Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

Baloreilly (00:00)
after Harry attempts to pursue this wolf in the dark, he walks out the back of the building and is immediately in the head from behind.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:09)
Harry and being hit in the head Name a more iconic duo. Yeah.

Baloreilly (00:14)
It's like peanut butter and jelly just with more

cracking skulls.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:27)
Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to recorded neutral territory. Remember, spoilers go all the way through battleground. I am Adam Ruzzo and with me, as always, is a college kid filled with idealism and violence, it's Brian O'Reilly. Welcome, Brian.

Baloreilly (00:41)
Save the whales. Or else.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:44)
Okay, okay, I'll do what you want. All right, Brian, where are we? We're still in the same night as the last four chapters, correct?

Baloreilly (00:52)
Yeah, we pick up right where we left off. Chapter four, Harry realizes there's someone maybe following the car he and Murphy are in. She lets him out.

Chapter five is Harry in the parking lot making a chalk circle to follow the blood on the piece of glass.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (01:10)
he follows it to a abandoned apartment store where we meet the Alphas for the first time. And Billy and Georgia are having an argument over what exactly? This is the question we want to dive into for this chapter.

Baloreilly (01:25)
I mean, it seems like they're arguing about whether they should go out looking for the hexan wolves. It's a little confusing because first of all, how much do they know? And second of all, what's exactly Billy's plan here? We're just going to roam around until we find some nasty looking dogs?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (01:46)
Yeah, that seems to be his plan because Billy gets smarter as he ages, but he does seem like the testosterone-laden idiot that Georgia accuses him of being in this moment. Now, some of the things they say my curiosity. So Georgia says, she told us not to move again tonight, unquote. So they've moved before, earlier tonight? Or maybe they moved yesterday?

And what does move mean? Were they out on the prowl for bad guys? They must be referencing what's going on with the Hexenwolves, right? What the FBI are doing. They know about that. They've read about the murders. They know it's a full moon. They think they should be out there right now. you interpret this as they were already out somewhere tonight and they need to move again tonight?

Baloreilly (02:35)
So we're going to talk a little bit about how the Alphas came to be in this situation. But the one thing that Dresden does mention is that the neighborhood that he's in is fairly close to two of the murders that took place. So maybe the Alphas are like revisiting the scene of a crime sort of, trying to, catch somebody in the act somehow.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (02:51)
Hmm.

It's true, Murphy describes most of the murders in that second chapter or third chapter that we talked about last time. And they were all in a relatively close geographic area in South Chicago. So maybe that's where they are here in this scene. And they're like, we should go out hunting essentially with our noses and or just patrolling like a cop would just trying to be somewhere at the right time. There's roughly 12 of them. If they spread out, they might be able to catch them in the act.

What they don't know, I think, at this point is that Tara was already hunting tonight and found one and caught one in the act. And that's what happened at the Varsity that we're examining in chapter two.

Baloreilly (03:40)
Right. And maybe in terms of she told us not to move again tonight, they were on the prowl and probably not as wolves, probably in human form, walking around ready to transform. And Tara told them all to go back into the safe house, presumably because she was either before or after that confrontation. She wanted them to get off the Billy's defense,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (03:55)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (04:07)
He probably doesn't logical reason why they stopped whatever they were already doing and wants to get back out there because he thinks he's helping. But I think it's an open question as to whether Alphas really have any clue what they're getting into here because mean how many times have they... the murders happened a month ago. Is this like their first night on patrol? Do we have any idea?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (04:32)
Yeah, that's a good question. So there is a quote that Billy says here, listen, alphas, I've led you for all this time. I've done what I promised to do. Are you going to stop trusting me? Unquote. That obviously suggests that they've been doing this for a while. How long? Maybe a few weeks, maybe a month, maybe two months, maybe a year. But I'm a little skeptical of that because we know we are in October, so we're roughly

two months-ish, maybe a month and a half into the school year at one of these universities. Harry probably would have noticed or wolves prowling the streets in the last year. So I'm guessing this is relatively do you think

happened? How did these kids, how did the Alphas meet Tara in the first place?

Baloreilly (05:23)
So, the most obvious timeline that the book sort of implies is that they met Terra sometime after the killing started last But that doesn't really make sense to me. We know that sort of this one trick spell of turning into a wolf isn't the most difficult magic in the world or something, but it's not like the Alphas are major league wizards and it's not like it's something that Dresden can do.

Presumably this takes more than a couple weeks to learn how to do it all, and they're already at the stage where they can fight in this form.

So it seems much more likely to me that they met Tara through happenstance sometime earlier. Perhaps, we know the Alphas have a bunch of different majors. This is not like the science department all getting together. is a psychologist. Billy, think, is an engineer or some kind of math program. I wonder if they were all involved over the summer.

in some kind of extracurricular activity, maybe even an incoming students activity that involved going out into the Rockies and doing some environmental work. And whatever they did impressed Tara enough to where she has had her eye on them for a few months and actually got in contact with them before the Hexenwolf Belts even got into the hands of the FBI.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (06:50)
Yeah, I think that is a perfect setting for one of the future side stories that we would read in an anthology like Side Jobs or Briefcases. I could just see a situation where Billy and Georgia and the rest of the Alphas are out there doing some kind of ecological work or environmental work where they're...

counting the number of birds that are in this thing or doing whatever it is, know, documenting, cleaning up, whatever it is. And they come across an injured wolf and they take the time to like splint its leg or like help it in some way. Maybe it's trapped And they help it. And then they in turn get caught in some kind of a sudden storm or a blizzard or something weird happens. And Tara, who was watching them, decides to return the favor.

by helping them and that's how their relationship gets started. That would be a very cool story to read.

Baloreilly (07:40)
Yes, and I think one reason why, even if they have only been turning into wolves for a month, it's likely that Terra had her eye on them at some point beforehand is because, you know, we know that basically any vanilla mortal can close a circle. But turning into a wolf requires at least a modicum of talent. So Terra must have had some process by which she was able to ascertain, who could do it.

she found kids who could actually do this magic it's not like she could put out a flyer and just get 12 people who, slide into that really easily.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (08:17)
That's possible. The other possibility is she was able to gift them with enough magic to do this. Now that would require her to be some kind of a lesser deity or something to that effect. More than what she appears to be at the end of this book, which is what she appears to be is a wolf that learned how to turn into a human. But we've never seen that before and maybe never again, maybe she's even more than just that. Maybe she is some kind of

Baloreilly (08:23)
Mmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (08:47)
animals, nature spirit that was around similar to, not necessarily on the same power level as Negloshi, but something like that in ancient times and still maybe does have the power to gift that to these young people that she decides are worthy.

Baloreilly (09:02)
Right, we know that the mantle of eldest has power among the fairy at least. Maybe Terra is the eldest among wolves and that's where her power is coming

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (09:13)
⁓

yeah, it could very well be. Okay, so Terra manages to notice that Dresden is Now, from what is described by Dresden, he is in the blackest dark and not making any noise. How does she recognize that he's there?

Baloreilly (09:34)
this puzzled me a little bit. Tara shouldn't be very good at being human. I mean, she's not. We know that from later in the book. So either she's retaining some, of her enhanced senses as a wolf in her human form. Maybe she has that fine control over the shape change, or it's just that her predi... And maybe her predatory instincts are just so good, it doesn't even matter. she's just always, keyed up.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (09:54)
Ooh, I haven't heard about that.

Baloreilly (10:02)
and noticing.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (10:02)
or if she is

more than just a reverse lycanthrope, we always talk about how if you change from a human into an animal, you get to benefit from those enhanced senses that the animal has. It would suggest that if you transformed from an animal to a human, you would then be limited by the crappy human senses that we have, where our sense of smell and hearing is not nearly as good as that of a wolf or something like that. So that does suggest there's something else going on here.

But Brian, I think it's a simpler explanation. I think Harry, in his excitement to have spotted her, is unconsciously doing something that's making noise. The way that it's written is thus, quote,

Baloreilly (10:30)
Yes.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (10:54)
and she knew she had been followed. How? How in the hell she had known I was after her? I looked up at her excited, only to find her staring intently at the thick patch of shadows around the shelves I hid behind." Unquote. So he's very excited. He thinks he's identified the killer. And I think he's like tapping his toe or like moving his body a little bit, like excited about it. And maybe his duster is...

brushing against the floor, something is making noise and he's not noticing it. That's my interpretation.

Baloreilly (11:24)
or even that head move he describes is enough for her to see something.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (11:29)
that's entirely possible. Now, we also have this scene where she then goes, knocks out the lantern, has the kids escape, and then goes after Dresden so that he can't follow her. So you asked an interesting question. Does Terra already know about Wizard Dresden of Chicago?

And does she know that he is Dresden of Chicago? Or does she think that he's just somebody searching that might have found them and she has no idea?

Baloreilly (12:00)
This comes up a little bit in the next chapter and we're going to talk about Murphy making a similar supposition there. And the reason why I ask that question is because it seems like Tara has done a lot of groundwork in Chicago, more than somebody who's just arrived. So she very well might know that there's a wizard in the city who's a private investigator. It's not like Harry keeps it a secret. He's been in the news for months, or at least he's had a news article about him.

few months so she very well might know and she might also know that's who she was following I mean he's 6'9 he kind of sticks out in a crowd

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (12:38)
And later, Murphy's, we're gonna talk about that conversation that Murphy has with him trying to decide whether these are the killers or not, you pointed out, you know, she's very gentle here, so maybe one of the reasons that she doesn't hurt Harry, she just disarms him and then runs away and stalls him, is that she knows that he's a wizard. But I think there's another explanation. Later on, in chapter 25,

Tara mentions that humans are the ones that kill for sport. Quote, animals do not do what they have done. Animals kill to eat, to defend themselves or their own, and to protect their territory. Not for the joy of it, not for the lust of it. Only humans do that, wizard. Unquote. So there she's describing that animals, and we know that she is a wolf that turns into a human, would not kill...

unless it needed to be done, unless they had enemies. She doesn't consider him an enemy in this moment. He is an obstacle, but he is not an enemy, so he is not deserved to die. That's the way that I would see it. Even if she doesn't know who he is, she doesn't see him as the enemy, so she can get out of it without killing him, so she does.

Baloreilly (13:47)
And I think it might even go further than that. says that not just because it's true, but it's also something of a statement of belief from her. Tara is a person who doesn't believe in unnecessary killing and also doesn't believe in unnecessary violence. She doesn't have to merely disarm Dresden. She could bite his arm real good and he'd let go just the same. She doesn't just avoid killing him.

She goes out of her way to hurt him as little as possible. So it's very possible that Terra's just awesome. And that's really why she doesn't go after Dresden here. She just doesn't want to hurt anybody. She doesn't have to.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (14:30)
So the next thing that happens, she kills the lantern, she helps the Alphas escape by stalling Dresden. But I wanted to bring up two different things that Dresden does here. When she leaves, Dresden tries to follow in the pitch dark, and he assumes, wrongly, that the dark will hide him as much as it hides the others. Now, he says, quote,

In retrospect, it wasn't the smartest decision." But he couldn't let them get away, right? He had to try. Now imagine for a moment, these were the killers and they recognized that you were in the room with them and they just turned out the light immediately. And we know that these killers can potentially turn into wolves that can see better than you in the dark. Do not try to follow them, you moron! Okay.

Okay, but Dresden, he doesn't know that they can necessarily turn into wolves. Maybe they just make killing and make it look like wolves like, like, like Murphy and Denton were suspecting. no, the sound of claws sliding on tile and then something furry slams into him and disarms him. And then what happens? Quote, it was definitely stupid to keep going forward, but I was angry, unquote. He goes after them again. Brian?

if he had stumbled on the FBI agents without realizing they were FBI agents, like the actual killers, and tried to follow them, he would be dead in this moment. There's no way he in the dark survives a Hexenwolf attack, because the only way he does it later is to steal a belt and use it himself.

Baloreilly (16:15)
Absolutely. I mean, it's very similar to something we'll talk about later in this episode when he goes to visit the street wolves, kind of blithely stumbling forward without really any regard for his own personal safety. And on the one hand, that's because Harry is stubborn and courageous and believes that, you know, sacrificing his life for others is the right thing to do. And if that's what happens, it happens. But on the other hand, dude, you're no good to anybody dead.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (16:42)
Yeah, so we're talking later in this episode, the question for Bob is what is the dumbest thing that anybody does in the series? I think this right here, recognizing that this is stupid, not once, but twice, and doing it anyway, this is a candidate for dumbest thing that anybody has done in the series. Is it top five? I don't think so, but I think it's worth bringing up right here, right now.

Baloreilly (17:07)
So after Harry attempts to pursue this wolf in the dark, he walks out the back of the building and is immediately hit in the head from behind.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (17:18)
it turns

out to be Murphy, as we all know. And in chapter six, Murphy it's Dresden, gets mad at him, rightly, because he followed a lead without telling her. And then we get this quote from Dresden. Those who live in glass houses, Lieutenant, unquote. He's calling her out on hypocrisy here. And at first I was like, well, hey, come on, man.

She didn't agree to, well she did kind of read a workout with him on it, but she didn't know that, wait no, she did notice it before she let him. So he's actually right, they were both in the car telling each other, yes we'll work together, no more secrets, I promise, while simultaneously they both knew that as soon as Harry got out of the car, they were each gonna follow a lead on their own, it just happened to lead them to the same place.

Baloreilly (18:08)
Yeah, I mean, really, you can tell why they get along so well together in the future. They're exactly the same in terms of their lone, lone wolf gunslinger act. The both of them just want to handle everything themselves. I think an interesting question is why Murphy doesn't tell Harry she's just going to follow the car that's clearly tailing them. They both notice it. What do you think it is?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (18:14)
Yep, flaws and all.

Yeah, well first of all, in order for her to not tell him that she's about to follow this, she has to assume he hasn't seen it. And why would he? She's the one in the driver's seat, she's checking the mirrors, et cetera, he's not necessarily doing that, so maybe she just assumes he's not looking. Or she's just underestimating the private detective part of him, right? So first of all, she has to assume he's not gonna notice it. Second of all, she doesn't maybe wanna bring a civilian on an official part of the investigation.

not only any civilian, but the one that's theoretically part of the IA investigation. If she actually does say, okay, there's somebody tailing me from the crime scene, they might have something to do with it, so I'm gonna get Dresden out of the situation, and then I'm gonna follow them and see where that leads. If it leads to a shootout and Dresden's with me and Dresden gets hurt, that's entirely on me. They can hang me out to dry, period, done.

That has to be running through her head at this point when she's under so much scrutiny.

Baloreilly (19:35)
Right, or if Dresden, hurts the suspect in that circumstances, that might even be worse for her career. And I think that's certainly possible, and it's a decent reason for her to break the promise, though it's still her obviously breaking the promise. One thing that's a little bit more charitable to her is maybe she just doesn't trust Harry to be able to keep his cool when she drops him off in the parking lot and not tip off the person following them. Harry is...

not the best with the poker face and the deception, especially in the beginning of the series, Murphy might realize that if she tells him, we're being followed, I'm going to let you out of the car, but don't do anything suspicious. know, Harry's going to immediately turn and look at the car following them to see if Murphy's able to double back on it and just ruin the whole sting. So that's underestimating him too, but it's underestimating him in a way that is not too far out of line with how we act in the early part of the series. So that's a little bit more charity.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (20:19)
Ha ha ha ha ha!

and the final possibility is she still doesn't necessarily trust him enough to bring him along on these kind of cases. Now, we know that they're going to be fully trustworthy after this, where they call each other up for backup whenever they need to go to something really dangerous, and this is not at that point yet. Now, one thing that does bug me every time I read it in this chapter, Brian, Harry, when asked, how did you find this place, says to Murphy, I'm a wizard. I used magic.

What else? Dude, just say you used a tracking spell on the blood that you picked up from the... you probably wanted to take that blood from the scene, huh? Yeah, yeah, you're lying for another reason by omission here, buddy.

Baloreilly (21:12)
Right.

Yeah, Harry hides things all the time. And I think part of what Harry believes has happened here is that he thinks that...

They're square. That this, you did something hypocritical Murphy and not looping me in and yeah, I did something hypocritical too, but you know, we're even, we both kind of went off on our own, but ha ha, we can laugh about it later.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (21:40)
Yeah, that's a touché moment and now we're okay again, buddy buddy. And maybe that's what it would be like in his mind, but that's not how she necessarily takes it. Now she does seem to let him off ⁓ easily here. She finds him here, maybe because she knew she was planning to go on her own, that might mollify her a little bit, but she does throw him some rope here because he betrayed her.

immediately after pledging that he would promise her, he says, listen, ⁓ I found a lead, I wasn't able to contact you. She says, fine, I accept that excuse essentially, and they keep on keeping on. But I don't think Harry realizes what a big deal that is, that she's willing to keep moving forward after he immediately breaks his word.

Baloreilly (22:29)
Yeah, I mean, he's on thin ice after this. That's why she's gonna blow up so hard later in the book, I think. Because he immediately broke his word and listen, yes, so did she. But the whole rift between them didn't develop because Murphy was keeping things from Dresden. The rift developed because of the things that Dresden kept from Murphy. For Murphy, this is a one-off, yeah, I didn't want to bring you along, I'm still kind of annoyed at you, or whatever her reasoning is.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (22:49)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (22:59)
For Dresden, this is a continuation of a pattern that he just promised he would end. she lets him go off this one, but Harry, and it's not like he should think, well, she shouldn't have let me off, but he might want to just note, damn, I'm probably on real thin ice now. I should probably aggressively try to

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (23:24)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (23:29)
info dump to Murphy even more than she's asking me to because first of all I know that the whole reason why you know we have this rift is because I wasn't telling her things but also because Murphy's my employer. She is the one in our relationship who is supposed to be getting stuff from me. What I get from her generally speaking is money. So he has this heightened responsibility to act as her agent.

And his failure to do so is both a pattern and also a more direct violation of their basic agreement.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (24:06)
Absolutely, yeah. So we talked about this a lot last episode, so we're not gonna harp on it anymore, but this is a stepping stone towards what happens when Murphy finds Kim Delaney's body and decides to arrest Dresden. That is exasperated by the fact that Dresden's in shock and doesn't properly explain his connection to Kim Delaney in that moment. If he just realized and got out of his shock at that moment, we'll talk about it then. So, next up.

I wanna talk about the conversation that they have after this, which is Murphy immediately assumes that they have found the killers and Harry thinks that's not the case. And unlike the previous book, Harry is actually getting it right fairly early on in the investigation. These are not the killers. He has figured that out correctly. So let's examine their reasoning and sort of decide whether we think Harry's reasoning is good at this Yes, he's right in retrospect.

but what about his reasoning here is correct, because Murphy still wants to make progress, so she might have an incentive to consider these people the killers more so than Harry does.

Baloreilly (25:11)
So Murphy says, quote, someone follows me back to town from the scene of a murder. Not only that, but you can confirm to me that they were the killer from the scene. Not in a court of law, I know, but you can give it to me and that's enough. Standard investigation will turn up the rest if we know where to look. And then when Dresden objects to the fact that the wolf had a chance to take him out, maybe the killer knows you.

Maybe it didn't want to risk killing a wizard. Maybe just maybe the wolf did it to throw you off. Maybe it spared you just so you would react in this way just to avoid suspicion.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:49)
And Harry's reasoning is that his spell didn't tell him that the woman was the killer, only that her blood was on the scene. Now, that's a little thin, because what are the odds that there was somebody else that crashed through that window that wasn't the killer or Spike? Well, it turns out they're pretty good. But from their point of view, that does seem like a pretty big Hail Mary. So that was his first part of his reasoning. Then...

He says, I'm not so sure they were killers. They didn't seem, I don't know, cold enough, mean enough. So he's just, he doesn't even have a lot to go on, but I think that it's set up so that you as the reader don't completely discount it.

Baloreilly (26:31)
Yeah, I agree that Dresden's reasoning is in some ways a little thin, but I actually think that this is a reflection of the fact that Dresden is a pretty decent investigator with physical evidence. I mean, listen, he obviously, you know, didn't go to CSI training school or whatever, but he's definitely as good as the average cop or average detective is. But he's really good and will remain really good the whole series.

at knowing stuff about people. Not always consistently, not always the most important thing, not with everybody. But he has these deep insights sometimes that are based off of stuff that he can't even always articulate.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (27:12)
Yes, and that's the last piece of his reasoning, is that the wolf that was with me in the dark could have killed me easy, but it didn't. It disarmed me even after I'd hit it, and then it left. And I think that's the strongest piece of evidence that he has there, is that if these were killers, he's in some abandoned department store, and if these things are killing people around the city already, why would it care if it didn't kill one more thing that might be onto them?

Baloreilly (27:41)
And I think there's also a little bit of a pattern here. When do you see, what's the most famous American example of killer college kids in the thrall of a slightly older ringleader? Manson family, right? They're not exactly college kids, but they're similar age. And in that case, it's people who are really unhinged and weird and on crazy amounts of drugs and just barely holding it together from a societal perspective.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (27:53)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (28:09)
That doesn't seem to be what's going on here. Yeah, they're in biker outfits and stuff, but this doesn't seem to be a bunch of people who are totally disconnected from reality in any immediate way. And that makes Dresden think, okay, they don't seem crazy. They don't seem that experienced. They don't seem that immediately violent. Nothing about these people says to me, killer.

except some forensic evidence we found at the scene.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (28:39)
Yeah, so part of that reasoning is Harry is trying to impart to Murphy just how scary these wolves are. And something caught my eye here in the description of how he describes a wolf and how he's trying to describe to, because Murphy says, you don't think you can take care of yourself against a wolf, Harry? She's thinking of Harry the wizard versus one wolf. Shouldn't he just be able to fireball that thing?

So Harry tries to set her straight, and one of the pieces here is he says, ⁓ wolf can see the heat of your body in the complete dark. That's not true. Wolves do not have dark vision, a la dwarves in D &D. They're not, yeah, and they don't have heat vision either. Now, I thought about that, was like, why did Jim put that in there? And you who has the answer for us? TVTROBEZ has the answer for us.

Baloreilly (29:22)
Yeah, they're not snakes.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (29:36)
they pointed out, Harry's description of what a wolf is capable of is lifted almost word for word from a movie from 1981 called Wolfen, artistic license, biology, and all. So here's that particular paragraph where he describes what a wolf can do. A wolf can run faster than you can drive a car through most of Chicago. His jaws can snap your thigh bones with one jerk.

A wolf can see the heat of your body in the complete dark and can count the hairs on your head from a hundred yards off by starlight. He can hear your heart beating 30 or 40 yards away. The wolf that was in the dark with me could have killed me. Easy. It didn't. It disarmed me even after I'd hit it and then it left." I haven't seen the wolf in movie, but that section there is apparently almost word for word from that movie. And that suggests to me that Jim has definitely seen that movie.

Baloreilly (30:27)
Yeah, so I love this because it actually works in the book really well because Harry's just seen that movie. It came out when he was 11 or whatever, or, you when he was a kid or something. He's seen it on TV and he's always remembered this. The one thing that I do want to note, though, because a lot of readers are probably under this misapprehension. Not everybody, but some people. ⁓ Wolves are not just like a husky that's wild.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (30:32)
Yes.

Baloreilly (30:55)
Wolves huge animals. large wolf is probably bigger than any dog you've ever seen, unless you've seen one of those giant Central Asian shepherd mouse type things. Large wolves are enormous animals. German shepherds are smaller than them, not the other way around. So wolves are really scary for a human to go after one on one.

it's not just like fighting a 70 pound dog. It's like fighting the biggest dog you've ever seen.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (31:29)
Yeah, 175 pounds is what male wolves can get up to That's huge. That's as big as many people in terms of just sheer body mass.

Baloreilly (31:40)
Right, The average large male human is just going to get shredded by a wolf. These things kill moose and yaks and stuff. You're a snack. Anyway, come up with a compromise to wait 24 hours to put out the APB,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (31:47)
Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, again, it is Murphy being conciliatory here, saying, all right, fine, I'll hold off on it until tomorrow morning when you get me a report. her reasoning here is actually pretty good because she says like, yeah, I don't think I would be able to write in my report that somebody followed me home from the crime scene that I wasn't supposed to be at. That would make it very difficult to explain how she had found this particular

potential suspect. You wanted to talk about Murphy's flashlight.

Baloreilly (32:29)
Yet

Murphy's flashlight goes out as the filament bursts, presumably because Harry's magic is making it go screwy. And the quote we get is Murphy's side in the darkness. Nothing ever works right when you're here. Sometimes, Harry, she said, I really hate hanging out with you. And I feel like this is one of those lines.

where your friend says something sarcastic because they're actually really mad at you, and this is just like a socially acceptable way to express that without sounding unreasonable, she's not mad about the flashlight. She's mad that from her perspective, Dresden bumbled into her stakeout and ruined it when she would have been able to identify all of the people walking out of that building and instead she,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (33:03)
Mm.

Baloreilly (33:19)
beats on a civilian and loses valuable time.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (33:22)
Yeah, and before you send in all the emails, yes, we know that Tara knew that she had been followed and that Murphy's stakeout was not going to work. Murphy doesn't know that. Harry might have been able to figure that out in retrospect, but from Murphy's perspective, Harry just ruined her stakeout by getting caught. So.

Baloreilly (33:38)
Another

reason why, even though she just kind of is conciliatory in this scene, she is doing that despite frustration she's feeling, not without frustration. So that takes us to chapter seven, where Harry returns home to make potions and to have his talking head, I mean floating skull, give him some information about werewolves.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (34:01)
Yeah, and the first thing that happens in this chapter is Harry enters a department, his apartment, and it shows that he has upgraded his door to a steel frame door after what had happened in Stormfront. And I would like to point out that I think this is the very first piece of gear that we've seen him upgrade. Yes, it's technically a door, but it's ⁓ part of his gear. It keeps him safe. Security.

Baloreilly (34:23)
Yep, that's true.

The other thing we know that's been upgraded is his rent, because Mrs. Sponkelkrieg did not enjoy the Toad Demon attack.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (34:27)
hahahaha

Yeah, probably not. Okay, we're going to talk about, Bob helps him with the blending potion and the pick me up in a bottle potion, both of which, by the way, are gonna backfire horribly on him in this book. And let's talk about the werewolf types that Bob goes over with him, because this is a bunch of exposition and it's very interesting. It's Chekhov's werewolves, because we're basically gonna see an example of each of these. There is one exception, which we'll talk about right now. So.

The classic werewolf that Bob starts with is somebody that transforms themselves into a wolf. Obviously the example of that is the alphas. Now, Brian, do you think the magic that the alphas use to turn themselves into werewolves is the same kind of magic that listens to wind uses when he shapeshifts?

Baloreilly (35:20)
So I basically think it's the same for two reasons. First of all, Listens to Wind knows Tara West and seems to think highly of her. I don't think there's secrets between them. I think they understand each other, possibly because they do somewhat similar things. Also, I think it's the same magic because the alphas aren't good at magic. They're doing this human to wolf, wolf to human thing.

Listsn2wind can do lot more advanced stuff, but that's because he's a power user. know, the alphas are kind of brute forcing their way through one program, they're good at Excel or whatever. Listsn2wind is writing PowerShell commands to skip from one function to another. He doesn't even need to go back to you, and he's a turtle in one second and he's a grizzly bear in the next.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (36:09)
Yeah. Now, do we think the alphas could learn to do other types of mortal magic, of wizard magic? How strong are they in comparison to like a white council wizard, even someone like Kim Delaney?

Baloreilly (36:23)
Well, we know that basically anybody can close a circle. Butters does that in deadbeat, and we know that basically he can't do anything else. Bob powers every other even quasi-magical thing that he does in the future. So could the Alphas do any other type of magic? I mean, they can at least close a circle. But I bet it goes a little bit beyond that. I think, like I said, that I had to find people with at least a little drop of paranet-level talent to be able to learn this trick.

So if they put years and years into practice, they could probably do something. But I do think they're significantly below even someone like Kim. How about you?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (37:05)
Well, the thing that makes the most sense to me, if we go along the idea, I'm a little skeptical of the idea that Terra went out and found a bunch of possible recruits that all had magic ability and discounted the ones that didn't. That's why I go with the idea that she somehow gifted them with this magic and they wouldn't necessarily be able to do anything else. The other reasoning for that is if they could...

use their magic to do something other than turn into a wolf, wouldn't they have asked Harry to teach them a couple of simple things that would be useful, like a tracking spell? They're in the same type of game as him. If they're trying to find somebody who's constantly, around the campus that's doing purse snatching or something like that, wouldn't it be helpful for them to use a tracking spell on some piece of his coat that got left behind at the scene of the crime? It just suggests to me,

that we never see them talk about it with him, and that he never teaches them even very simple stuff that we see Thomas doing, I think that means that they might not be able to do any other magic.

Baloreilly (38:12)
Yeah, you know, I think that is a really good argument, and it's a good argument for the fact that Terra might have somehow been able to gift them this, because it does seem like after, I mean, 15 years, if you had any magical talent, you would maybe learn to do one other thing. Now, it's also possible, I suppose, that they have, and we just never see it, but...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (38:37)
or

that they asked and it turns out they couldn't learn it for whatever reason. But yeah, it's just pure speculation at this point. That's kind of where my head is at.

Baloreilly (38:44)
So the second kind of werewolf we hear of is the exact same as the first. It's just a human in the body of a wolf with one difference. They're not transforming themselves. Someone has transmorgified them. And this is the Sir Not Appearing in this film werewolf of the books. We never see one of these. The closest we get is changes when Leia changes the party into a bunch of her hounds for a couple minutes. Do you think we're ever going to see this one?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (39:14)
I foresee a villain that to demonstrate how villainous they are, party Dresden and his merry men, whatever it is, they're going to come across the villain and the villain's gonna have some kind of a pet and at some point it's gonna dawn on Harry that that pet is actually.

the receptionist that they met earlier in the book or some other character that they knew as a person that has been forced, like as a punishment has been forcibly turned into a snake or a dog or whatever you want, right? I could definitely see Jim pulling out that sort of cliched villain situation. So I think we might see something like that in the future.

It is something that probably only a villain would do. We do see Leah do it. She does it for a specific reason and for a short period of time. And we're not entirely certain that her fey magic would have the same effect that Bob describes here, which is where transmorgification is against the laws of magic. It's one of the laws of magic. You're not allowed to do it because it destroys the human person.

Baloreilly (40:11)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (40:20)
that's the mind that's in there. If you turn a human into an animal against their will, they lose their humanity. Now, Bob says, actually, they can hold onto it for a little while, but if any extended period, they're gonna lose it. So maybe that's what happens with Leah. She turns them into a hound for 15 minutes, no big deal, they come back. But if she had left them that way, then they would have lost their humanity. Other interpretation, fey magic.

doesn't work the way that mortal magic does when it comes to transmortification. What do you think? Which one of those is true?

Baloreilly (40:51)
Yeah, I mean, I think it really could be either. I think there's a reasonable belief that Leia's hounds aren't biologically hounds, you know, it's more of a fairy glamour kind of situation. But they do seem to function like hounds in the stories. And it doesn't seem to be a shadow mask like the Wild Hunt. So it could be an actual transformation.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (41:01)
Hmm.

Right.

Hmm.

Baloreilly (41:18)
We do know that she plans to turn Harry into a hound. Maybe it's something that she's going to turn on and off frequently enough that it won't destroy his personality. She couldn't do that as his godmother. ⁓ But perhaps it's just a completely different thing, and that's why it would be OK.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (41:34)
All right, so the next one we've got here is the Hexenwolf, which of course is represented by the FBI agents in this book. It's a talisman that binds a spirit of rage. Now, Brian, is the Hexenwolf belts that we see in this book a proper example of this kind of talisman? It corrupts them so quickly and completely. Harry tries it on one time and almost loses himself immediately. Is this how all of the Hexenwolf belts work?

Or is this a particularly like, connected to particularly strong rage spirits that can overwhelm the human faster than others?

Baloreilly (42:11)
Right, so I think that's a really good question because one possible answer is just, yeah, it is always like this. Bob talks about the church trying to stamp this thing out. It's possible that it just does create raving lunatics pretty quickly. So therefore, that's the genesis of the drive to end Hexenvolfen. But it might be the case that if it's a weaker...

rage spirit it doesn't happen as quickly or that these belts were not designed with some safeguards that could have been put in place to make the user more resistant. Perhaps even they were deliberately designed in a way to facilitate the spirit of rage getting.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (43:03)
Yeah, because Bob describes these as, make a deal with a demon or a devil or a powerful sorcerer. You get a wolf hide belt, put it on, say the magic words and whammy, you're a wolf, a hexid wolf, unquote. So you are making a deal with a demon or a devil. Their whole goal might just be to mess with you. So from that perspective, maybe all of them do make you crazy eventually. Or as you mentioned,

Maybe these ones are made more corruptive on purpose for someone else's purpose.

Baloreilly (43:35)
Dun dun dun! The next kind of wolf that Bob tells us about is not really a wolf at all. It's the lycanthropes. This is the street wolves in the narrative. Now, just like the hexan wolves, this involves rage spirits,

Hexenwolves, Lycanthropes naturally channel rage spirits. This gives them sort of bonus stats. They're stronger, they're tougher. They're also meaner and prone to getting out of control. One weird thing in this book is we made a whole gang of them. That seems odd. How are they just congregating that easily?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (44:13)
Yeah, so Bob gives an example of the Viking Berserkers in the old times as an example of probably lycanthropes. So that suggests that maybe it's something that runs in families, almost like a recessive gene,

or maybe they found each other through

the same tool that's allowed a lot of niche groups to come together in the modern age. Now, this is 2000, so there aren't a huge amount of very sophisticated forums and communication set, but we did have Usenets and forums in 2000. So maybe there's people on those forums talking about werewolf stuff because they know that they've got this weird rage spirit in their head and it's almost like a werewolf thing going on, but...

then they find somebody else is talking about the same thing and then let's meet up and you're in Chicago too and you have small groups of people like me and my cousin, me and my brother, we both have this weird thing that we can do and nobody else believes that we have this and those groups all meet each other and wouldn't you want to be teamed up with that group? Boom, you make a gang.

Baloreilly (45:27)
people who understand you. Now there's a couple other possibilities, right? So one is maybe Norse Berserkers were no more likely to be like and fair-ups than anybody else, but maybe they were drawn to each other. So your boat has three guys in it who were all instantly best of friends the second they met each other because they all have this in common and they're the three berserkers in your boat of 40 people or whatever. Or maybe...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (45:29)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Baloreilly (45:56)
It's something that they can instantly recognize about each other. That the spirit's sort of like a wizard's soul gaze. They just, they see each other instantly and that's how they're getting together. But it is strange because unless there's a lot of lycanthropes running around, it's just odd that they all end up in this gang together. There's no normal human with antisocial personality disorder in the street wolves as far as we can tell. It is purely lycanthropes.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (46:25)
Yeah, and we do see that they have the leader and he is being challenged by some of the younger members of the group. So maybe this is a group that's a little older than we're thinking. This isn't just a gang. This is a group that's been around for decades with different leaders and they find others to recruit into their group that is like them. That's one of the things. They go out and find others. So it's not something that's happened recently. It could be that old.

Baloreilly (46:43)
Mmm.

last type of werewolf that we learn about is the Lou-Guru. Hell on wheels, unstoppable killing machine capable of just tearing through humanity.

Bob tells us the last major Lou-Guru rampage happened around Gévardin, France back in the 16th century. Now, my French pronunciations are terrible, but I can tell you that Bob is referencing a real historical event here, the Beast of Gévardin, ⁓ which was animal that perhaps attacked over 200 people, killing over 100 in France.

not the 16th century, it's actually the 18th century. But it got so crazy that the king himself actually had to send royal hunters and soldiers to attempt to rid the area of this man eater. Now, was it a wolf? Was it one animal? In actual fact, we don't know, but in the Dresden files, it was a Luke.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (48:01)
And nothing in the beast, the actual historical beast of Givon Dan, my French is also bad, ⁓ suggests that it was a Lou-Guru. But the Lou-Guru is an actual cryptid. It's an actual sort of mythological creature in, I think, French-Canadian tradition, specifically, but also maybe that comes from the French tradition as well. ⁓ So that is a thing that is outside of the Dresden files that Jim has taken into the books.

Baloreilly (48:28)
And the only thing that can take out the Lugaru, Bob tells us, is of course not just silver bullets, but inherited silver, which is of course going to be a big plot point at the end of this book.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (48:42)
Yeah, do you remember if you recognized the pentacle before he, before Dresden does? Cause I felt like an idiot for not recognizing, of course, he calls it his mother's silver pentacle, like six times in the previous book and in this one. Why didn't I, it was a big face slapping moment for me when he reveals that.

Baloreilly (49:01)
So

I don't catch everything in this series. There's a lot of stuff that I miss, but I actually had the opposite experience where the whole book, I was thinking he wasn't gonna realize it. I was like, my God, this is such a plot hole. You literally have inherited silver, Dresden. Why don't you just cast a spell using it as a folk eye or whatever? What actually happens, way better. And I'm really glad that Jim wrote it the way that he did because I think that...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (49:10)
Ha ha!

Hmm.

Ha ha ha.

Baloreilly (49:31)
For me, as somebody who listened to the books the first time in very quick succession, I had all his magical gear in the front of my brain. I had those last few chapters of Stormfront in my head. But of course, in real life, this is just jewelry he puts on every day. He's not going to think about it.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (49:46)
Right.

So that brings us to the final secret subtype of werewolf, so to speak, and that's the werehuman or the reverse lycanthrope, however you want to put it, that we know Terra is. So that's not one that Bob mentions in this chapter, but it is one that does appear into the book. So what's interesting is Bob mentions four possible werewolves.

and we only see three of them, and then there's a fifth that he doesn't mention that we do see as well. That was actually one of my favorite twists on any of the end reveals of the books is, oh, Terra's actually probably more than a werewolf. She is a werehuman, and that was, I don't know why. That's on my mind. It was very cool.

Baloreilly (50:33)
that's one that I completely missed when I was reading it and I was like, ⁓ man, at the end, I thought the whole thing was she just spends so much time as a wolf that she's adopted all these wolf-like mannerisms. I never really realized that the soul gaze thing, ⁓ that's the clue, he can't gaze her.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (50:45)
Hmm.

that and she says like, Macphin says they can track the plastic cards, suggests you're right. Maybe she's older than she looks and she doesn't know what credit cards are because she's been a wolf for the last forever, but she was a human originally, but that definitely tips you off that like she's definitely not been living as a human anytime in the recent past if she doesn't know what credit cards are.

Baloreilly (51:14)
Yeah, it's a really nice twist and it also creates this expectation in the series that while Bob is an encyclopedia, nothing has complete knowledge of the truth in the Dresden Files. And that's an important...except, right. And that's a really important thing to tell your readers this early on. The world is bigger than any of the characters in it. No one knows everything.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (51:28)
Hmm.

except the archive.

so speaking of Bob, it's time for us to ask him our question for Bob.

Baloreilly (51:51)
Bob, what is the stupidest thing that anyone does in the Dresden Files?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (51:59)
Yeah, as we expected, he can't make it this week. He says he's doing recon for Harry. Anyway, we did get a lot of great responses from this on the Reddit thread, and what we're gonna do is we're gonna read through these and we're gonna rate them on a scale of one to five Rudolphs. So, five Rudolphs being the dumbest possible idea, and one being, ⁓ it's kind of dumb, but.

there are reasons why they would do it anyway. So let's start with Little Red Riding Hood at the Vampire Masquerade Ball. Now this was, think, the most upvoted one that we got here, Brian, and there were many people that suggested it. Among them, Abject Star, Elfinch47, Psychedelic Phil, Numerous One, and Kafa02, among others. I'm sorry if we didn't get everybody's name, but this one was very popular because a lot of people give a lot of hate on Susan for this choice.

Baloreilly (52:50)
Yeah, and listen, it's a real stupid decision. It's a five Rudolph for me, clearly and obviously. two things we have to keep in mind though as we go through these that can kind of influence our rankings. One is dramatic irony when regardless of how stupid the decision is for the character in the moment, we as readers know it's really dumb. And two consequences. There are some things that we're gonna talk about where

It's not that it's that huge of a mistake, it's just that it's a crucial moment. This kind of has both of those making it seem even worse than it is. Susan should know better, but the reader super knows better and it kicks off the war. It's got crazy consequences.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (53:37)
Yeah, huge personal consequences for Susan and massive consequences for the supernatural community at large. Now, the reason that I brought up Harry's boneheaded move earlier in chapter five is specifically because of what you said. There are no huge consequences from those stupid moves, but there absolutely could have been. If he had tracked the real killers, he would have died and that would have been the end of the series. I'm firmly on that.

camp ⁓ of being that confident about that. So a lot of these have to be graded on a curve for maybe people thinking they're dumber than they actually are because of the high consequences.

Baloreilly (54:19)
so just to be clear, I think this is one of the stupidest decisions in the series. I think the only things that we can say in Susan's defense are she doesn't know what she's getting into or understand why the invitation copy is not really going to keep her safe. And she can't take Harry completely seriously because she feels like her boyfriend's just kind of being overprotective. I'm sure a lot of boyfriends have done that to a lot of journalists and she's sort of got armor against it.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (54:41)
Yeah.

Baloreilly (54:48)
So I do think it's one of the top five or top three stupidest things in the series. It's not my number one.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (54:54)
Yeah, the other defense of Susan, I agree with you, for minimum, this one, no question. But the only other defense I can come to is, in the course of her job, she's probably snuck into a lot of parties that she was not supposed to be in in order to sneak information. And so she's used to this, she has experience doing this. The major difference is she doesn't recognize that the consequences for being caught here are way, way different.

Baloreilly (55:08)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (55:21)
than the consequences for sneaking into the mayor's private ball or whatever

Baloreilly (55:27)
I said this in the thread, but her real sin here is that her ambition to get a news breaking story is blinding her to any rational analysis. This is a flaw that it's a stupid choice that stems from this blinding ambition and that doesn't redeem it, but it's the reason why she's comfortable making these rationalizations.

that don't sound so bad until you look at them all together.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (55:57)
Yeah, and we know she's a risk taker. She's willing to take risks. She just misjudges how risky this is in the end. With that, let's move on to the next one that we wrote down here.

Baloreilly (56:09)
Elikwoso Raptor and Kip Ingram and Vastras all brought up, quote, honestly, Kim Delaney trying to hold the Luguru or just refusing to explain to the wizard who could have handled it no problem.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (56:24)
Yeah, this one, I would have rated this one higher until we had our discussion last week where a bunch of people pointed out that Kim Delaney and or Mac Finn might have very good reasons to not trust Dresden to the point where they're trying to avoid that. But Kim Delaney thinking she can hold the Lou Guru in retrospect is an obviously dumb move. Now.

I still think this is more on Macphin than it is on her. He has an out, he should have taken it. It's kind of his responsibility, the curse is his, he should know better. But I give this a three, three Rudolphs on this one. What about you?

Baloreilly (57:05)
I go four Rudolphs for Kim and four for McFin. It's a five Rudolph level mistake, but they both share an overlapping percentage of the blame.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (57:12)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's fair. All right, and the next one we have is cadmium61 who said, Lloyd Slate betraying Mab. Five Rudolphs, period, full stop. I don't think there's any redeeming defenses you can make of this. It was an incredibly boneheaded move.

Baloreilly (57:35)
Yeah man, mean, listen, Lloyd Slate working as Maeve's Knight is in a super bad spot and I understand trying to get out of that. Dude, take Don't try to outfox the queen of air and darkness in a game of fairy politics.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (57:49)
Yeah.

Yeah, I was trying to think to myself, like, okay, but it almost succeeded, right? His plan almost worked. But if his plan had worked and they had sacrificed the summer night's mantle and given it to winter.

How does that save him from Mab's justice? It really doesn't. He assumes that Aurora's gonna be able to defend him when Mab has the extra power of the summer night's mantle too. The whole plot was to unbalance the courts and he would do it by unbalancing to Winterside. I guess maybe in his head he thought Mab would be fine with a power level up and that she would forgive him for that. I don't know.

Baloreilly (58:16)
Ding ding ding.

And I also think that Dresden points out rightly that Aurora is probably going to end up betraying him in the end anyway. whether this is a four or a five Rudolph one is actually kind of an open question to me. It's a five Rudolph level mistake. Is it all Slate's fault? Is Aurora bewitching him? He's drugged up all the time. I'm not sure how in his right mind Slate is. So whether it's four or five Rudolphs, I can't really decide.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (59:09)
Alright, next up we've got Chromaine and Sophie Sephora who both suggested hiring Kincaid in Blood Rites instead of Ebenezer. Now if you remember in Blood Rites, Mavrah has a scourge of vampires and Harry has to... has to... decides he wants to take it out and he hires Kincaid. He then gets Ebenezer as well to show up and just to shut down Mavrah's powers so that they can take her out the old fashioned way. But hiring Kincaid...

when you have no plan to pay for him is a little bit insane. I would give that, that to me is at least a four, four Rudolphs.

Baloreilly (59:51)
Yeah, think Four Rudolphs is correct there, and it's mostly because he literally invites Eb. if you're asking him to come and help you, let him come and help you.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:00:00)
Yeah, if he had had some kind of a plan that didn't involve Thomas bailing him out at the last second to pay for it, that would be different. But the fact that he's like, I'm gonna go around to banks to get a loan to, no.

Bank is gonna give you a loan to pay off a mercenary. What are you? You're a wizard, you should know this.

Baloreilly (1:00:22)
Yeah, that's a good point. ⁓ Number five on our list is from Grungivaldi, and it's,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:00:36)
All right, this one's a little tougher. I do think it was dumb, but it did almost work. Like it took a star born with a very special spear of destiny and every heavy hitter that the supernatural community had available all at the same time. And they only barely stopped her. So to me, this is probably two Rudolphs.

She can be forgiven for not realizing quite how advanced humanity has gotten.

Baloreilly (1:01:09)
Yeah, a lot of people said, she's never gonna be able to handle the military counter-strike at the end of this. I don't think Ethany's planning to stick around for that. I think as soon as she kills Mab and squashes the, Uncelia cords, she's gonna blow up a tank and just, walk into the Never Never.

and she's fast enough to be able to do something like that before anyone can stop her. I think the real stupid thing that EthniU does is that she goes for the big, traumatic, terrify the mortals event in the same time she's trying to surprise Attack Mab.

and it compromises her ability to deliver on that surprise attack.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:01:53)
most boneheaded thing is that she announces her sneak attack by going to the peace talks and throwing the head of the tell with tag there and ⁓ smashing Mab as like, I don't know, what is this, a fear inducing thing or just like her ego and pride is in the way? Because if she had just walked up onto the beach without giving them like a night to...

prepare themselves and come up with a plan and move forces into place, then she absolutely gets what she wants and goes back into the Never Never or goes back to where the Fomor are hiding and nobody can stop her in time. But I also take issue with the idea that, yeah, the military is just gonna drop a bunch of bombs and nukes on her and then that'll be the end of her.

I think the Titanic bronze could survive a number of explosions, even of nukes.

Baloreilly (1:02:44)
And also,

what is the US military going to drop on Chicago before they have a handle on what's going on? It's not like they're going to open up with the fleet of bombers, you know, throwing the whole payload at the city. So this is a three Rudolph for me because the hubristic mistakes that she makes are obvious, but she's not far off when it comes to earning that hubris. So it's three Rudolphs.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:02:51)
Right.

No.

All right, next one. Skeety Speedy, Castilleabdl88 and SweatyBite521 said, very simply, Rudolph. Trigger discipline. Five Rudolphs, no question.

Baloreilly (1:03:28)
Five Rudolphs, one question.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:03:31)
Okay.

Baloreilly (1:03:32)
let me rephrase that. Six Rudolphs. This is the runaway winner. One question. Was Rudolph actually in his right?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:03:36)
Ha

Right, that is certainly the question. There is a lot of speculation about the fact that maybe he is being pushed to do what he's doing or is being threatened or cajoled or even possessed. It's not clear, but

He does act more and more irrational over the books once he gets into a higher position of authority. So that to me suggests that there might be something going on. We learn a lot about that in changes, I think. So if that's the case, this looks a little less dumb. It's still pretty dumb.

Baloreilly (1:04:08)
Yes, we do.

Yeah, if he's under a mind whammy that's making him erratic, four Rudolphs, but otherwise the runaway.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:04:24)
He was always dumb. We're gonna meet Rudolph actually later in this book, if I recall correctly, because he's actually working in SI as of this book. And he was dumb when he was staring at a Luguru, disbelieving its existence. And he's more dumb as the books go on. So there's that. All right.

Baloreilly (1:04:39)
Yeah.

Okay, number

seven is from inevitable curibos. Harry refusing to explain himself to Ramirez after leaving the Wraith Mansion in peace talks. Quote, yeah, I was going to the sex vampire house, so I made love to my girlfriend first, because unlike you idiots, I know what I'm getting into.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:05:05)
Yeah, that would have protected him and explaining that true love protects you from the sex vampires and that's why he did it would have at least given them, they were looking for any reason to believe him, right? Ramirez really likes Harry. He doesn't think he's a bad guy. And in peace talks, he's just begging Harry, give me a good reason to be on your side, buddy. I wanna be there with you, but you are making it.

really hard with all the behavior that you're doing. And this would have at least thrown them a bone. And it's the same thing that we talked about here. When Murphy says, you know, how did you find this place? He doesn't say, ⁓ I used tracking spell on this blood. He just says, magic. Like, dude, it's so easy to, you're not forbidden from telling her what thaumaturgy is. You did an entire book. You gave her a report on thaumaturgy. That is clearly not a forb-

So just tell her in the same way Ramirez could easily be told this actual reality. ⁓ it does make me mad. Sorry.

Baloreilly (1:06:10)
Now I will say, in

Harry's defense, what do we hear from Ebenezer in the same book? How is Mab going to get to him? She's going to isolate him. Well, what does the winter mantle do? It makes you proud, territorial, right? So maybe this is only a three or four Rudolph mistake if we take into account the fact that the winter mantle is making Harry unwilling to explain himself to people who should trust him.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:06:39)
Yeah, you know what, wanna, when we get to that scene in Peace Talks, I wanna kinda look back through the wording and see if there's any subtle suggestions that the mantle is having an effect on him. That is a really good point.

Baloreilly (1:06:50)
Yeah, but if it's not that, five Rudolphs. I mean, this gets Harry kicked out of council.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:06:56)
All right, Temeraire64 says, Harry giving the word of Kemmler to Mavrah. Also, summer night bathrobe. So we'll get to that second one. Let's do the first one first. Harry giving the word of Kemmler to Mavrah. That is a little concerning, right? We don't ever get any like, it was 4D chess, because I knew that...

Blampires can't use the word of Kemmler because it doesn't work on undead or anything like there's no sneaky trick-a-roony. He did literally give the word of Kemmler to her and unless we're speculating something that's not in the text, that does feel like a very bad mistake that's gonna come back and bite them in the ass.

Baloreilly (1:07:36)
Now, I can't give this one as high of a rating. I'm gonna give it to Rudolphson, here's my defense. This is one where the consequences of this action are probably going to be really bad. But it's not that Harry's being stupid, it's that Harry's not being smart. He can't figure out a better way to get Mavera out of

town and get her off Murphy's back and you know he doesn't totally maybe understand what Dracul could do with the word of Kemmler at this point. He doesn't want to do this. This isn't something that he's doing willingly. She's twisting his arm as hard as she can. But because the consequences of this could be so bad I still have to give it a couple of Rudolphs.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:08:28)
Yeah, I think I can agree. Two, I would say three. If we don't see really bad consequences, then maybe it feels more like a two, but I really, I'm with you. I feel like we're gonna see some really bad consequences to this in the future. So the summer night bathrobe, if you forgot what happens in summer night, Harry has to go to the first wizard conclave that we've ever seen in the books because the war has been kicked off and the Reds want him.

turned over to them and they promised to end the war if the White Council does that. And Harry goes to the conclave in his bathrobe because his proper formal wizard robes were used by a litter box by a mister or something. Mister, are you just that mean? What's going on? We gotta revisit. Mister being something more than he seems and he's doing this on purpose. I don't know why.

So Harry goes in a bathrobe, because I guess there's some rule that you have to have robes, and it looks like an insult to everybody else that's there. Like he's there pleading for his life, and instead of upholding the traditions of the White Council, he comes in with a bathrobe. Now, that might actually get the younger wizards to like him more, because he's throwing the formality and tradition in the face of the others. So maybe that works in his favor. For that reason, I only give it, and because he didn't have anything else to wear at the time,

I give it only two, two Rudolphs.

Baloreilly (1:09:50)
This is for me a zero Rudolph one, not because it's not stupid, but because the reason it happens actually has nothing to do with that. The reason it happens is because Harry is suffering a unbelievable, diagnosable depression at this point.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:10:10)
That's true, I'd forgotten about that, yeah.

Baloreilly (1:10:13)
Yes, he is basically sleepwalking through life at this point. And this is like two or maybe even five Mental Health Awareness Month stickers, but it's not really a Rudolph's thing. This is not a decision.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:10:28)
Sure. Okay, yep, I can see that. So, mbergman42 says, Harry trying to summon Mother Winter in cold days. So, that one actually seemed perfectly reasonable to me while he was doing it in the moment, but when Mother Winter actually...

pulled him into her, what turns out to be the mother's cottage, it looks really like it was very dumb at the time until, mother summer interrupts.

Baloreilly (1:11:01)
Well, and Harry, you know, does ⁓ manage to impress Mother Winter by dealing with her challenge because it's really something of a challenge to him. She's not hoping that he dies in their encounter. She's not gonna mind if he turns out to be weak, but she's hoping that he is not. So I think this is a one Rudolph for me. The only reason I'm giving it a Rudolph is because Harry's been to the cottage before.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:11:27)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (1:11:31)
Aurora gets him in a lane there, I guess, in Summer Night. So there is another way to get to the cottage. He could ask around how to do it. He doesn't have a lot of time, but he's got enough time to try to figure that out. But he is the Winter Knight. She isn't actually really mad. She's just being Mother Winter at

So it's one Rudolph for me, he should have looked for another way, but it's actually not that bad of a decision.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:12:02)
Yeah, I agree. One Rudolph sounds about right for that because it does seem like you could have asked Leah, you could have asked Mab to help you, part of that investigation, like part of everything that was going on there in cold days is he needed access to her, he had good reasons for it. There's no reason he should have at least tried other options.

Baloreilly (1:12:21)
So number 10 here is from Snowshine Dog. Quote, red king, bloodline curse. I mean, it does seem like overkill, doesn't it?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:12:34)
Yeah, but to be fair, he has all set up and it's ready to go. Really, could he have, would he have been smart to have foreseen not only Harry's little group, but also Odin and like 12 other really strong, either wizards or other supernatural entities coming in to all throw down at the same time.

plus two swords of the cross. Like that all seems like it would have been a very big surprise to everyone there. Technically, it was a huge surprise, even to Harry. He didn't realize the Grey Council was gonna show up. If the Grey Council doesn't show up, he does not survive that. The bloodline curse goes off exactly the way that the Red King thought it would, and everything goes differently. So I only give that about a one Rudolph, because from his perspective,

That should have worked. It didn't seem very dumb.

Baloreilly (1:13:32)
Yeah, I mean, it takes an actual damn archangel speaking through Murphy to throw off the Lords of Outer Night or they go down. So it's everybody is moving in that scene. Now, I'm gonna say is a three Rudolph decision because in general, don't work magic that's bigger than you need to. Do you really need this much power to skip up a couple generations to get Ebenezer?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:13:40)
Right.

Baloreilly (1:14:01)
I don't know. But it might.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:14:02)
That's

why I think it was designed to kill all wizards and not just Ebenezer, but I think we're gonna learn a lot more about that. I think we're gonna learn more about that in the future. I hope we all will.

Baloreilly (1:14:09)
Yeah, and

I'll mention what could make it a Zero Rudolph decision for me. said this in the thread. I personally think there's a pretty good chance that Harry's bloodline includes Odin. If it does, and you're trying to kill a god on not Halloween, there's no such thing as overkill. So then it's a Zero Rudolph.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:14:28)
Right, and I could

be convinced that it's a couple more Rudolphs if you talk about his specific decisions that happen at the climax of the book, like when he's got Maggie up there with Harry and...

Baloreilly (1:14:37)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:14:41)
And if I remember correctly, he's doing villain monologuing nonsense there. Like there's some, definitely some stuff in there that he does that makes it more like a two or three Rudolph situation Anyway, the next one we have here is Verseterix and temporary pie 2733 and Borticious all said,

Harry's interrogations in Full Moon, specifically the street wolves. This one is coming up later and I definitely agree. Three to four Rudolphs, he gets completely tricked by the FBI agents, specifically Roger, to go and investigate these guys. It's an attempt to kill him or get him killed or at least incapacitated enough to get caught off this case.

Baloreilly (1:15:19)
Yeah, I'd say that if we do Full Moon as a whole, Harry's inability to perceive how his actions are going to cause other people to react, for Rudolph's.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:15:32)
Yeah, he just walks in there and says, hey, are you guys the bad guys?

Baloreilly (1:15:36)
And just the

scene we just went over walking in on the alphas, know, and then chasing the wolf into the dark and, you know, the plan to go after the hexen wolves, that just barely works, mostly because Marcon is super good with throwing knives, apparently. So Harry gets bailed out by some really bad reads he makes in this book. And listen, you know, I don't really consider it plot armor. The only way you get to be great is if you're a little bit lucky.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:15:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it really it is.

Baloreilly (1:16:05)
Full Moon is the book where Harry gets luckiest. It's the only way that you get through learning this much this fast. You gotta get a couple lucky breaks.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:16:12)
so next up here we've got the 25th Grace who said, Molly in white night and proven guilty. Specifically, if you've forgotten, in white night, Harry is doing this investigation and Molly knows how to turn herself invisible now. She follows him along on this investigation despite the fact that he tells her to wait in the car like all the time or she like secretly hides in the back of the car when he goes in the investigation even though he tells her she's not allowed in the investigation. So obviously there she's doing,

some dumb things and in proven guilty, she lies to Harry right off the bat. She's doing some stupid stuff with the black match to begin with. Now, ordinarily, I would potentially consider the things that Molly does in these books somewhere around a three, However, grading on a curve because she's young and naive, I'd probably bring them down to a two because you wouldn't expect those kinds of young people to know these limits properly. They should, but they don't. That's just reality.

Baloreilly (1:17:09)
Yeah, I'm actually, I have the exact same thought. I'm gonna give it one Rudolph. Everything is dumb, but there's nobody to really tell Molly why it's dumb, except for, and this is why she gets a Rudolph, the first time she sneaks into the car, Murphy tells her, you can compromise this crime scene, I should be arresting you. That's where she earns the Rudolph. That's where somebody actually gives her reasons to understand why her actions are unacceptable.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:17:35)
Yes.

Yep, Murphy handcuffs her and is like, gonna take you in because you are crest backing out crime scene. And she's like, ⁓ this can't happen. Like, yeah, she gets sort of a wake up call there that she should learn from and she doesn't. That's where the Rudolphs come in for sure. All right, next one is, Eggish Elmer says, Darth wannabe. This is from the side story, Day Off.

Tell us what happens in that

Baloreilly (1:18:03)
I'm a fixin' to defend myself. ⁓

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:18:05)
⁓ So if you

haven't read that one recently, that's where you have these Harry Potter wannabes that come up to, because they hear that Harry is a wizard and they're going to have a wizard duel So he gets out his gun and they're like, what are you doing? And that's when he says that famous line. That may be one of my favorite lines in the entire series.

What do you think? What's your rating on Darth Wannabe?

Baloreilly (1:18:31)
it would be pretty low, except they'd drive up from New Orleans. So that's Three Rudolphs. That's a long drive, kids. About 20 miles in, you should have been like, this is dumb. Let's just go to St. Louis and have a good time.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:18:35)
Yeah!

Yeah, exactly. All right. Zombies Domeys says, Butters eavesdropping on Harry and Murphy in skin game. This is one that people give for reasons that they dislike Butters is because he ruins all this stuff in skin game. What do you rate this one? I'm curious.

Baloreilly (1:19:03)
So, depending on a couple factors, this is either three Rudolphs for me, or it's five. Because one of two things happens. Either one, Butters just does this as we see on the page, and he's got really good reasons to be suspicious of Harry, but he should also probably know that if anybody's gonna notice Bob spying on him, it's gonna be Harry. So if Harry's gone bad, this is super dangerous. But, if he asked Bob,

whether this was a good idea, and ever said the name Nicodemus, it's a five. Because then you know Bob's going the whole time. Butters, absolute Waldo, my man, there is no way, you know, and just Butters is blithely ignoring what is really good information about the kinds of people he's looking at.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:19:55)
Yeah, but I think Butters would have no way of knowing that Nicodemus is even involved until he begins his eavesdropping. So he knows that Harry's doing something sneaky, he doesn't know why or with whom, and

He has to find out if Harry is still a good guy because he should not be treating him and aiding him if he's gone to the bad side. He needs that information desperately to decide how to move forward.

and he has the bad luck that it's Nicodemus that's involved in Harry's plot.

Baloreilly (1:20:31)
Yeah, I completely agree, but just tell me this. Do you think that Bob could eavesdrop on Harry for a long time without Harry noticing? I mean, Harry does notice, doesn't he?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:20:44)
Yes, they all notice right around the same time, which suggests to me that something happened with the spell or I don't know, it was always unclear to me exactly. Was that when the spell kicked on and they immediately noticed or were they being listened to for a while before somebody noticed it in the first place? That's always been a little unclear. We'll probably talk about that a lot more when we get to actually get to skin game. But for me, this is more like a two, unless like you're saying,

He's being counseled against it the whole time. Then it goes way up to at least a four for me.

Baloreilly (1:21:17)
Yeah, I think that's fair. Okay, the number 15, our last one that we're gonna cover on the show. There were a bunch of really good ones, guys. We spent a lot of time on this section, so I hope you'll forgive us for not getting to absolutely everything. But the last one we're gonna talk about is from Peradical Ghost and Rev Rizium. Thomas Attacking Etri slash Harry Not Telling Eb About Thomas Sooner.

And I intertwined these two because I think they get into sort of a couple similar themes.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:21:54)
Yeah, So Thomas attacking Etri. Similar to the last one, I will give this like a two or a five, and it's based on the circumstances, right? A lot of people in the thread that were talking about this, and in other threads as well, were like.

Boy, Thomas is so stupid. Why didn't he contact anybody? Why didn't he tell anybody about what was going on? Why didn't he just charge in there? He's screwed everything up right on the eve in this big attack. Okay, number one, he doesn't know about the big attack. That's part of the reason that they sent him in first before the peace talk thing happens is because they want Thomas to screw it up. So he's the first shot fired, essentially. Number two.

Nemesis is dumb. They would not have told Thomas, you have until Thursday to get this done. No, the way that I foresee this happening, if he who walks beside is infecting Justine, she drives him over there, then in the car reveals to him that Justine is being possessed and that Justine and the baby are both under hostage and.

you're getting out of this car and you're gonna go kill Etri right now or you lose them both. He's not given a chance to call for help, he's not given a chance to prepare, he is being forced immediately and now to go and do that. That's how I would have seen this going down. That's probably the only way that this goes down without Thomas figuring something out to warn Harry or tell him what's going on aside from just trying to say Justine's name after he's caught.

Baloreilly (1:23:28)
Right, here's the five Rudolph version. They're in Thomas's apartment across town and Nemesis, while Justine is making breakfast, comes and says, I will take this steak knife and plunge it into her heart if you do not kill Etri and then send me a telegram about it. And Thomas goes,

Justine and runs off to try to attack entry. zero.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:23:52)
go ahead.

Baloreilly (1:23:54)
Justine drives him there in the car, having revealed it immediately before or in that moment, and says, Come back in 20 minutes with Etri's head, or Justine is dead. And maybe Thomas doesn't try to kill Etri, because we know he attacked him.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:24:10)
Mmm.

Baloreilly (1:24:13)
We don't really know what happened. Thomas might have done a very convincing attack that absolutely would have made anybody think that he was trying to kill Etri. But man, Thomas is good at this stuff. If he's a trusted ally and he's trying to kill you, I bet you he can probably at least wound you. And Etri's fine. The only person who dies is somebody who dove in front of a bullet or something for him. And maybe that shot...

wasn't actually gonna connect if that guy didn't get in the way. Might all be kind of a mistake. Thomas has no idea that the Sphard Alves are gonna beat him so badly that he's gonna be literally unable to talk. And the only thing he says is attempting to get Harry to go solve the crime. So he might have done literally everything within his power to not get Justine killed and not kick off a war.

but just the confluence of circumstances preventing his desperate counter plan from actually working.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:25:16)
That's a really good point. I'd never thought of that, but that definitely does seem like in that moment, that might be his only option is to put on a really good show in the hopes that it doesn't get Justine killed. So I'm right with you there. If that's the circumstances that get revealed later when Thomas finally comes out of demon reach, then that's a zero ⁓ for me. Okay, let's talk about Harry not telling Ebenezer about Thomas sooner.

This for me is one of the most aggravating things about Harry in the series is, especially when I got to peace talks and you see just how badly it goes when it's revealed in ⁓ the heated moment. I just want to read the scene of what would have happened if Harry had just sat down with Ebenezer in calm time when neither of them are super mad at each other about anything.

what would that have looked like? I really wanna know because it seems to me like it could have gone really well. Obviously Ebenezer has problems with vampires and that would have been a thing that took some effort to overcome, right? He would go into a rage for a short time, but maybe he could have gotten over it if he had time.

Baloreilly (1:26:31)
Yeah, there's an argument that this is Zero Rudolph's. When Harry actually does tell Ebb, Ebb kills him. Or at least thinks he does. So there's an argument for that. But what's going on there? First of all, really high pressure situation. Ebb feels like Harry is kicking off a ⁓ war just to help out the white court. And that's when Ebenezer gets it revealed to him. This guy just tried to kill Ettree. What are you doing, Dresden? He's not a good guy.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:26:38)
Yeah.

Baloreilly (1:26:59)
But it might not be that simple. Ebb might not have reacted that badly if Harry had told him under different circumstances. Remember, at that point, from Ebenezer's perspective, Thomas has tried to kill a major ally and has maybe kicked off a war.

and Harry is inexplicably helping him and causing huge issues in the Unseelie Accords during the peace talks. There's no way Ebenezer is primed to think that Harry is justified in trusting Thomas in those circumstances.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:27:32)
Yeah, on the other hand, imagine for a moment, 10 to 15 years from now, Maggie's grown up and is now friends with a ghoul. How does Harry react to that information? Because it's a very similar sort of hatred that we see between the two of them. The same way that Harry hates ghouls, Ebenezer just pure prejudice against all vampires, period.

Baloreilly (1:27:48)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:27:57)
And we know that he has good reason, just like Harry has good reason, for those feelings. So it's entirely possible that even under calm circumstances, Ebenezer could have still gone off the deep end. And maybe he doesn't kill Harry under those calm circumstances, but maybe it drives a bigger rift between them because he can't reconcile his feelings with that reality.

Baloreilly (1:28:20)
And maybe he tells the council, which is maybe just as bad. I will give this to Rudolph's just because Harry never really considers trying in an earlier book. And also because I do feel like he had one opportunity and I understand why he didn't take it. But when Harry finds out Ebenezer's his grandfather, Adam, what's happening?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:28:23)
Yeah.

When Harry finds out that Ebenezer's his grandfather, he's also discovering that he has a daughter. And he gets to introduce to Ebenezer the fact that he has a great-granddaughter and another grandson at the same time.

Baloreilly (1:29:05)
another grandson who just fought on the same side as Ebenezer, protecting Harry's hurt apprentice and the White Court then evacuates her to safety. All of sudden Ebenezer's thinking, wow, this guy is Maggie's kid, he's even making the White Court bastards work on our team for once. Would it have worked?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:29:11)
Yes.

Baloreilly (1:29:33)
I don't know, I have no idea. Maybe it doesn't even work.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:29:34)
No, there's

still the possibility that he goes, ⁓ the white court is just playing the long game. That's how they get you, right? That's his attitude in peace talks. And it could have happened then. But you're right, that was an opportunity for him to reach out about that. All right, so that concludes all of the listener suggestions. Now, if you had just asked Brian or I, a lot of those suggestions probably would have been our main answers.

So we came up with some answers that are not quite on this list.

Baloreilly (1:30:04)
Now, I will say, I have two answers. paired for a reason. I would say that these are both, for me, the stupidest things in the series. They are, for me, five or six Rudolph things. Because despite the fact that they're not as consequential as some of the things we went over, they're just so dumb. The first one is...

Madrigal selling Harry on eBay in Proven Guilty and as some people mentioned, roping him into the case for no reason in White Night. But the reason why I come back to the selling him on eBay one is, Madrigal doesn't need money. If you wanna show off that you killed Harry Dresden, step one, kill Harry Dresden. That's what he should be doing. Why does he care about getting another several million dollars or whatever it is?

Madrigal has no need for money, it's just a way of counting his chickens before they're hatched, with a dangerous wizard that he knows has a lot of allies, like the local police lieutenant who he just saw him with. Okay, so that's one thing. Who's my second answer?

Because if Madeline Wraith can just not be a huge bitch for the entirety of Turncoat and constantly try to flaunt in front of the other members of her family how she's like literally working against them in their faces at every given moment, no one's gonna think that she's involved. Everybody thinks she's an idiot if she just acts like an idiot, just an idiot and not a bitchy idiot.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:31:16)
Madeline Wraith.

Baloreilly (1:31:45)
then she's gonna get away! What ends up happening? Larry eats her to death. So, god, Madeline, like all you had to do was nothing, and you couldn't even do-

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:31:55)
Yes, absolutely. All right, so my answer that I didn't see anybody else say is everything that Trixie Vixen does in Blood Rites. I hate her so much. Everything she does is dumb and it's bad. And even Marster's voice that he picked for her is so perfectly infuriating that I just hate her so much. Now I came up with one other that has always bothered me

Like before I looked at this big list, I was like, which thing that has done makes me cringe the most? And it's grave peril when Harry uses Amorachius to try to defend himself from Leia, even though Michael is screaming, no, don't do that. It's just such an important sword and he's doing so dumb.

After coming up with that answer, which is my personal answer, I did notice that director Evan9250 also did make the same ⁓ observation in the thread. So I want to give them credit as well. But that one has always, every time I do a reread, that's a tough part to read for me.

Baloreilly (1:33:04)
Great minds think alike there and I agree. of those are... I Trixie is just stupid and that by Harry is... I mean he knows what the sword is. He knows there's a nail in the pommel. So next week's question for Bob. What do we got for him?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:33:19)
Next week, we wanna ask which mortal magic feels like an outlier compared to the rest. That is to say, we've seen a lot of different types of wizardly magic demonstrated across the books, but some of them seem very different or don't seem to work and function the same way as the others. Some seem to heal very close to how physics interacts with the real world. Others seem to work

outside of physics in ways that we wouldn't figure out any way that they could actually work in the real world.

Baloreilly (1:33:55)
Right, so what magic that we've seen in the Dresden files seems the most unintuitive compared to the rest of the magic we see.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:34:06)
All right, we're gonna talk about all that next week. We'll see you then.