Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:08)
Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to Recorded Neutral Territory, a Dresden Files chapter by chapter reread podcast. Spoilers go all the way through battleground. I am Adam Ruzzo, and with me, as always, is a confused motel receptionist, it's Brian O'Reilly.

Baloreilly (00:24)
Hi, is this the corporate office? So, I just had a client come in and ask me for a den? She said she was a pack member? Is this kind of some promotional tier?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:41)
All right, Brian, we're talking about chapters 14, 15, and 16 of Fool Moon. This is day number three of these books, the second of three Full Moon nights. This is Harry waking up in a motel. Tara has bandaged his wound. He's been asleep for like 12 to 14 hours, and he's sort of recovered, and she brings him to MacFinn. There's an altercation.

MacFinn explains his side of the story, and from there, the FBI and the SI officers show up. They scatter. Only Harry and Tara make it out. He calls Susan. She picks them up, and they go back to his apartment to get some items in preparation for the ⁓ attempt to sneak into the SI offices that happens in future chapters.

Brian, what happens when Harry wakes up here?

Baloreilly (01:33)
So Harry wakes up in what he quickly surmises is a motel room. And he doesn't immediately feel as though he is in danger. He's in fact been bandaged up. He has been treated And he engages in a conversation with Tara.

that kind of very deliberately moves the plot along, which is something that we're gonna return to here. But he has this back and forth with Tara who's asking him to come help MacFinn. And Harry's asking her a bunch of questions about MacFinn and what he's done and what he is. And she doesn't really give him very many answers.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (02:13)
No, she in fact says, MacFinn will answer your questions. You must leave this place. And she keeps saying, we have to leave over and over again. She seems very adamant about not trying to answer his questions. Why do you think that is?

Baloreilly (02:27)
Tara doesn't seem to think she's capable of relaying MacFinn's story in a way that arouses sufficient sympathy for Harry to want to be on his side. We know that Tara is capable of talking to people in a way that can forge groups. She is, after all, this point, the leader of the Alphas. But I don't think Tara thinks she's good at arousing pity, you know, those sort of...

emotions that she might classify as weakness. When Terra can offer strength, when she can offer you a way out, when she can offer you something material, she's capable of getting you to do what she wants. And in fact, she's going to use that in this scene to get what she wants. But she doesn't feel as though she's good at the softer side of communication, of getting people to do things because they like you.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (03:21)
Right, and that makes sense if she's not human and she's never really participated in human culture. So that does seem to track with what we know of her in the book so far. But Harry presumably wants the answers that MacFinn will give Why does he resist leaving to the point where Tara's only option is to go and threaten him being arrested?

Baloreilly (03:47)
Yeah, this really causes me some trouble in this scene. Obviously Harry is reflexively contrarian at times. That's certainly true of him. But from a plot perspective and from a character perspective, Dresden's beat, if you're an actor playing Dresden, your beat is Kim's dead, horrible things are happening, I want to stop the murders. In every other situation,

Of course Harry wants you to take him to your leader so he can either fight him and put him down and stop the murderer or so that he can figure out what's going on. And here he's resisting it, I guess, because he's tired and he decides he doesn't want to move and enter a new situation that could be dangerous without arming himself further. But it doesn't seem to be consistent with how he behaves in earlier chapters in this very book.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (04:43)
Yeah, is, this doesn't really feel like him learning a lesson on being prepared and safety and being careful and not walking into things blind. it feels more like we needed a way for the police to show up later. And so Harry's going to be obstreperous.

and that is going to result in Tara calling the police to get him to move. And hey, that is a good excuse for the police to show up later.

Baloreilly (05:10)
which is a little strange to me, right? Harry's So it's way easier if somebody just calls in, hey, I saw this 6'9 guy getting dragged into a motel room you know, it takes hours to make its way up the chain or whatever. But then Murphy hears it and she realizes, oh, that's him, you know, and that's why the police go there. It almost feels to not like this is

but as though Jim is searching for a dramaturgical thing in this scene, he needs there to be conflict. That's what makes good, interesting scenes, when characters want different things and they're in conflict over them. But I feel like the conflict that he's choosing the characters to have doesn't work with what they both want. Tara doesn't want the police anywhere near MacFinn, but she's calling them.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (05:51)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (06:05)
And Harry wants answers and he wants to stop the killer, but he's not jumping out of his chair to go see MacFinn. It almost makes more sense if they'd reverse it.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (06:14)
that's this is gonna be a trend in today's episode. There are issues that we have with Fool Moon that we think might be the reason that other people rank it fairly low. And I wanna preface all of this by saying, we enjoy Fool Moon. It's not our favorite book, but it's still an enjoyable read, especially the first time through. I don't remember hating it, the one I read it through. It's certainly...

kept me interested in the series enough to continue reading when I read through it the first time. keep that in mind when we go on to critique this chapter or the next chapter and the flaws that we find there. We're doing this with a ton of hindsight and we don't mean to come down too harshly.

Baloreilly (06:56)
No, I think it's important for us to say that, don't know if you feel this way, Adam, but there were parts of this book where I thought to myself as I was reading them, wow, that was really good. That was better than I remembered. He's really executing this scene very well, this trope very well. This is a very good noir way to move the plot along, even though this is a more magical story than Stormfront is in a lot of ways.

It's just that I think in this middle portion of the book, Jim knew the set pieces he wanted to have and worked backwards from that a little bit. And therefore it is, on reread at points, a little clunky, simply from a literary perspective. And I don't blame him for this. It was the second book he ever wrote. And presumably he probably wrote it more quickly than the first one.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (07:51)
Yeah, that's almost, that definitely feels like the case here.

Anyway, that having been said, at the end of this chapter, fairly short chapter,

where Harry finally agrees, okay, fine, take me to MacFinn now that you've sort of blackmailed me into leaving by calling the cops. Harry and Tara wind up at Wolf Lake Park. She says he's here somewhere. Then she gets pulled up into a noose trap. Number one, why did MacFinn set a noose trap near where his camp was on the hopes that somebody would happen to walk into it? That feels weird. And then,

He comes out of nowhere, like as if he's wearing a ghillie suit. Like it's kind of described like he comes out of the leaves below Dresden, punches him in the jaw and then grabs him and says, got you, I got you. Who does he think he's got at this point? At next chapter he says, sorry, I didn't know who you were and I didn't see Tara with you. I just don't understand. Does he think this is a random park goer that's just hiking through the park and he's attacking them?

For what reason? What is going on here, Brian?

Baloreilly (08:59)
So I think it has to be the case that MacFinn knows there are people sabotaging his circle, working against him, trying to get the Loup Garu rampaging through town. It makes sense that MacFinn would be trying to do some counter surveillance, some counter attack against those people. And he doesn't necessarily know who they are or how many of them there are, so it could be two people walking up to him.

But that's where this kind of falls apart, right? It could be anybody walking through the park. Why would the people working against him know he was there? If they did know he was there, why wouldn't he leave? Does he think he can take all of them as a human? He has no idea who they are, how they're armed, what they're doing. So I understand the idea that MacFinn is trying to go on the offensive.

against the people who are tracking him. this just seems to be a little bit of a...

clunky way of showing that he's trying to take back the initiative.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (10:06)
think the way that you just explained it is probably the best Watsonian explanation we can get for this, but from a Doyleist perspective, it almost feels like Butcher was just like, I need a little more conflict here. Let's have a misunderstanding where MacFinn attacks Dresden without really thinking through, like, why would he be attacking Dresden?

Baloreilly (10:25)
Yeah, and that's I think the overarching critique of this section of Fool Moon and a little bit later in the story, but it's really only this bit. Jim is excellent in the Dresden Files as a whole at keeping characters from looking like they're passing the idiot ball around. And that doesn't feel like what's going on in this chapter, but that critique...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (10:45)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (10:51)
is more applicable to this part of this book than just about anywhere else in the story.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (10:58)
Yeah, and for those unfamiliar with the trope called the Idiot Ball, if you've ever watched a TV show or read a book, it's more prevalent in TV shows, where a character just starts doing something that's way dumber than they normally act. just, for some reason, become a lot more incompetent in this one scene, and it seems like it's only so the plot can go in a particular way. That's called the Idiot Ball. Bad writers for TV shows will...

come up with interesting plots and force the characters to fit into those plots by making them act differently than normal. So when one character does something dumb, then the idiot ball gets passed to another character for the next episode in order to create drama. Generally speaking, those are bad TV shows. And that's usually used in a derogatory way when people say that somebody's passing the idiot ball around within the story. So that's what it,

feels like is happening here. And again, it's not as bad as it is in the worst TV shows that I've ever seen, but it does feel like it is happening in the background here.

Baloreilly (12:02)
So chapter 15 transitions quickly to MacFinn and Tara, mostly MacFinn, explaining their side of the story. And here's where we get a lot of information that does prove to be true.

and gives us enough to understand to a certain extent what's actually been going on in the story if we haven't already made these guesses. I think this is a good place for this to happen. This does need to happen in this part of the book. So I really like what Jim is doing in terms of waiting until the middle of the book to drop enough for us to start figuring out what's really going on.

The question is just about the execution. So Harry gets out of the confrontation with MacFinn by hitting him with some electricity. It's actually a spelly cast without words. I think this is the first mention of wordless casting having a negative effect on the person using it, and it does in this scene with Harry. And then he and MacFinn get to talking and MacFinn goes over his side of story.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (13:17)
Yeah, so first, there's just a sort of list of facts that MacFinn explains. He didn't mean to kill Kim. The curse fully takes control when it comes on him, and he has no way, he doesn't even really remember much of what happens when he's the beast. He just remembers pieces of what happened. then Harry interrogates MacFinn about how he learned about Kim Delaney. they met through her activist functions, and she offered to help.

Then he learns that someone broke MacFinn's circle the previous month before Moonrise. MacFinn could not have killed Marcon's business partner because that happened the night after the full moon the previous night. And MacFinn insists that he made sure he was somewhere way away from people during the actual full moon the previous month so he was not responsible for any of those killings. So after...

explaining all this. If MacFinn is telling the truth, which we know because we're rereading it that he is, he was not responsible for any of the murders the previous month. and the only murder he was responsible for this month was Kim Delaney because she was trying to help him contain himself in a new circle. He also doesn't know who broke his circle.

and he doesn't have much contact with the supernatural community. He tries to keep his head down and hide what he is.

Baloreilly (14:36)
And like we said, this is all true. We know that. But Harry very reasonably doesn't. It makes sense for Harry to not just interrogate MacFinn to get this information, but to be unsure as to whether he believes MacFinn. But before we get to that, we just want to touch on a question that MacFinn poses to Harry. MacFinn asks him, have you ever been angry, Mr. Dresden?

so angry that you lost control that nothing else mattered to you but acting on your anger? And Harry answers once. What's he talking about, Adam?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (15:17)
So there's a couple things that come to mind. Number one would be the fight with Justin. We still don't have the full details of how that explicitly went down. We get the full story of his confrontation with he who walks behind during his discussion with Leah in Ghost Story, but we don't ever really hear what happened when he actually went and confronted Justin. So it could be...

that he was super angry there about the betrayal that Justin, who he looked up to as a father figure after a horrible time in the foster care system, seems like it could be enough to cause him, especially a teenager, to be so angry that nothing mattered but his anger. And maybe that's what allowed him to overcome Justin in that moment. That one seems to be the most plausible form to me. But Brian, what about this one? What about in Stormfront?

when he was thinking about burning down the house that contained Victor's cells.

Baloreilly (16:18)
So he's angry enough that nothing else might matter to him. But we know Ultimately there were things that mattered more to Harry. His soul, his responsibility to use magic properly as a wizard, his sense of right and wrong, his mother's amulet.

We know there were things that mattered more to him than his anger in that moment. But I think that you're correct to bring it up because what does that moment actually reflect on? He thinks about using the dark power gathered at the cell's house to burn it down because it's something he's already done to So I think it's a gotta-be that scene with Justin and...

I want to highlight this for people who were on the Justin is Cowell bandwagon. We don't get a direct picture of that engagement. The conversation that Harry and Elaine have in summer night doesn't actually go up to the moment of Harry's return. And we know that Harry, if this is correct, was blindingly angry during that confrontation. So if Harry

missed something that allowed Justin to survive it? This is a clue as to why. He was so angry he couldn't even think straight. And from a Doyleist perspective, the author isn't even giving us the details on how it went down.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (17:47)
Yeah, I kind of expect that we may get those in the future, but we might not. It might just be one of those things that we're allowed to speculate about and imagine how it happened in our own head. So the next question I had for you, we know that Kim was trying to contain MacFinn in a new circle that she created based on what little information Harry was able to give her. We know that didn't work. MacFinn used his greater summoning circle with all the

gems and gold and silver that was in his basement that had been broken. But before it was broken, Brian, who powered that circle?

Baloreilly (18:23)
So there's a couple easy answers, and for various reasons they're a little unsatisfying. The first answer is MacFinn doesn't take a lot of power to close a circle. This is obviously a major league circle, but on the nights of the full moon, MacFinn is major league powerful. Maybe he gets access to a little bit of that before the full moon actually happens.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (18:50)
There is precedent for this in Demonreach, which uses the power of the beings to keep them contained.

Baloreilly (18:59)
Yes, so that's totally plausible. It's a little odd in this instance though, because not only would MacFinn be using the power of the beast to chain it, he'd also be literally using the beast to chain itself. MacFinn would be the person whose will was powering the circle, and then he would transform into the monster that was trying to get out of the circle.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (19:21)
Yeah, it doesn't map one to one with Demonreach because is a construct that is sucking power out of the prisoners to keep them contained. MacFinn doing it by himself wouldn't have the same effect, but one could argue that maybe the actual circle that he's using is the construct. Maybe it's not just a circle, it's a piece of magical gear in the same way that Harry's

blasting rod or his belt buckle or any of those things are designed to work in a very specific way. Maybe it channels the power in a way. I could see that being the explanation. It's not my favorite.

Baloreilly (19:56)
Yeah, and I think it's important that you brought that up, the idea that the circle itself is so impressive that it's capable of doing some pretty cool stuff in terms of forming this barrier. It could be that anybody could close this circle. Anybody with any amount of will, you put a drop in this thing, it's so efficient, it's so well made, that's why it needs all these incredible materials.

that MacFinn, since he was growing up, he's had an Alfred Pennyworth, he's had a butler who was sworn to secrecy who would always power the circle and lock him in at night. So that's possible too. It could be that he's always had a person doing this and it doesn't really matter who that person is because the circle's so impressive.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (20:44)
But in that case, where did the circle come from? Because the story that he gives here is that the curse basically took hold on him when he went to Vietnam. Like the first time he changed, he slaughtered everybody around him in like a two mile radius. And like he was the only member of his squad that survived or something. So that suggests that he...

didn't learn about the curse from like his father or something like that. That's how I originally thought of like, okay, maybe this circle is something that an ancestor had put together. His ancestor found a shaman or a wizard that was willing to help and they put together this great device and it's been passed down through the generations. But the way he tells it here is suddenly he realized that he was cursed when he came back from Vietnam. that.

puts the kibosh to that idea, which means that the circle is something that is more recent, something that has happened in his lifetime. At least that's the way that I interpret this.

Baloreilly (21:45)
I think that's a more plausible reading, honestly, but just to do the counterfactual, it's possible that the reason MacFinn is surprised by the curse in Vietnam is because his father died unexpectedly while he was in Vietnam. You he had a heart attack at 45 or whatever.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (22:01)
That's also possible.

Yeah, and then it transferred to him suddenly Maybe he was like, I'll tell him when I'm in my sixth. He keeps putting it off. Like, I'll tell him when he gets back. I'll tell him this. You know, that's entirely plausible.

Baloreilly (22:12)
But if it's not that, then it's something that MacFinn had to figure out a way to design since he's come back from Vietnam. This actually creates a whole host of questions. How did MacFinn make all this money and maintain any family money he had if he was uncontrollably turning into a wolf for several days out of the month? Seems like it would be difficult to keep a business schedule.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (22:35)
And he claims

to not have much contact with the supernatural community, so how is he going to find somebody to design this thing for him?

Baloreilly (22:43)
Which leads to the next possibility, which is that this is all Tera West, Tera West does have contact with the supernatural community. We don't know to what extent, but listens to wind, knows her. has the resources to throw something like this together in terms of the magical complexity if she can tap that friendship. She also might be the one powering it.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (22:58)
Yeah,

Baloreilly (23:10)
We know that Tara is at least a minor talent because she can transform into a human or a wolf or whatever exactly her deal is. And we speculated that she's quite a bit more than that. So it's possible that she got help to design the circle or was capable of doing it on her own and that she's been with MacFinn for quite a long time and she's been powering up the circle for him every time.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (23:38)
Yeah, that to me feels right compared to the other ones. It has fewer questions. It's kind of the Occam's razor answer in my opinion.

Baloreilly (23:47)
And it gives a good reason why MacFinn would never doubt her loyalty, because Tara has been the only person keeping the Loup Garu under control from his perspective.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (24:00)
Yeah, absolutely. So now we know, in this chapter, they don't know who broke the circle, right? There's speculation. Harry thinks it's some gangsters broke MacFinn's circle to cover up their own killings and they use like wolf motifs or something. Now, we know it's the FBI that did it to cover up their killings. How did the FBI know about the curse on MacFinn?

Baloreilly (24:22)
This is really interesting. It's possible that Denton was able to piece together what and who MacFinn was by his access to crime statistics, his awareness of the existence of werewolves. He could have figured it out, but Adam, you found a really strong reason to believe that that's not.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (24:48)
Right, so in chapter 30, and we're gonna do a lot of speculation about who this is later, but in chapter 30, Denton says, after the deaths, I was warned about a governing body, a sort of magic police, the White Council, and that you worked for them, unquote. Who warned him? We don't know, and we're gonna have fun speculating about that when we get to chapter 30, but for right now, I'm gonna speculate that whoever told him about the White Council,

is also the one who tipped him off about the Loup Garu. The real question is, why did they wait until after the deaths to tell him about MacFinn and the White Council?

Baloreilly (25:28)
And we're going to tease that here because we think it reveals some things about the person who did the tipping.

so turning back to the story, Harry has formulated three possibilities on the basis of the information he gets from MacFinn. And we're going to go through these possibilities quickly and then we're gonna discuss whether they make sense from Harry's perspective in this moment. First, MacFinn is Gangsters broke the circle to cover up their own killings. But if he's not, MacFinn is the killer

trying to make it look like he was framed. But if that's what's going on, why put yourself in a position for it to seem so obvious? Option three, did Tara betray McPhinn, possibly to Marcone

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (26:20)
and that's I think the most interesting one. And while he speculates out loud about the first one.

He's like, let me give you a theory. And then he lays out the idea about the gangsters breaking the circles to cover up their own crimes. But then we get his inner monologue. Like, what if he was lying and all of this had been by design to fool me and the White Council specifically, to make it look like a really good cover up? And then he continues to think about, but what about the Marcon angle? Could Marcon have done this? Marcone it's not his style. but...

Maybe Marcon found out about it from someone else. Tara, what's her deal? And then he has a bit of a hunch and he asks, you know, how are Billy and Georgia doing? And he watches for MacFinn's reaction and MacFinn clearly has no idea what he's talking about. And so that gives him some more information. Like Tara is hiding something from him. Maybe she's hiding more than just the existence of the Alphas. Maybe she is somehow betraying him to someone else, whether it's Marcon or somebody else.

Baloreilly (27:16)
Now, MacFinn is truthful. I don't want to discuss the first one in full.

Is it even remotely possible that MacFinn is the killer at this point? Like, that supposition. Should Harry really give any weight to it?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (27:29)
I don't think so, mostly because I'm pretty sure that What MacFinn states here is perfectly congruent with what...

Bob gave him about Loup Garu and that they only transform on the full moon and the night before and the night after. They don't go to the two days out from the full moon. Therefore, at the very least, MacFinn definitely didn't kill the business partner and definitely didn't kill the gang bangers that were...

on the first and fifth days of the previous month. So that lends some weight towards believing MacFinn. And it seems like Harry gets a pretty good hunch about he seems to want to believe MacFinn here.

Baloreilly (28:10)
Yeah, I think that's right. I think that Harry's feel for the situation, plus the facts that MacFinn relays, make way more sense than the idea that MacFinn is somehow killing people on other days when he's not a Loup Garu and using his Loup Garu-ness to cover it up, but he's gotta come up with a way to... It's just such a convoluted story, and MacFinn doesn't seem like that kind of guy to Harry. So...

That leads me to ask, okay, Tara's doing this, let's say, she's betraying him. Is the supposition, is the reason to ask about Billy and Georgia that the Alphas are part of Tara's plot to mess with Marcon's business and holdings?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (28:57)
I don't know that it's fully thought through. Specifically, Harry Like, he's just coming up with who benefits, right? He's trying to see from different angles. And I think it's very clever the way that Butcher put together this

possibility of maybe Tara isn't being as truthful as she appears. Maybe she isn't someone that we can really believe. He proves right here in this scene that she's keeping secrets from her fiance, and maybe there's more secrets than just that. that, think, is the most successful part of this chapter.

Baloreilly (29:29)
I really agree that this theory is plausible, at least where we are in this scene, because Tara also called the cops, which makes zero sense if she's trying to keep MacFinn from getting caught, but makes a lot of sense if she's trying to betray him. So that all fits nicely. I wish, honestly, if we were gonna do it all this way, we let this one

a little bit more because I feel like this is a good smoke screen that we could develop a little more here that would make the following scenes with Terra have a little innate tension that would heighten their sort of literary weight. And I think that not developing it takes away from what is a really good potential red herring.

for the readers fits nicely into your femme fatale noir tropes. So I think this is really good. My only criticism of it is I wish we got to play it out just a little

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (30:39)
conversation, right when it's wrapping up, the cops show up. Specifically, they hear Murphy and Carmichael talking as they sweep through the woods, and we hear, quote, if we hadn't got that report about the Westwoman in the hotel room, we wouldn't be here, unquote. That's Carmichael, and that confirms that Tara was not bluffing when she told Harry that she called the cops, which...

is an interesting note. Like you pointed we know with our reread knowledge that she didn't want him to be arrested. So why did she actually call the cops? And I think this might be another example of Terra just not understanding human society, human concepts, and like bluffing is a human cultural thing. Like she wouldn't think to bluff because that's just not something.

that she can compute with who she is.

Baloreilly (31:31)
Right. And this is part of that critique of characters not necessarily acting in line with their main motivation. Tara's main motivation is the safety of her fiance. So even if she doesn't understand bluffing, she shouldn't call the cops. She's...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (31:51)
She should have

found another way to convince Harry to leave.

Baloreilly (31:55)
this is, think, well done, honestly, the slight red herring here and

It's a good transition to a bit of a chase dynamic in the scene, but it happens very rapidly. And there's other things that took up a little air in this chapter that could have been used to fill that notion out a little more. We have some issues with this chapter in the context of this book. Adam, what's the deal with

MacFinn tackling Harry on top of everything else that's happened.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (32:31)
yeah, so Carmichael, Murphy show up, and MacFinn decide to split up. They run away, and that's the end of chapter 15. Now, I do have some problems with this chapter and some other problems with this book. We kinda touched on them a little bit so far, but let me talk about one that we haven't touched on.

Brian, as you may know, I used the handle Bridger online, named after Nathan Bridger, a character from the short-lived TV show Sequest DSV back in the 90s. Now, in all my other podcasts, I used this handle, and there's a segment from those podcasts that I have refrained from bringing back to this one because it didn't yet seem appropriate. Well, Brian, it is now time to bring back that segment. Because Jim, yes.

I'm talking to you now, Jim. We've identified a few small problems in Fool Moon, but this chapter 15, it takes the cake. It frustrates me, and when I get frustrated, I have to vent. And when I vent, it's called a Bridger Rant That's right. You see, Jim, I know that Harry has got to take a beating for it to feel kid Harry, at this point, he's pretty bad at being both a wizard and an investigator. I get it. So for him to come out on top,

We expect he's gonna have to get beat up a bit, but you overdo it here, Jim. This book has too many injuries for me to take it seriously. of disbelief, Jim. Let's just examine what he's had to deal with so far up to chapter 15. First, Tara knocks him down in the dark in the department store to prevent him from following the Alphas. Then, two minutes later, Murphy knocks him down. Then he gets socked in the jaw by Murphy.

twice when she arrests him. Next he gets shot in the shoulder, falls down again, and passes out while using the last of his energy to cast magic to help them escape. Then he gets punched in the jaw again, this time by MacFinn who knocks him down again. If you're keeping count at home, you know that this is the third time he's been clocked in the jaw and the

fourth time he's been knocked to the ground. You think a guy who's 6'9 is going to hit the ground lightly? No, he's coming away with compounding bruises every time. Next, MacFinn chokes him almost completely out and forces him to cast wordless magic which puts its own toll on his body. Then Terra thinks he's killed MacFinn so he has to expend the last of his energy flinging her away in a tornado

This is the amount of damage he might take over the course of an entire early book. But we haven't even gotten to the Loup Garu fight at the station, the two fights with the Streetwolves the second Loup Garu fight, or the fight with the FBI agents. Did I mention he's also had to deal with the stress of Murphy's distrust, blaming himself for Kim's death, watching a bunch of his cop friends die, and using the last of his magic?

for the third time against the Streetwolves. That stresses him out so much, he can't use magic for the rest of the book. It's just too much, Jim. This is where you went too far. This is, I think, one of the unspoken reasons that people don't like this book as much. Harry takes it on the chin literally too many times. The simplest and lightest touch to fix this would be to take out the unnecessary conflict in this specific chapter.

Why the hell is MacFinn just randomly assaulting strangers in the park? It makes no sense. It doesn't add anything important to the story or his character. Just don't have that misunderstanding. Have them find MacFinn and have the conversation, but you don't need all that extra stress and expenditure of energy and Harry getting beat up again. It's completely unnecessary and it's too much pain for my boy Harry. He needs a break.

Baloreilly (36:10)
And I want to mention two things seriously tune with your rant as critiques. First, we know that the point of this is ultimately to give Harry a reason to be truly tapped out in the last fight. And that's something that Butcher wants to do in this book. It is not a bad narrative element, but...

We just think that you didn't have to kind of go so far to make that reasonable. And two, we've already demonstrated, I think, a way we could have had an alternative conflict in this scene, not a physical one, but a mental and emotional one that puts Tara across the axis from Harry and MacFinn in the middle trying to figure out what's going In addition to that,

as a separate critique, this chapter brings with it a lot of little plot holes that make me feel like ultimately this scene, this section shouldn't really be in the book at all.

This chapter could have egocentonic reasons for the characters to have conflicts with people who should be on their team. use the word egocentonic

Because that's a psychological concept that describes a situation where your feelings, whether they are well-founded or are in keeping with your character and your self-image, and we can extend that to your actions on those feelings. Here, the characters are Tara's main motivation, keep MacFinn safe, but she calls the cops into the general area.

Harry's main motivation, stop the murder, but he doesn't want to go see the prime suspect. So gonna propose a different way we could have done this at the end, but I want to do the full list of little issues with this chapter to show why I think that might be necessary. The first simple question I have for you, Adam, is why is MacFinn still in Wolf Lake Park?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (38:30)
Yeah, presumably he woke up at dawn-ish or shortly after dawn and then just made a camp and stayed here until four o'clock in the afternoon.

He is being searched for by the cops, but I guess maybe he has nowhere else to go? It still feels weird.

Baloreilly (38:49)
And that's especially strange to me because there's one of two things that are going on. Either one. This is a pre-arranged meeting spot. Okay, in that case,

Why doesn't MacFinn's go-bag in the park include 20 grand in cash for him to go buy a used car and drive into the woods? If whole point of this stratagem is to get Dresden to hold MacFinn, well, why does it have to be here in a public park? Isn't there any place MacFinn could have...

purchased through a shell company to go to for that to happen? And what if Harry doesn't agree? Are you just gonna transform in the city again? Doesn't make a lot of sense.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (39:32)
Yeah,

and by the way, speaking of transforming in the city, Brian, why did he only kill Kim Delaney? Wolf Lake Park is not in the middle of nowhere. It's surrounded by suburbs. So even if his house was right near Wolf Lake Park, why did the beast stop at one death that night?

That is completely inconsistent with what Bob explains to us in the seventh chapter.

Baloreilly (39:57)
Moreover, it's inconsistent with what happens this very night. The Loup Garu doesn't get out of the cell and then wander off to the park. It goes on a killing spree. And the only reason it doesn't keep killing after Harry blasts it across the street is that he slaps a binding spell on it so that it can't see very well. So the only possibility I can see to make this make sense is that actually, as we speculated, Kim is a little bit more powerful.

than Harry is suggesting, and when the circle fails, she actually does hold the Loo Guru there for hours maybe, until she finally fails and is killed. And that would be really cool! So we should find that out!

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (40:45)
And then we already talked about why does MacFinn attack Harry. That doesn't make a lot of sense at all. Moreover,

it's so confusing. I don't think I ever noticed it before, but this re-read, I was paying closer attention. So the cops show up. Tara and MacFinn and Harry are trying to figure out what to do. And MacFinn says, let's split up. We all go in different directions. The first one that gets discovered puts up a fight and gives the others a chance to get away. Harry is adamant. He says, no, MacFinn, you've got to stay with me.

I can make a circle with some sticks and dirt if necessary, but if I'm not there, I can't hold you when the curse takes hold later tonight." Unquote. not 30 seconds later, Tara rushes off to be the distraction. She's trying to sacrifice herself to some degree to help MacFinn get away. Great, that works for her character. But then, Harry, after she does that, you would think Harry said, come on, MacFinn, let's go. Instead he says, split up!

and they run in different directions. Harry just made a very concrete and good reason that they should not split up. Tara says, okay, that's a good plan. I'll be the distraction while you guys get away. And then Harry splits up for no, nothing changes his mind. Nobody disagreed with him. I don't understand what happened there.

Baloreilly (42:01)
And perhaps because we get a little bit more information about the search pattern in those 30 seconds, Harry's reasoning is, well, this maximizes the chance that one of us gets away. But why does that even matter? One of you getting away doesn't help anything. It's not like the three of you are on some mission where one of you has to kill the dark sorcerer. The thing that needs to happen for anyone to be saved is that Harry and MacFinn have to end up together.

This doesn't maximize the chances of that happening. He does tell MacFinn, meet me at the gas station afterwards, but does MacFinn have a better chance of getting away on his own or with a freaking wizard? And if MacFinn does have a better chance of getting away on his own because he's a ex-soldier and a woodsman, then bring the wizard with you and help him get away. So,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (42:59)
Yeah!

Baloreilly (43:01)
It just doesn't seem to work on the basis of, as you said Adam, the very plan they just outlined literally within a page. In addition...

We know because we see... In addition, we see on page the rapport of a gunshot. We know that somebody is out here shooting. Nobody yells afterwards, don't shoot, we need to take them Makes sense, these people are dangerous, murdering psychopath serial killers. If you have to shoot them, shoot them.

The FBI and Agent Ben are there. Harry remarks on hoping that Tara doesn't run into Ben. So why doesn't the FBI just shoot McPhint?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (43:51)
Yeah, that's because they immediately start shooting at Tara when they see her. And we know that it's not Murphy that catches MacFinn because in the next chapter when Tara shows up at the gas station, she says the federal people have him, they took him away. And then it's made clear that Murphy caught up to them and insisted that they go downtown to the SI precinct. But that means that Denton's crew, for some reason, started shooting at the first thing they saw, but then

didn't shoot and kill MacFinn when they did catch up to him. Here's my only counter argument to this, Brian. MacFinn can't be killed except with inheritance silver, or at least the Loup Garu can't. So maybe they did shoot at him and it just healed? I don't know, that's the only thing I can possibly think of.

Baloreilly (44:36)
That's certainly a possibility, but the other alternative is that they wanted to take him alive, which seems really because you do want MacFinn to be your supernatural patsy for the White Council, which means that people do need to know he was on the scene. But do you wanna bring down the mortal authorities in the worst werewolf incident in hundreds of years?

by turning him loose in downtown Chicago and draw the eyes of the entire White Council, it seems to run counter of their motive to quietly pin it on him.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (45:12)
Now, to be fair, it's made clear in the next chapter that the Federals resisted Murphy wanting to bring him downtown. So obviously Denton wanted to get him away, but because Murphy had more people and more guns, McPhinn went with her.

Baloreilly (45:28)
And maybe he had some other plan for MacFinn that we have no access to and it made total sense. But if he did, again, that's really cool. Tell us what it was.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (45:42)
Yeah. So, that's basically the end of chapter 15.

Let's jump into chapter 16. There's not a lot that happens in this chapter. Harry meets at the gas station with Tara. He calls Susan. Susan comes in her car to pick them up. Now, there is a little bit of uncertainty at the start of this whether Susan is going to come and help Harry. When Harry says, will you help, she then says, I don't know, Harry. I don't know what's going on.

I don't want to get in any trouble, unquote. And then Harry goes on to suggest that it's going to be quite a story, ⁓ hey hey, hint hint, one nudge nudge, and that causes her to say, yeah, I would've come to get you anyway, you bastard. So let me ask you, Brian, is that true? If Harry hadn't dropped the hint about offering her a story, was she gonna come and help him out anyway?

Baloreilly (46:35)
I'm going to give the answer that every good lawyer gives whenever a client asks them It depends.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (46:42)
Ha ha ha!

Baloreilly (46:44)
I think the actual reason that Susan is hesitant is that she's actually worried that Harry did something bad. I don't believe that Susan thinks that that's consistent with Harry's character, or it's something she expects of him, or that it's something that she seriously thinks he wouldn't be able to explain at all. But I think that Susan

is smart enough to realize that she hasn't known this guy for that long and maybe there's a side to him that she hasn't seen. And he has to do something to clear the bar of keeping the trust that he's earned even though he's basically wanted for murder and resisting arrest at this point.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (47:34)
Yeah, she's looking for reassurance at this point, and instead, Harry's dropping hints her a story to try to appeal to her avarice in advancing her career instead of just being honest with her and saying, listen, I know you've heard some things, it's not what it sounds like.

Baloreilly (47:50)
Now, I don't think that that's a terrible way to do this because we do want to know that Susan is very ambitious, it's a big part of her character, and it's ultimately a tragic flaw that compromises her ability to remain alive as a mortal. But I wish, again, we just had a little more here because I like this dialogue, actually.

I think that Susan's reaction, which of course we can't get, it's a first-person narrator, but her internal reaction on the other side of the phone is, he's making a joke. Harry is making a joke because he knows he didn't do anything that he considers wrong, and he's exactly the guy I think he is. That plays out with her

teasing response and her reassurance that she would have come to get him anyway. She's saying, I do believe you. I do trust you. If Harry reflected on that a little bit, that yes, Susan is very ambitious, but what she just showed Is that she trusts me.

when I give her the reassurance she needs, it would spotlight tragically what happens in the next book and make her character more fully developed.

Adam, do you think this scene reads that way as it is or for that to be successful, if you think that's what Butcher's trying to do, did he have to give us a

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (49:20)
think it can be read either way. The fact that she's hesitant there and then as soon as he drops the word about a story, she's like, yeah, story, huh? But it does also feel like a rhythm that they've gotten into in the past. Part of their sort of flirty behavior, their entire relationship started as, if you give me a story, then maybe we'll see where the night takes us, you know? And then, of course,

Baloreilly (49:34)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (49:48)
the first night, the first date was a crazy story. And then they continued their relationship from there. So because it was sort of forged in that flirty, I'm gonna pump you for information and then maybe some more, then that essentially continues through to this point. And so they have that rapport where, like you he's giving that same back and forth they always give as a reassurance that nothing's changed, that I am who I always was.

Baloreilly (50:17)
Yeah, I think this is a younger man actually doing something that does really illuminate something cool about this relationship, but not necessarily executing it in a way that allows every reader to walk away with that perspective. And I think that's okay. It's okay for that to...

happen in the story, it's okay for people who are digging a little deeper to have a different opinion than people who are just reading the surface text. One of our complaints about this set of chapters is that there's a little bit too much of that. We're gonna get to another example as we close this one out because Tara shows up with the news as we discussed that MacFinn was taken by the feds and Harry makes the plan, I'm gonna have to sneak into the precinct because I have to

hold MacFinn when he transforms. Susan arrives and brings them to Harry's apartment, which is being watched by the police, predictably, and Tara distracts the cops. Adam, how'd you like that ploy?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (51:23)
So it feels like the trope where the woman just says, Teehee, I'm pretty, and so that will distract the opponent, and it's not the woman overcoming adversity using cunning or guile or determination or any other positive feature that you might have in a male hero. It's just, she's pretty, and that's all that matters for this distraction. That has been done and done over and over again.

in so many different things, but here, it's a little different because the character has no image of themself as a human. They don't have a taboo about sexuality or nudity at all. This is assuming we take at face value that she is a wolf that transforms into a human or some kind of a spirit that just has no concept of the human sexuality and taboo culture.

that gives it a completely different spin in my head when we read that she doesn't mind doing this because it literally means nothing to her. It'd be like, ⁓ if I clipped my fingernails, it completely distracts this alien race. I don't know why they think it's so weird, but I'll do it. It's not a big deal, right? It's just as so alien to her that it's not as objectifying in this specific instance with all that context.

Baloreilly (52:48)
I completely agree with that. When a character is using their usually feminine wiles to distract some figure that needs to be gotten out of the way like Lara with the eye in her jar in,

peace talks. They're being very cunning, it involves sneaking around, there's sort of a whole ploy built around it, and that exhibits some guile on the part of that character of knowing exactly how to do it. Tara is ridiculously brazen with what she does, and it works because she's not, strictly speaking, human. But I do want to say, Jim could have just had her walk out of the car wearing

nothing but a trench coat, and oops, it falls off, and now there's this naked woman walking down the street. Maybe she's drunk, maybe she's whatever. That's gonna get the cops to look. It might even get them to come over more than someone staring directly at them as they do an animal mating dance on the ground. And it's a little bit less fan-service-y. It feels a little bit less like a

softcore shoot or something. So I think that because of a couple other things we're going to discuss, it would have been better if this was toned down a little bit, but it does fit with Tara's character that she chooses this method.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (54:15)
Yeah, I think that's overall, it's a little bit more graphic than it needs to be. Now, after, of course, the actual distraction does work, Harry's able to go in, get his staff and some coveralls that Mike had left in his beetle by mistake, and then basically put it all together into a disguise, along with the potion that's gonna allow him to sneak into special investigations. But let me ask you one more question before we end this discussion, Brian.

What's Harry's plan for the next couple of chapters? Okay, say he gets in before MacFinn changes and he's able to get into cell block with What does he do?

Baloreilly (54:56)
So I initially thought, and it was part of my critique of this chapter, that Harry was going to try to bust him out and take him somewhere he could hold him. And I thought, that seems pretty outlandish and crazy, even for a desperate plan. But I think you came up with a much better reason that Harry might be trying to sneak in. Not to break MacFinn out.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (55:24)
No, I think what he was trying to do is he was going to get into the cell with MacFinn, set up the circle, and just hold him there overnight. And whatever consequences he would have to face with Murphy wouldn't matter if he could save everybody from MacFinn. He'd deal with tomorrow, tomorrow. What's important right now is getting MacFinn into a circle. And the way I do that, for sure,

is sneaking in with this potion. I can't rely on convincing Murphy right now. I broke her trust too much recently, so this is the only option. And I figure he's like, I'm gonna get discovered in the cell eventually, but if they see me holding MacFinn, this giant beast in a circle, they're not gonna stop me from doing that. At least, that's probably his hope.

Baloreilly (56:09)
And that's why I let my critique of the characters acting in concert with their motivations and with their knowledge really to just chapter 15 because when you said that Now I feel like that's Harry Dresden again. That's exactly what he would do It's a self-sacrificial plan that really does have a shot of working because of course somebody might tackle him if he starts doing magic in the jail cell But he's got the blending potion on

And if MacFinn transforms, is anybody coming anywhere near him? No. So he's got a plausible way that he could pull this off. And we just want to set that up for the next chapter because of course, Harry does arrive a little too late, but that explains why he's going in the direction he's going a lot better in that scene than the alternative that I initially thought of when I read that chapter.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (57:07)
Okay. So next week's chapter, 17 through 19, it's the entire fight in the special investigations, the infiltration, the actual fight, that all takes place there. And so we'll be doing that next But for now, we've got our question for Bob.

Baloreilly (57:23)
Bob, something that has been bugging me since Harry tried to soul gaze Tara is gaze anyway? I feel like it should work on her,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (57:37)
The problem is, Bob isn't going to make it this week either. He's doing his yearly reread of Twilight.

Baloreilly (57:43)
Well, I understand why that would be important to him, so it's honestly a better excuse than Do you think he's Team Edward or Team Jacob?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (57:52)
For the purposes of this episode, I think it's Team Jacob.

Baloreilly (57:55)
I think that makes sense.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (57:57)
All right, so we asked this question, we had some good answers from the Reddit. The main answer was, in order to soul gaze, the being you're soul gazing with must have a soul. That is obviously a very straightforward question, but then it raises the question, what does it mean to have a soul? And are there any creatures that have souls that are not human or not mortal? And so we dive into that. So green tea.

and Somalden both kind of expounded on this idea. But there was also the question of biggest outlier of all the soul gazes Harry ever does is the in peace talks. What is the deal there, Brian?

Baloreilly (58:37)
So there's a few potential reasons Harry could be soul gazing the Kraken, even though it seems like an outlier.

reason, which is what I just believed, I thought it was basically canon, is that the Kraken is just a human. The same way that the Huntsmen that Harry fights in the beginning of Battleground, we think are...

people who the Fomor have turned into these mythological terrifying beings. The Kraken is a person who they have transmorgified and tormented into being this horrible creature. And that's why you can soul gaze it. It's a person inside.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (59:23)
Yeah, that's a horrifying thought. It certainly reminds us of Rasmussen, where Harry ⁓ soul gazes him in death masks and we get to see the human soul that's kind of trapped within the Denarion frame. And that looked like also a form of torture, but we know that technically those humans can give up the coin. So they're kind of doing it on their free will, whereas the Kraken is 100 % trapped in there and cannot get out of their own accord, I'm sure.

Baloreilly (59:52)
Now you saw another possible answer to this that you liked and that maybe consider something that I think is also plausible and is a little different.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (59:59)
Yeah, Electric Turtles came up with the idea that what if the Kraken of mythological history that we have was once like a sailor that was cursed by Poseidon, like he offended Poseidon somehow, so he was cursed to turn into the Kraken. And the Fomor just like recruited him, just like got him to join their side somehow, whether magically or some other method, you know, just got him to join them.

And that was an interesting idea too. Like, so the Kraken isn't someone that the Fomor transmorgified. It's an existing thing out in the oceans for hundreds of years, cursed by Poseidon or some other god or entity, similar to the Loup Garu. But in this case, the Fomor just got it on their side.

Baloreilly (1:00:42)
And I do really like that idea because it sort of makes it that the Fomor really are assembling the team when it comes to the baddies who are showing up. It's not just there's the Fomor and the people they turned. It really is all of the beings that have been driven underground taking this opportunity to try to get their place in the sun back. Rev sent an email posing a different idea.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:01:11)
What if who you can soul gaze can change? Now Harry doesn't soul gaze the Kraken until after he's the Winter Knight. So Revvvv

Baloreilly (1:01:16)
Mmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:01:36)
We have not seen him try to soul gaze anyone like Leia or the Queens or Sarissa or anybody else in the Fae courts since becoming the Winter Knight. At least I can't remember that he has. So Rev is basically positing maybe he can soul gaze them now that because he's the Winter Knight, who he can soul gaze has changed. And maybe the same thing is true of Molly. Now that she's the Winter Lady, she can soul gaze Winter or other Fae.

Baloreilly (1:02:05)
Yeah, that's really interesting because it dovetails with one of the things that Samaldin mentioned. he said that Terra can't be soul gazed by Harry because you have to have a human soul for a human wizard to soul gaze you. It's not just whether or not you're a mortal, it's that you have to be the right kind of mortal.

And it would make sense that Harry is now capable of gazing beings that the average wizard can't because he's no longer just a human. I think that's really interesting.

Now, this raises kind of a whole other question. Because a lot of people said some variations of they have to have a soul, and that's sort of begging the question. Of course they do, it's a soul gaze. You're seeing a soul, you're sort of assuming what your definition of soul is in that answer. You're retrofitting it to exactly who can be gazed.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:03:08)
Thank you

for using Begging the Question correctly, by the way.

Baloreilly (1:03:11)
I as an LSAT tutor, I am forced to learn all my logical fallacies.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:03:15)
Every time that Harry says that begs the question in my brain I go no Jim it raises the question It doesn't beg it, okay

Baloreilly (1:03:23)
So in addition to that, people said, well, it has to be a mortal soul. But if Harry's on-page supposition is correct, and Terra is a wolf-ware, or a were-human, or however you want to do it, well, that would still make her a mortal. She's not immortal just because she's a wolf. You should be able to soul-gaze Mouse and Mister and Terra and...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:03:44)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (1:03:51)
anyone who has a fixed lifespan. But that doesn't seem to be a reflection of what's on the page, which is why that human soul idea is tempting. But we know that that's not strictly true either.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:04:05)
So that brings us to Thomas. We know that Harry is able to soul gaze Thomas and presumably other white court vampires, especially before they fully turned, Like for example, if he had tried to soul gaze Inari in blood rights before she had become a vampire, presumably he would be able to soul gaze her with no issue at all.

And the same is probably true of most vampires after they turn, since we know that Thomas is able to do it. There was some speculation in the thread that maybe if a vampire like fully gave themself over to their hunger, the way that kind of Madeline does, then maybe that means that they lose access to the salt. We don't have any evidence of that, but it's an interesting thing to speculate about.

Baloreilly (1:04:51)
But I think the important thing there is you can come up with a rejoinder, well, that is still a mortal soul, it's just got something attached to it. Well, strictly speaking, it's not mortal anymore. It is still human, but in that case, shouldn't you be able to soul gaze other humans plus, so to speak? And there are a lot of those in the series.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:05:00)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (1:05:17)
That raises the question of are forest people humans plus? Are they mortal? Could you soul gaze river shoulders?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:05:26)
Yeah, I mean, for example, blood on his soul, it's literally right there in the name. They seem to imply when they gave him the name that they do have souls. But again, this might be a situation of humans gazing humans works, but maybe humans gazing non-humans doesn't. Like maybe a shaman of the forest people.

would have a version of soul gazing that would work for their own people, but Harry couldn't. We don't have any direct evidence of that being the case, but it certainly seems plausible.

Baloreilly (1:05:57)
And it's notable that he never gets away from the genosqua by gazing in its eyes and stunning it that way, which he's done in the past. He clearly does have enough of a soul to give it up to the coin. I don't think that you could take up the coin if you didn't have some kind of a soul. I feel like you've gotta sell your soul to the devil, right?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:06:04)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it's

not only just the soul too. We know that the Denarians are all about free will, right? To the exclusion of like what the white god is trying to say, the angels should have no free will, Uriel doesn't have free will, just has to live by all these special rules. And the fallen angels are like, no, we want freedom. That's what we're fighting for, as Nicodemus explains in a couple of different books. So that means that if you're able to pick up a coin, you must have some amount of free will, right? That seems to...

Baloreilly (1:06:25)
Mmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:06:48)
to logically follow.

Baloreilly (1:06:50)
Now, I think that's certainly true, and a of people brought up the extent to which whether or not you have free will comports with whether or not you have a soul, but I think that it's not such an easy answer, because as far as we know, every being in the Dresden Files has

free will, depending on exactly how you define it, in some degree or another. If an angel can choose to fall, they have free will.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:07:25)
Right, it's just consequences of that choice, but that still means they can make the choice.

Baloreilly (1:07:31)
And we know that Mab is constrained by her position and how she can act, but Mab is definitely making decisions based on her preferences for how things turn out. That seemed like they might be independent of just what is required of her role. Mother Winter calls her a romantic because she won't just kill Maeve. She has to have Harry do it.

there appears to be a degree of choice in how even a MAB acts that doesn't allow us to simply declare beings of a certain level of power don't have free will anymore. And if whether or not you have free will binary isn't the definition of when you lose your soul because it's a system of degrees, then

What can you soulgaze? Adam, do you think you could soulgaze a red quart vampire?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:08:34)
I don't think so, but again, I don't think that's because of the free will argument. I think when we first started discussing in the first book, we were wondering, you know, when does a Red Court vampire sort of lose their humanity, right? When they turn. And one of the things that people speculated on is maybe what a Red Court vampire is, is like your soul is gone from your body and the demon monster

inhabits the place where your soul used to be. I did kind of like that as an interesting explanation for like what makes this body a body. Like you still have the memories of your, that you were when you were a human, actual empathy and all the things that make you human are gone now, taken over and replaced by this demon thing. So to me, that suggests that you would not be able to soul gaze a Red Court vampire, though I don't think we ever saw any explicit examples of trying.

Baloreilly (1:09:32)
I agree with you though, because I think it would have happened to Harry if he could have. Now, I was under the opinion that Red Court vampires sort of have the humans still chained in there, forced to witness what is happening. Yes, and I think that's why it's perfectly congruent, because the Denarion's host can theoretically give up the coin, but once the Red has you, it's over for you. You're in your own personal hell.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:09:43)
Hmm. Much like the Denarians, but maybe more explicit.

Baloreilly (1:10:01)
And that's why you can't be gazed, because you're locked away, in my opinion.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:10:03)
Yeah. We know

Yeah, that's entirely possible. Now we have some other candidates. Could you, could Harry Solgay's Sigrindgård, a Valkyrie. I'm guessing not considered mortal because she's probably been like brought back from the dead by Odin's power. So maybe not considered mortal. Seems to still have some member of free will. Valkyries are known as the choosers. So maybe, but what do you think? What about, Valkyries and Einherjarin?

Baloreilly (1:10:35)
So I really like this because I think for Einherjarin the answer is clearly no. You can't soul gaze someone who's dead. You can't soul gaze a ghost. And effectively Einherjarin are revenants. They're ghosts that still have a flesh body they can walk around in. You know, as far as I'm concerned, I'm oversimplifying. But you can't soul gaze an Einherjarin. But I think the question of whether you can gaze a Valkyrie is a little bit different. Because one thing we know about Einherjarin is you can't

make someone an Einherjarin, you can't make Hendrix an Einherjarin until his memory has faded from the world of the living. People have speculated that that restriction might not exist for Valkyries. That's the Murphy could get back into the story. If you're a Valkyrie, you're a different order of thing, and perhaps you can come back even if you're still remembered because it's a different job, it's a different transformation. And if that's true,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:11:12)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (1:11:34)
Perhaps you could gaze a Valkyrie. because perhaps a Valkyrie is alive, they're just alive in a new They're more like a white-court vampire who's tapping into their demon power than they are like a black-court vampire, which is just a dead thing that I don't think you can gaze at all.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:11:56)
Something else came to mind. In Summer Night, Mab shows up in disguise office and actually tries to get him to soul gaze her. But he kind of figures out that she's not who she says she is and he tries to like...

stab her with a nail as a litmus test, basically. Like, hey, just touch this, just touch this. And he kind of figured out that she was a fairy, because of glamor or something to that effect.

So let me ask you, Brian, what would have happened if Mab had gotten Hair to Soul Gaze her? If she was asking him to do it, presumably it's possible.

Baloreilly (1:12:37)
I think there's only one of two interpretations either one it's impossible and if he tried to do it failed the test moving on you're not worth my time or two it is possible and that's exactly why she wants him to gaze her because if he does he's gonna be completely overwhelmed and really easy for her to

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:12:59)
that's definitely possible. We'll talk a lot more about that when we get to summer night.

Baloreilly (1:12:59)
Okay, I

just

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:13:03)
right, I think that's gonna do it for the discussion here. We don't obviously have a lot of answers for you. It's entirely possible we'll get more on soul gazes in the future. We'll probably almost certainly see more examples of this in the future. ⁓ Next week's question for Bob, however, is a different, it's not a question, so to speak, it's more of a character profile or a character dossier, as it were.

Next episode we're going to see Carmichael sacrifice his life to try to save Murphy. And it's really the last time we see Carmichael for quite a while. We do see him come back briefly in Ghost Story, but we thought we'd want to take this opportunity to talk about the character himself. Some examples are, what do you think of Carmichael as a character? Do you like him? Do you expect him as a character? Do you think Jim used him well? ⁓ Were you upset when he died? Did you want to see more of him?

What happens if Carmichael doesn't die here? What kind of future do you see his relationship with Harry? Does he become an ally the same way that Stallings does in the future? Or does he continue down more of a Rudolph path where he continues to be a skeptic?

Baloreilly (1:14:11)
and feel free to compare and contrast Carmichael to other characters even if we haven't done one of these dossiers. I think an interesting question raised by this book is whether the characters of Carmichael and Kim Delaney have similar functions narratively, or does the fact that we get to know one a little bit better or a little differently mean that he's serving a different purpose?

How did you feel when you showed up in Ghost Store?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:14:39)
So yeah, anything and everything to do with Carmichael, all your thoughts on the character, how well they were used, et cetera. That's what we're gonna be talking about. Next time, we're gonna do a lot more of these, but we're going to try to fit them in where it feels narratively appropriate. We haven't really seen enough characters interacting with Harry enough to have a lot of these, but for sure, we're gonna do one on the Alphas, we're gonna do one on Murphy, we're gonna do one on Thomas, we're gonna do one on Lara, but we're gonna do those a lot later in the...

in the series as we work our way through.

Baloreilly (1:15:10)
And we're certainly going to do dossiers on important characters when they exit the stage, at least for a long time. So I think that means the next one on the offer is probably going to be Bianca.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:15:21)
Yeah, we'll definitely talk about Bianca, even though we've only seen her in two books. Same thing's true for Carmichael, essentially, except for that little stint in Ghost Story. That's gonna do it for us tonight. We'll see you next time.