Dresden Files II: Dealing Drugs To Tiny Faeries

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah, sometimes spirits are liquid too.

And if you drink enough liquid spirits, you may see non-liquid spirits.

[hamlet]

The difference is that they have different effects. Consuming "life force" would basically be like killing them any other way. Consuming their "spirit" may (all these distinctions are unclear) make them unable to leave a ghost. Consuming an actual soul well...GS implies you'll be wiped from the cycle. You will not go to an afterlife. That's kinda huge.

You don't know this. You're speculating based on what little evidence you have.

In the end, a soul and a spirit are really the same kind of thing, it's just a matter of degrees and the amount of "self" remaining to them. A ghost/spirit is really just an echo, a shell, the last remaining bits. A soul seems to be essentially a person absent a body: Harry was a naked soul throughout Ghost Story.

How these interact with a Dark Hallow we cannot know, but I'm saying that, when you get down to brass tacks, consuming even a ghost or such like for your own personal benefit is an inherently evil act. Hell, I'd go so far as to say doing such to an eldritch abomination is also an evil act. You can do evil things to evil people.

[Lamech]

Granted, Bob made a point of asserting a technical difference between the two, but in the end, you're talking about consuming that which used to be a human for your own benefit. I'm struggling to see how that can be considered neutral let along good.

Ghosts are not humans. They never where. They can be created when people die, but they aren't the person themselves. That's why we had both Harry and Ghost Harry in book three.

Souls are the important part. You are a soul. A ghost is the impression you leave when you hit the ground boarder between life and death. Its like a snow angel. The outline the police draw around bodies. The hole you make when you go through a window.

Hell, I'd go so far as to say doing such to an eldritch abomination is also an evil act. You can do evil things to evil people.

We consume living things for our benefit all the time. Consuming a ghost for your own benefit is akin to consuming... maybe a dolphin? They aren't human, but some are certainly high on the intelligence scale. An eldritch abomination would be akin to consuming a wild animal that's murdering people. Ghost in particular are free to use. You can bind ghosts, eat them, enslave them, look through their memories, or use them in street mimery and you won't break any of the laws of magic. They aren't human.

[The Glyphstone]

Ghosts are not humans. They never where. They can be created when people die, but they aren't the person themselves. That's why we had both Harry and Ghost Harry in book three.

Souls are the important part. You are a soul. A ghost is the impression you leave when you hit the ground boarder between life and death. Its like a snow angel. The outline the police draw around bodies. The hole you make when you go through a window.

We consume living things for our benefit all the time. Consuming a ghost for your own benefit is akin to consuming... maybe a dolphin? They aren't human, but some are certainly high on the intelligence scale. An eldritch abomination would be akin to consuming a wild animal that's murdering people. Ghost in particular are free to use. You can bind ghosts, eat them, enslave them, look through their memories, or use them in street mimery and you won't break any of the laws of magic. They aren't human.

Ghosts aren't human, or anything else. They're just echoes of people, not independent thinking creatures in their own right...not even like eating a dolphin, like eating a portrait of a person. So eating an eldritch abomination being evil would depend on if it was an independent sentient, by whatever definition of sentient such things use.

[lord_khaine]

Ghosts aren't human, or anything else. They're just echoes of people, not independent thinking creatures in their own right...not even like eating a dolphin, like eating a portrait of a person. So eating an eldritch abomination being evil would depend on if it was an independent sentient, by whatever definition of sentient such things use.

No?

Ghost story certainly showed us how ghost were indeed individually thinking beings, best example of this is properly Mort's ghost guardian whose name escapes me.

[The Glyphstone]

No?

Ghost story certainly showed us how ghost were indeed individually thinking beings, best example of this is properly Mort's ghost guardian whose name escapes me.

Sir Stuart was specifically called out as unusual by ghost standards, as evidenced by how he 'regenerated' into a generic, unthinking ghost after being caught in the circle and melted.

Ghosts aren't real creatures. They are imprints/copies of the people who 'spawned' them, and act like that person would. They can be incredibly detailed and 'lifelike' up to a certain point, to where even the ghost is convinced it is an authentic extension of the living person (see, Mort's interaction with Dead Harry), but they're ultimately just shades or echoes, unable to act against their imprint and devoid of actual free will.

[lord_khaine]

Sir Stuart was a pretty clear evidence of ghosts being able to both think and feel, and while the damage he suffered made him degenerate pretty severly, then Uriel directly pointed out how there was still a lot to build upon there.

And what is the definition of "real"? because from what we have seen so far the only one ghosts fail are actually being ghosts.
We have evidence of them being able to both think, learn feel and chance.
And while we have no evidence for them having free will or not, then it hardly matters.. neither have Bob or Toot Toot, and i suspect most people will agree they are real.

[Aidan305]

The way I look at it is like this: There are three parts to every person: The Mind, the Body, and the Soul. When someone dies, the body and mind remain, while the soul proceeds to whatever's waiting for them in the afterlife. The body just sits there and fades away, and the mind hangs around as an imprint on the world but will still fade with time. It's only the minds of those with sufficient purpose such as Sir Stuart or Kravos or Grave Peril Dresden that can hold on and stay strong, and stay who they were without fading.

Of course, in Ghost Story it wasn't just the Mind that was hanging around for Harry, but the Soul as well.

[BRC]

IIRC there is a difference between "Free Will" and "Defined by one's Nature" that, in many places, is pretty technical.

It's the difference between a very honest person who, when asked their birthday, says "December 12, 1985", because they were born on December 12, 1985, and a computer program that, when given the question "When is your Birthday" answers "December 12, 1985".

Effectively its the same thing. You get the same answer from both the computer program and Honest Jim up there. If they filled out a form asking for their birthday you would not be able to tell which one provided the answer.

However, Jim is choosing to answer, the computer program is not.

In Dresdenverse lots of supernatural things act like very complicated computer programs. They are defined by their nature.
Jim's Ghost, when asked "When were you born" would say 'December 12, 1985", but it would not be choosing to say that. It would give that answer because it is an imprint of Jim, and Jim would always answer "December 12, 1985".
The Ghost would also believe it was really Jim, because if Jim found himself floating around as a ghost HE would assume he was himself as opposed to a psychic imprint of himself.

Jim would have given 12/12/1985 as his birthday. He did not need to, but he would. Therefore, his ghost MUST give that answer.
The difference is purely technical, but is apparently very magically significant.

I'm getting into speculation here, but
This is, as far as I can tell, the reason for a lot of weird supernatural behaviors. The Sidhe cannot tell a direct lie because their "Programming" does not allow it. Humans can choose to lie because they have Free Will. We can, at any point, make any number of decisions. We tend to make only a limited number of decisions for a variety of reasons, but the potential to, say, rip off our clothes and dance around the restaurant exists.

That's why Faeries can pledge an oath by saying it three times. If they do that, they are bound to their oath. Human wizards swear by their power. Technically they CAN break the oath, they just suffer great consequences by doing so.

[123456789blaaa]

You don't know this. You're speculating based on what little evidence you have.

In the end, a soul and a spirit are really the same kind of thing, it's just a matter of degrees and the amount of "self" remaining to them. A ghost/spirit is really just an echo, a shell, the last remaining bits. A soul seems to be essentially a person absent a body: Harry was a naked soul throughout Ghost Story.

How these interact with a Dark Hallow we cannot know, but I'm saying that, when you get down to brass tacks, consuming even a ghost or such like for your own personal benefit is an inherently evil act. Hell, I'd go so far as to say doing such to an eldritch abomination is also an evil act. You can do evil things to evil people.

That having your soul destroyed erases you from existence was heavily implied in GS.

Really though, my point was that different words like spirit and soul aren't interchangeable in the DF. They are not synonyms. While the precise definitions of the words aren't known (I acknowledged such in my post), using them as synonyms confuses things. Unless you can get a quote, I'll reject you saying that "a soul and a spirit are really the same kind of thing".

As for whether consuming ghosts/eldritch abominations for the Darkhallow is evil? That's a complicated question (see below).

Ghosts are not humans. They never where. They can be created when people die, but they aren't the person themselves. That's why we had both Harry and Ghost Harry in book three.

Souls are the important part. You are a soul. A ghost is the impression you leave when you hit the ground boarder between life and death. Its like a snow angel. The outline the police draw around bodies. The hole you make when you go through a window.

We consume living things for our benefit all the time. Consuming a ghost for your own benefit is akin to consuming... maybe a dolphin? They aren't human, but some are certainly high on the intelligence scale. An eldritch abomination would be akin to consuming a wild animal that's murdering people. Ghost in particular are free to use. You can bind ghosts, eat them, enslave them, look through their memories, or use them in street mimery and you won't break any of the laws of magic. They aren't human.

Sir Stuart was a pretty clear evidence of ghosts being able to both think and feel, and while the damage he suffered made him degenerate pretty severly, then Uriel directly pointed out how there was still a lot to build upon there.

And what is the definition of "real"? because from what we have seen so far the only one ghosts fail are actually being ghosts.
We have evidence of them being able to both think, learn feel and chance.
And while we have no evidence for them having free will or not, then it hardly matters.. neither have Bob or Toot Toot, and i suspect most people will agree they are real.

As I recall, the RPG says that doing stuff to ghosts like that is a very very dark grey area in the Laws because it borders on necromancy.

Now the question of whether doing so is evil is...complicated. I've pondered the morality of non-humans in the DF a lot. If anyone's interested, I consolidated a lot of those thoughts in the OP of a thread on another forum (reposted below):

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<snip>
Also, I'm not really attempting to make a point here. I'm just pondering and seeing if there's any discussion to be had.

Anyways, Free Will is a HUGE thing in the Dresdenverse. The entire universe revolves around it. Other universes revolve around it since other universes are created by Free Will (per WoJ). Jim has literally said in WoJ that

For the Dresden Files, the whole point of The Almighty positive good forces that are out there is that free will is important and they respect that and you've gotta have it and use it. That's the entire point. They are a force of freedom. And it's the bad guys who are going around doing whatever they can to abrogate free will. So for me, where you draw the line is what defines where good stops and evil starts is by how much you're taking away free will and how much you're enabling it.

So good guys= enabling Free WIll and bad guys= taking it away.

We can see from all this that Free Will is perhaps the most important thing in the Dresdenverse. The question is: does this make being with Free Will more important that beings without Free Will?

In a very old, very long WoJ about Free Will Jim talks about Bob and how he doesn't have Free Will. He then says:

<snip>
His existence is focused on questions and answers, upon simply acquiring the knowledge, and that's that.

Which is not to say that he could never become anything more.
<snip>

So now we have Jim heavily implying that a being with Free Will is "above" beings without Free Will. He also says in another WoJ that having Free Will is what "seperates" us from everybody else.

Do beings without Free Will have any worth at all? Both Dresden and Jim seem to care for animals so perhaps being without Free Will are on the level of animals no matter how intelligent they are? How far does that go though? We use animals for experiments that would be deemed unethical if preformed on humans. Does this apply to Red Court vampires (for example)?

A lot of people don't mind killing animals that harm them. If a botfly lays an egg in your scalp you probably don't mind killing the baby. In the Dresdenverse this seems to also hold true for supernatural predators. When almost the entire Red Court was exterminated nobody thought this was horrific in the least because the Red Court are slaves to their parasitic, evil, sadistic natures.

Would it be okay to kill a Black Court vamp even if they haven't actually done anything wrong yet? After all, unlike a human you know they are going to horrible things if they can get away with it. If you could exterminate all the supernatural predators would you have an obligation to do so? After all they will prey on and do bad things to the other humans.

Would it be immoral to save a being without Free Will that wants only to bring peace and joy into the world if you had the choice of saving either it or a sadistic human serial killer (all other things being equal) because the human has the capacity to change? What about saving a black court vamp instead of a human? What about saving a black court vamp instead of the peace and joy being? Is that wrong only because it harms humans? Is the worth of a being without Free Will only measured in how much they can contribute or detract from being with Free Wills lives?

Humanity wants Monsters to be real (I refer you to this article:http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-reason...rs-to-be-real/.). In the Dresdenverse they are! They're the enemy. Jim avoids the "evil babies" problem by having the monsters come from humans.

Now there are some things in the books that indicate that beings without Free Will are not so below us and that we should treat them with respect. Harry certainly treats Tara West, Mouse, Mister, Bob, Toot-Toot, and Lash as equals. In fact there is a very interesting passage in White Night concerning Lash and the topic of this post:

<snip>
Lasciel's mere shadow was infinitely more dangerous to me than Marcone, but that didn't mean that I
couldn't admire the creature for what it was while respecting the threat it posed to me. It didn't mean I
couldn't feel some kind of empathy for what had to be a horribly lonely way to exist.

Life's easier when you can write off others as monsters, as demons, as horrible threats that must be
hated and feared. The thing is, you can't do that without becoming them, just a little. Sure, Lasciel's
shadow might be determined to drag my immortal soul down to Perdition, but there was no point in
hating her for it. It wouldn't do anything but stain me that much darker.
I'm human, and I'm going to stay that way.

So I felt a little bit bad for the creature whose purpose in the universe was to tempt me into darkness.
Hell, once I'd thought about it, it was just about the only job I'd heard of that had to be even more
isolated and frustrating than mine.

This is very interesting. From a Doylist perspective it seems to be put there to contrast Harrys irrational hatred of ghouls from the incident earlier in the book.

The thing is though, that it is only every mentioned in this book. Nothing like this is ever mentioned again in the series (that I can remember).

Now, to me this quote is saying that when fighting back and killing beings that mean us harm we shouldn't hate them while doing it. It's like putting down a rabid bear or gassing cockroaches. I'm pretty sure this wasn't the intent though.

The last thing I want to point out is a very interesting section from Cold Days. I can't quote it here because I don't have the book on me right now but basically, Maeve seems to get Free Will from Nemesis.

Now, we haven't really seen any comments about Free Will from any of the non-Free Willed beings in the series (except for Bob in WN where he says he's glad he doesn't have it because having it is terrible). It seems to be a non-issue among them, they just don't care (or that's the impression I get from the books). This is the first time in the series that a non-Free Willed being thinks Free Will is awesome. Maeve rubs her ability to choose in Mabs face and seems really happy. Now you'd think gaining Free Will would be an awesome thing but...

Both Harry and Mab seem to regard it as bad. Harry says being able to choose isn't a superpower (wtf? Yes it is) and says that it allows you to choose wrong (or something like that. Don't have the book on me). Mab says their is no shame in fulfilling your Purpose (Do all non-Free Willed beings have a Purpose?) and that Maeve is not free now anymore than a knife is free after having been pulled from its sheath and plunged into a corpse.

Once again I repeat that I'm not trying to make a point here. I'm just sharing my thoughts and asking questions.

...

I think that's everything. I hope I didn't disappoint and I welcome everyone's thoughts .

Note: on the Maeve thing at the bottom, I was later convinced that Nemesis did not give her Free Will. It only altered her nature. She was just tricked.

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Technically, what Harry says is:

"Being able to lie isn't a freaking superpower...it means you can lie to yourself."

(Italics mine).

The issue isn't choice - supernaturals regularly make choices. Free Will seems to mean a bit more than that. What I'd take away from that quote is that beings without Free Will have a reason to exist, and that reason is a foundational influence on them. They can become more than that, but that's where they start. Humans, having Free Will, have no supernatural hole they're forcibly pegged into.

Let's look at a relevant WoJ:

No free will ever? Or no free will to disobey when commanded? I don't know that it's possible to have intellect without will. Well, then again, most of us have to make decisions about what is true, and what isn't, or what to remember and forget - but a spirit of intellect is mostly just a talking library, right? A storehouse. Although, Bob seems to also understand what he knows... I'm getting over my head.


Well, I don't want to hand out too much outside the context of an actual story. But within the context of the Dresden books, Bob isn't, like, an actual mortal person.

Mortals are the ones who have free will, the ability to choose what they're doing, to choose between right and wrong. Without getting too thickly into the underlying philosophy, that's the thing that separates, for example, mankind from the angels--the angels didn't get the same kind of choice about their existance, and what they would do with it. Mortals get the chance to make all kinds of decisions, and can change their minds, well, at will. Other creatures, though they may look like people, don't get the same range of choices about who and what they will be.

Mab, for example, is Mab. She /can't/ show up and suddenly be merciful, generous, patient and kind. It would never so much as occur to her to do so, because it isn't a fundamental part of her nature, and she /can't/ choose to change it. She simply isn't capable. She doesn't have free will in the same way that people do. It's related to the difference between having a soul and not having a soul, as well. Without a soul, you aren't free to choose how you will shape that soul. You just stay what you are.

But that's getting way off the subject of Bob. I mean, don't you think that if he had totally free will, he'd be out of the skull all the time, hitching rides in people's heads on their way into strip bars or something? There's a reason he obeys Harry, and it's not purely because Harry offers him shelter from a gruesome demise. It's a part of who and what he is.


Another question: Does Bob know everything all the time, or just know when he is asked a question? Can he ask himself questions? (wouldn't that involve will?)


He doesn't know everything. He knows a LOT. There's a difference. He's been alive for centuries and worked with a lot of different wizards, and he remembers absolutely everything he is exposed to. He's an enormous source of information and practical experience, not a conduit to infinite knowledge. He's got limits. He can ask himself questions and attempt to extrapolate answers based upon what he knows, or by asking other spirits for answers, or by venturing out and seeking the answers himself, but he doesn't just pull knowledge out of nowhere. He just LIKES having it, and getting more of it. That's what he is. He's innocent (more or less) of the whole question of good and evil. His existance is focused on questions and answers, upon simply acquiring the knowledge, and that's that.

Which is not to say that he could never become anything more. Especially if he hangs around with mortals a lot. Mortals, in their own possession of free will, have a tendancy to influence beings who don't have it, in one way or another. I suppose it's entirely possible, for example, that too much association with mortals are what changed Aurora, former Summer Lady, and gave her a determination to destroy the natural order in an effort to change its very nature--for the better, true, but it would never even have occurred to any of the other Queens, Mothers or Lady that such a thing might be, until it had already happened. It isn't in their nature.

But perhaps I've said too much. I'll shut up now .

Jim

In the Dresden Files, Free Will is being able to go against your nature (or change your nature...it's a bit unclear. For the purposes of this conversation though, they're basically the same). They aren't robots: they can still make choces within their natures (for example: a ghoul choosing whether to wear a blue dress or a green dress). They just can't Choose outside of their nature (the same ghoul letting a person go for sentimental reasons). Imagine a dog chained up in a backyard. He can roam around the backyard but can't go further than it because of the chian. This is a metaphor for not having Free Will.

Now what I'm getting from your post is that you believe that the dogs chain is strong but breakable. It may be very hard to break the chain and go outside but the dog can do so on its own. I do not think this is true. While I do think that Non-Free-Willed beings can become something more (heck it's right their I the WoJ), I believe they need outside interference.

As far as the validity or lack thereof of supernatural beings' lives, I think it's one of the more unsettling aspects of the series - Harry, at least, seems largely to view pretty much anything that isn't human as lesser unless they have some special reason to be useful to him, and in this he's not unusual. He's certainly willing to show empathy to things that he befriends, but that intrinsic compassion-by-default attitude he shows (or tries to adopt) towards fellow humans just is not there. Killing, say, the Sidhe, or vampires, is like squashing a bug for him, as opposed even to killing horrible humans.

As I recall, the RPG (as an example of lore) doesn't strictly say that creatures like White Courters or the fae lack all free will; what it does seem to imply is that they have an intrinsic Nature, and it is more difficult for them to act against that nature than it is for humans. But does that mean that they're without value - that they're not really "people"? I don't think that's the intent. For one, Harry is a very unreliable narrator; WoJ has shown a bit more sympathy to nonhumans than Harry has - the quote you cited about Bob is a good example. Supernatural things can change, in the Dresdenverse, if someone gives them a reason to. Harry gives Lash her own name, he gives Ivy her own name. These gestures matter.

In the Dresdenverse, beings like Red Court vampires do not have souls. They do not have Free Will. The morality of the Dresdenverse is based around Free Will. Per WoJ the "positive good forces" are all about enabling Free Will while the bad guys are all about taking it away. Entire universe split off because of Free Will. Free Will is one of the building blocks of the DF universe.

I find this interesting and refreshing actually. We've had this trend of "bad" races in fiction turning out to be "good" and the Dresden Files found a non-horrible way to go back to basics. Of course with that comes all the reasons why we moved on from the "basics" in the first place but hey.

The White Court have Free Will. They have souls but those souls are bound to a Spirit of Hunger form the NeverNever. They're actually a unique type of Scion (half-supernatural and half-mortal creatures. Changelings are one of the most common Scions). Remember in Summer Knight how the changelings slowly grow more and more Fae as the use their powers until they finally Choose either human or Fae? White Court vamps are like that except as a see-saw. When they draw on their powers they become more and more in thrall to their Hunger Spirit but because of how unique they are, they don't actually go over fully. Instead they feed and go back to being almost human. It's pretty interesting. Anyways, the point is that they do have Free Will.

The Fae on the other hand to not have Free Will. I think you are recalling the RPG incorrectly because it says pretty much the exact opposite of what you are saying.

I'm not aware of any WoJ that are that indicate Free Will-even limited Free Will- in nonhumans. Supernatural things can change but before they change, do the matter? It doesn't seem so.

Harry may be an unreliable narrator but I haven't seen a shred of anything different from any other characters in the entire series either. Just look at the Red Court genocide. People cared because of the impact it would have, not the genocide itself. Tons of Red Court who weren't involved in the kidnapping died horribly and nobody cares. It probably wouldn't even occur to anyone clued-in. In the Dresdenverse, this is justified. Every ghoul will probably try and eat you, every Fae will probably try and trick you. This isn't racism but fact.

I don't think Jim meant this of course. The kind of world where racism of his sort is justified really doesn't seem like Jims intention (just look at Toot-Toot and Tera West for example.). Nevertheless, that's what I got out of it.

I believe Bob states that Lash's borrowing some of Harry's soul-energy was what enables her to make her choice, so it could also be that the inhuman can gain free will through the intervention of the free-willed, but not on their own juice. I'm not entirely sure about it, though. There's some significant disparities between how, say, different vampires within the White Court approach the issue, or how the White Court vampires are treated as opposed to the Reds (seriously, the justification Harry gives for Reds being unforgivable monsters is that they must go through a fatal feeding to fully transition. This is also the case for a true White Court vampire). Jim is really good at worldbuilding, but there's definitely still some apparent inconsistencies. It may be that we end up finding out everything fits together neatly later on though--I wouldn't put it past the series to answer this kind of question by the end.

Also, responding to Jetrauben's comment about the RPG reflecting the lore: If the game mechanics can be considered a valid source of lore, then there are actually three categories on the free-will spectrum. Pure mortals, supernatural beings with a degree of free will, and true monsters. Some creatures are automatically in the latter category (like Blampires), while the others have free will but find acquiring power limits its exercise, possibly leading to their corruption into a monster (which explains the inconsistency between characters like Thomas and Lara).

By WoJ Lash didn't actually gain Free Will. Bob was mistaken. Interestingly enough though, my first major DF theory was actually based around Mab gaining some Free Will/a soul through borrowing soul energy (I can post it if you're interested). I think it has a lot going for it). We do have the WoJ I posted saying that supernatural beings can become "something more" especially if they hang around with mortals a lot. The borrowing soul energy bit is probably the most straightforward conclusion (Occam's Razor and whatnot).

The justification Harry gives for Reds being unforgivable monsters is that they have no souls. They do not have Free Will as I said above. They are slaves to their not-very-pleasant nature. Red Court Infected are basically artificial Scions. When they Choose to feed and kill, they make a Choice to become full RC vamps and lose their souls. The White Court on the other hand do not behave like that. They are unique in that they still retain their souls after they "Choose".

In addition to that, I'd also like to highlight another portion of one of the WoJ's I posted above:

Mortals are the ones who have free will, the ability to choose what they're doing, to choose between right and wrong. Without getting too thickly into the underlying philosophy, that's the thing that separates, for example, mankind from the angels--the angels didn't get the same kind of choice about their existance, and what they would do with it. Mortals get the chance to make all kinds of decisions, and can change their minds, well, at will. Other creatures, though they may look like people, don't get the same range of choices about who and what they will be.

Bam. Creatures without Free Will aren't real people.

[Lamech]

Hmm... if Nemisis truly did give Maevae free will, this suddenly becomes majorly chilling.

For the Dresden Files, the whole point of The Almighty positive good forces that are out there is that free will is important and they respect that and you've gotta have it and use it. That's the entire point. They are a force of freedom. And it's the bad guys who are going around doing whatever they can to abrogate free will. So for me, where you draw the line is what defines where good stops and evil starts is by how much you're taking away free will and how much you're enabling it.

Although it probably didn't.

[The Glyphstone]

I don't think Maeve gained free will from Nemesis, she just lost the restriction against outright lying. The virus altered/overwrote her operating code, to continue the programming analogy, but she was still bound by a lack of free will.

[Lamech]

I don't think Maeve gained free will from Nemesis, she just lost the restriction against outright lying. The virus altered/overwrote her operating code, to continue the programming analogy, but she was still bound by a lack of free will.

Yeah, that's probably the case.

[Thrawn183]

Didn't Maeve have free will all along?

[Soras Teva Gee]

Well if we take the implication that back in the day she Chose Sidthe... probably not. Or not in any meaningful sense

[Mauve Shirt]

Guys, I just noticed something wonderful. When Harry builds an iceberg in Cold Days, the spell he uses is Rexus Mundus, "King of the World" in Latin.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Guys, I just noticed something wonderful. When Harry builds an iceberg in Cold Days, the spell he uses is Rexus Mundus, "King of the World" in Latin.

*pauses*

*it sinks in*

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Thrawn183]

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Never actually watched more than 10 minutes of Titanic, is that the reference?

[Socratov]

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Never actually watched more than 10 minutes of Titanic, is that the reference?

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Yes, yes it is.

[Mauve Shirt]

*pauses*

*it sinks in*

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Pun intended?

[CarpeGuitarrem]

...actually, not intended. Oh goodness.

[Mauve Shirt]

Ermagerd, guize, should I get the signed pre-order of Skin Game or just pre-order the e-book?
This thread must not expire!

[Avilan the Grey]

Having this fan fiction idea running in my head of having modern arms taking up defence of the ice wall for a while (for whatever reason) and Mab (and others not familiar with how... good... we have become at killing each other) initially doubt mere humans are up to it, until the first report to her where the question is asked "How far should we push them from the wall?", and it turning out that the modern human army has pushed the Outsiders several miles away from their wall section at that point...

[Eldan]

Guys, I just noticed something wonderful. When Harry builds an iceberg in Cold Days, the spell he uses is Rexus Mundus, "King of the World" in Latin.

Terribly fake Latin, too. "Rex" is king in Latin. "Rexus" means nothing I ever heard of. Google translates it as "Bond". But that's fitting for Harry.

How was it:
"Merlin esteemed, I am embarrassing, laundress mine is not present, I am another garment?"
Or something like that.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Also, recall that spells aren't supposed to be spot-on language, because they act as linguistic insulation. They have enough meaning that you can evoke the spell, but not so much meaning that the spell fries your brain.

Which means that Harry's use of "Fuego!" says a lot about how well he learned his Spanish. Or didn't.

[BRC]

Also, recall that spells aren't supposed to be spot-on language, because they act as linguistic insulation. They have enough meaning that you can evoke the spell, but not so much meaning that the spell fries your brain.

Which means that Harry's use of "Fuego!" says a lot about how well he learned his Spanish. Or didn't.

I think it's more that they have just enough meaning for you to evoke the spell, but are uncommon enough that you don't have to worry about accidentally firing off the spell.

If Harry just learned to shoot fire, he would run the risk of shooting off fire whenever he's angry, or whenever he thinks about shooting fire.

If he ties his fire spells to a word like Fuego, he has more control.

However, if he ever actually SAYS the word Fuego, he runs the risk of shooting off fire, which is why most Wizards prefer Fake Latin or dead languages, things they won't actually ever say.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I don't remember where specifically, but he talks about pseudo-language as a way to insulate your own brain in one of the early books. Maybe Storm Front. (Admittedly--subject to change, since it's so very early and is Storm Front, but it seems consistent with everything else.)

[Dragonus45]

The idea put forth is Storm Front was that you used words you didnt really understand so that the magic didn't fry your brain. He tired unworded magic while wresting the one guy and gave himself a magical migraine like never seen before,

[Soras Teva Gee]

Not like it can't be for more then one reason.

How was it:
"Merlin esteemed, I am embarrassing, laundress mine is not present, I am another garment?"
Or something like that.

Closer then that... his was something like an actual plausible mistake over hovercrafting eels.

Because while Harry doesn't speak Latin... Jim Butcher clearly has a bit of a crush on it.

[Mauve Shirt]

I feel the Rexus Mundus joke works despite its incorrectness.