Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

Brian (00:00)
why wizards don't get sick, heal from injuries, and live a very long time and have magic power, because magic is life energy. It is the animating force that drives the cell. So necromancy is not...

Adam (00:14)
I thought that mitochondria

was the powerhouse of the cell.

Brian (00:17)
And magic is mitochondria, yes, exactly. That's, actually, no, actually, my god, Adam, no, no, that's right, actually, because what do you inherit, who do you inherit the mitochondria

Adam (00:20)
⁓ okay, that's, that way just answered our question for Bob.

⁓ from your mother.

Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to recorded neutral territory where the spoilers go all the way through Battleground in very soon, 12 months. I'm Adam Ruzzo and with me as always is a physicist struggling to explain magic, it's Brian O'Reilly.

Brian (00:53)
So what we know is that the magic obeys laws of thermodynamics. It neither creates nor destroys energy. Forces react as they should. So we should be able to explain all of it.

Adam (01:08)
How much success have you had so far?

Brian (01:10)
Absolutely not.

Adam (01:11)
Okay, well, good luck with that. In the meantime, welcome. We're gonna be talking about chapters 13, 14, and 15 of Grave Peril today to put it in context of where we are here. Harry has just arrived at Mickey Malone's house and started to examine him in the previous chapter. This is day number two, by the way. The previous evening, Kravos is in jail, kills himself, rituals suicide, turns himself into the nightmare. On that evening, he goes and attacks Mickey in his dream. These are things we know from

read the book before, but Harry does not yet understand. So the first thing that happens in chapter 13 is Harry is examining Mickey and determines that his condition is not caused by a possession, but it still really does look like a possession the way that it's described in this bride.

Brian (01:56)
Yeah, Nikki, as we discussed last week is sort of behaving in a demented, know, frightening manner. Yes, exactly. And it's why I think that Jim very sensibly has sort of everyone think it's a possession. It would be weird if he sort of didn't write it that way. writing it.

Adam (02:04)
Very poltergeist.

Brian (02:18)
as if Mickey's possessed, and then having Harry tell us that he's not in order to sort of effectively communicate, okay, I am using all the possession tropes, guys, so note those, have those in mind, but Harry is telling you we can't solve this by calling a priest.

Adam (02:29)
Mm-hmm.

Right, it one day, get me an old priest and a young priest. It makes me wonder, why would Harry be so confident just by touching it to go, this definitely isn't a possession. Trust me, I've seen possession before. Back on the farm in the Ozarks, we had possessions all the time. Like where has he ever had to deal with this?

Brian (02:39)
Yes.

You know, I wonder if that's actually how he met Michael.

mean demonic

possession like literally is a thing in the Dresden files. mean frankly that's what taking up a coin kind of is. ⁓

Adam (03:01)
Yes.

Yes

and no, I mean, feel like demons, far as the nature of the word demon in the Dresden Files is very wishy washy, right? But there is a quote unquote hell somewhere in the Never Never, just like there's a Hades realm in the Never Never, because it's a huge place with all the different imaginary things that humans have come up with, or actual domains of actual deities.

Brian (03:14)
Yeah. Yep.

Adam (03:32)
So that to me suggests that, yeah, so there's actual demons, they're actually able to possess people and faith magic can work to or whatever they are. But it made me ask this question, Brian, do you think if Michael were here that he would have any effect at helping Mickey in this situation?

Brian (03:52)
I don't think so, and I think that's part of the reason why Jim is so clearly clarifying that this is something very different from possession. This spell is not operating on that wavelength. It is a tormenting spell. is not a takeover spell. And I think that Michael probably can't interact with magic that is...

Like, I don't think the Knights of the Cross can heal damage done to one's spirit by black magic. And I think that functionally, what you have to be able to do to make somebody get better from the barbed wire

Adam (04:30)
Yeah, mean, there is the one piece of evidence I would say in favor of it is in small favor, Harry has had his mind screwed with by Mab by I guess something that's black magic adjacent, right? Because screwing with somebody's head if you're a wizard is very bad. We learned that in proven guilty very clearly, but Mab is able to do it. Does it not cause as much damage because she's so much more powerful, able to be more precise? I don't know, but whatever she did,

And whatever, for example, Leah did later in Grave Peril when she locked away Susan's memories, those were able to be undone without any lasting damage the way that boyfriend Nelson has in Proven Guilty. So that suggests to me that if Michael is able to stand over Harry and say a prayer and lay his hands on him and help him fight through the black magic that's locking away his memories, maybe faith magic can do

other things that we just haven't seen in the books yet. And maybe this is a situation where it could do that. Now, if this barbed wire spell was placed by a wizard using normal magic, probably not. There's too much free will there. I don't think faith magic would be able to deal with that, but barbed wire spell is tied pretty inherently into Mavra, which makes me think

that maybe it's, and Harry very clearly says, this is no magic I've ever felt before. It's different from the magic that he uses. That's the only reason I think maybe Michael could have a effect here.

Brian (06:04)
Okay, yeah, I mean you're touching on two things there that I think are pretty important. The first is agree that there's some way in which Faith Magic inherently sort of has like dispell or like disenchant as sort of like one of its sort of core domains. Yeah, because I think that...

Adam (06:20)
Mm-hmm. Exorcise.

Brian (06:26)
The difference between what Mab and Leia and what, ⁓ well, maybe not Leia so much, but I think the difference between what Mab did and what Molly did to boyfriend is that I don't think Mab took Harry's memories in the same way. I think she sort of glamored him. You know, like he can't access those because there's this like little curtain in the way and Michael just kind of helps him push the curtain out

Adam (06:45)
Hmm

Brian (06:54)
Maybe Leia took the memories, but that's again, sort of a, that's not really the same kind of black magic because it was a deal, it was a trade.

Adam (07:04)
but he also discovers that she didn't take the memories, he's able to use his love for Susan to break through them, because that's something that Leah doesn't understand.

Brian (07:12)
So perhaps

that is the same thing, where it's a glamour really more than anything else. But the other thing you're getting at there is that we know that magic, that we know that works on vampires, of the red and black

Adam (07:18)
Yeah.

Brian (07:33)
the vampires of the Black Court and the Stoker sense and then the Red Court, have the whole bursting into flames thing later in this book. So makes me believe that faith magic is fundamentally oriented against necromancy. the reason why I make that connection is simply because it seems as vampires are

Adam (07:39)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (07:58)
worse at regular magic than wizards are. Presumably because magic comes from life.

Adam (08:05)
and they're kind

of anti-life in most cases. And I think you can make the argument that the Red Court is not really tied into the life cycle the same way that humans and other mortals are.

Brian (08:15)
Yes, I agree. think that's true. mean, they're definitively... A Red Court vampire is born from death, right? The act of murder. Yeah. So I think that that's gotta be true, that they have a sort of fundamental connection to necromantic magic, and that that's what the barbed wire spell is. And that's why someone like Mavra does want the word of Kemmler later.

Adam (08:23)
Right, sort of parasitic, yeah.

Brian (08:43)
And maybe because of that, faith magic could be used to get rid of it because it's fundamentally necromantic and maybe faith opposes that. I just feel like that's highly speculative because we haven't really seen necromancy and the knights interact at all, maybe deliberately, because there's no reason why in Deadbeat there shouldn't be Knights of the Cross running around. There just aren't.

Adam (08:53)
Hmm.

Okay, so let's move on. Harry then opens his sight and makes two very important observations. Mickey's spirit has been savagely attacked and there's this barbed wire spell just like he saw around Agatha. He decides to go right at the problem. First he kind of hems and haws about, ⁓ I could, I have no idea what this thing's gonna do. I really should go consult with Bob and see if he has any idea. We could put our heads together.

But by the time I do that, Mickey could be basically beyond saving, right? He could be so insane from the damage that this thing is causing to his psyche that he's gone forever. So I have to act now. And that's what he decides to do. me ask you this, Brian, would you call this barbed wire spell a curse? Cause I had been trying to like figure out how to describe it without just calling it barbed wire spell over and over again. It's kind of a mouthful. Is this a curse?

Brian (09:55)
So, okay, there's one curse canonically in Dresden Files that I think we know of. The Luguru, I'm gonna put aside for a second here, which is the Billy Goat Curse, which is this spell that needs to be reapplied all the time because it does fade, but it sort of bends probability against a certain outcome. It is a, you know...

Adam (10:05)
Mm-hmm.

Ha! Whoops, sorry.

Brian (10:19)
continuous effect that slightly adjusts the universe so that things manifest in certain ways.

Adam (10:25)
It's funny you say that because the other curse I thought of was the entropy curse in blood rites. curses may have something to do with bending luck or fortune or something to that effect specifically, but there are probably other example of curses. Sometimes they're called hexes in various media. can't remember off the top of my head if there's any in this.

Brian (10:32)
Exactly. So.

Well, the Lugaroo, the

Lugaroo situation is a curse. And again, I think it's a combination of it being a long-term effect. maybe, the death curse, right? When, yep.

Adam (10:51)
Yeah.

Yes, Ryan reminded us of death curses, that's true, that's another.

Yeah, specifically I'm trying to figure out like, does Jim use the word curse with any very careful application? I don't think so. I don't think the characters do either. I think they just kind of use it for negative magic used that's going to have an impact over a long period of time,

Brian (11:07)
I don't think so, but I think...

Yes.

Now, I think that if we're going to use the word curse specifically in the Dresden Files, it is when you do something that is going to last. know, most spells fade after a day. So a curse is a spell that has a negative effect that's going to last.

Adam (11:33)
Mm-hmm.

like

the death curse that Margaret cast on the White King,

Brian (11:45)
So I think that's definition of a curse. And I don't think this really meets it, not because the barbed wire is going to fade away so quickly, but because I think eventually it will.

It's just that the barbed wire is a bit of a damage over time spell. It's gonna stick around as long as it can and do, you know, a bunch of bad and by the time it's gone the harm is So I don't think we would necessarily refer to this as a curse if we were going to define a type of spell that is a curse. But I also think that the characters don't treat it that way either and in that way it's fine to call it a curse. It is evil magic that hurts people. It's a curse.

Adam (12:01)
Yeah, more or less.

Hmm.

Yeah, and in other media, curse very specifically means this is something you can't remove without a special something or other, a MacGuffin of some kind, a curse removal thing, special anti-curse magic. Exactly, I don't know Jim has ever used the word curse in the Dresden files in that specific way to suggest that.

Brian (12:35)
Yes.

The Holy Grail.

Adam (12:50)
you can't undo this thing except with a special what's it.

And this made me think of a number of different questions here. Now he is talking about how like he infuses his will into his hands and uses the sight to see the curse and then like starts physically pulling it off of Mickey. does Harry's physical strength, like how hard his muscles can pull have any impact over getting this curse off of Mickey? Or is it just

a way that Harry is like encapsulating or like the analogy he's using to remove this barbed wire.

Brian (13:28)
Okay,

so I think that the actually correct answer as a general rule is no, it's not about his physical But I think in this instance actually it is, specifically because Harry is choosing how to conceptualize his plan of attack on this spell.

Adam (13:49)
Hmm.

Brian (13:51)
And Harry knows how strong he is. It's sort of a, he's only going to be able to pull on the barbed wire as hard as he thinks he We know that Harry could, presumably, try to manipulate this spell without touching it at all, the way that he takes down the wards that the Ordo Lebe is set up in White Knight. You he feels them with his magical senses

Adam (14:01)
Hmm.

Brian (14:14)
so physical strength doesn't necessarily matter as Ethan says when he hits the ghosts with the staff in Deadbeat for sure, except it matters in his head.

Adam (14:23)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (14:27)
how strong he thinks he is, how strong he thinks the blow is matters. So Harry is choosing to, with his sight up, conceptualize the way he's using his magic as, I'm gonna take my hands, plant my feet, and pull this thing out. like, does how strong he is matter? No. Except in so far as how strong he thinks he is matters, which is actually affected by how strong he really is.

Adam (14:56)
And maybe that also is why the consequences are what they are. Quote, the metal strands burned into me. My fingers never went numb. They just began to ache more and more violently. The barbed wire resisted, barbs clinging at Mickey's flesh. The poor man screamed aloud, agonized, though there was that horrible, tortured laughter added to it as well, unquote. So he's describing how his fingers start to hurt more and more. Because he's conceptualized this,

as a physical interruption, the damage being done by the barbed wire spell is also feeding back into him through that physical manifestation, that physical conceptualization. And of course then after this, talks about how he's so cold by touching this thing when it goes into his neck and stuff. And again, I think that's all part of his

the way that he is conceptualizing it is affecting him in that way, even before it goes into his neck.

Brian (15:56)
Yeah, mean, magic occurs the way that the wizard decides that it occurs.

Adam (16:03)
or expects

it to even.

Brian (16:04)
Right.

he is enforcing this kind of combat against this spell mentally. He's making it this way. And because he's making it this way, yeah, he is going to suffer physical effects. The same way that Harry, you know, doesn't have to shoot energy in the form of fire. He could shoot it as force, but when he shoots it as fire, there's heat. When he shoots it as force, there isn't. He's choosing to make this a physical thing. So it is not because it inherently has to be, but because he

making it

Adam (16:35)
So guess the next question is, if we had a future book Harry come back to this moment, having to deal with this barbed wire spell, would he choose a different way to remove it? Could he put a circle around him and like do something with his will to like will it away or destroy it with something other than this sort of conceptualization of pulling it out of him?

Brian (16:58)
I mean, definitely. The question is what book? I think... Well, I think anytime after book 10, yeah, he can pull it out really easily with Saltfire.

Adam (17:02)
Where would he learn to do that better?

Hmm.

yes, because he would make like a soul fire hand or something that would be more real, that would be able to pull at it maybe more effectively with less direct connection to his physical hands. That's a good point. That's a really good point. Okay, where do we go from here? Well, once Mickey is free of this thing, it starts going into Harry, it embeds itself in Harry's neck and he starts screaming and he manages to pull it out of his neck.

and Murphy bursts in and he has her open the window and he throws it outside and then just points his finger and does a little fuego to destroy it with magical fire. And during this, when Murphy bursts in, there is a specific description of Murphy that Harry sees with the sight.

Brian (17:58)
The door burst open. Murphy came through it, her eyes living flames of azure blue, her hair a golden coronet around her. She held a blazing sword in her hand and she shone so bright and beautiful and terrifying in her anger that it was hard to see. The sight, I realized dimly. I was seeing her for who she was. And that's really interesting because that's not the only time he sees Murphy with the sight.

Adam.

Adam (18:29)
No, in Blood Rites, when they're going after Mavra's scourge and they need to determine which of these characters are like Renfields versus just innocent humans, Harry has to open his sight to determine which ones are Renfields. And in that interaction, we get this, quote, an angel blazing with fury and savage strength spun towards the Renfield, her eyes shining with azure flame, a shaft of fire in her hands.

The angel was dressed in soiled robes, smudged with smoke and blood and filth, no longer white. She bled from half a dozen wounds and moved as if in terrible pain." That is a very different description of Murphy. And it was really interesting to go back and read this and see, okay, compare that to what we know happened to her. We know that in this book, her spirit takes a beating.

during the confrontation with the nightmare in her office, and she's still recovering from that in summer night. So it's safe to say that that's probably at least part of what we're seeing in this difference between the two.

Brian (19:36)
Definitely. I think also it is the accumulation half a dozen wounds. All of the traumatic experiences she's had with the supernatural over the course of those years. Murphy is no longer just dealing with human cruelty, which I'm sure would actually affect her in a very similar manner. She's dealing with things that are even more awful and terrifying.

and are going to damage her spirit, not necessarily irreparably, but in even more evident and dramatic ways.

Adam (20:14)
and I think that explains the wounds that are being described there, but the fact that the angel was distressed in soiled robes, smudged with smoke and blood and filth, no longer white. I think that goes to describe Murphy's slow dissension from the world is black and white, I enforce the law, I enforce justice to, well, I have to bend the law a lot in order to get

justice, like I can't, like I have to allow this consultant to lead a raid against a sorcerer. Technically that's not legal. She shouldn't be letting Harry do that, but that's what needs to be done. She sort of stops being lawful good and becomes more neutral good. And I think the concept of this avenging or guardian angel is one that's a black and white concept. In this book, she still sees good and evil.

black and white, and that's why she can be so pure in that vision. But by the time we get to blood rights, she has learned that the world is a lot more gray and she has to treat it that way. And it affects her.

Brian (21:26)
I think that's true.

I think also what Jim is doing here, potentially, I mean we'll see, is playing with the conflation of a female battle angel and a Valkyrie. Because those two things are depicted as very similar and we know that Murphy, you know, upon her death in Battleground, has been claimed by Odin, perhaps, you know, to be a Valkyrie at a later point in the series, perhaps to, you know, this the end of

Adam (21:52)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (21:58)
story she's an Einherjar who will not return you know we don't know but as somebody who personally leans a little bit towards team Valkyrie I think that this is also a depiction of what happens to something that is constantly in battle

it doesn't remain clean because a Valkyrie's job is to, you know, the chooser of this lane, wander the smoke and ruin of and, you know, be, select the great warriors. So I think that Murphy is a constant battle.

Adam (22:18)
Hmm

Brian (22:41)
in a way that not even a normal police officer in her position would be, because Murphy is grappling with much greater threats due to her larger understanding. and I think it's really important to realize this about Karen, the reason why she can in White Night pop into the Rape Deeps with a P90, among a team full of Einherjar and a crime lord, shoot at ghouls for two hours, is because

because her worldview is shifting from merely, keep order in Chicago, to I protect this city from threats that people don't even know are real. And that constant struggle is something that is separating her.

from the people that she shares her office with. It's part of why she can't remain the lieutenant in charge of SI as she gets dragged more and more into the supernatural world because she's becoming different from even the cops in special investigations.

Adam (23:53)
So now we move on to Harry has gotten rid of the thing, but he's got these after effects. He's kind of like basically shivering on the ground just from that brief contact with this dark power, which you've hypothesized like a necromantic energy and that's why he's not familiar with it. And we've seen this maybe at least one other time before, haven't we?

Brian (24:16)
Yeah, mean, evil Bob, when he tries to get Harry to swallow the little necromantic pill in Deadbeat, basically, you know, knocks him over and knocks him out. Harry's able to resist it in the end. He tells Bob to, you know, go back or stop or I don't remember the exact wording,

Adam (24:35)
he was only able to come out until the end of the conversation and he says this conversation is over and it forces Bob back into the skull. memory.

Brian (24:41)
But that, I believe,

Adam (24:44)
Yeah, I found the part in Deadbeat where this happens and it goes, quote, the cold started spreading and it wasn't purely physical. There was an empty, heartless void to it, a starless, frozen quality that raked at me, not just my body, but me with a mindless hunger and I could feel it sending tendrils out through me, slowing my heartbeat, making it impossible to breathe, unquote.

So there's definitely that similarity with like the cold being the first and foremost thing that is described in both of these encounters.

Brian (25:15)
Yeah, and I think we know fundamentally that magic is life energy. We're gonna discuss magic physically, like how does it work mechanically as we get towards the end of this episode. But I think we know that in the Dresden Files, magic and life are effectively synonymous. That's why Rivershoulders has so much life energy and Irwin has so much life energy that Connie can feed on.

but also they have so much magic power. That's why wizards don't get sick, heal from injuries, and live a very long time and have magic power, because magic is life energy. It is the animating force that drives the cell.

So necromancy isn't just death magic, the way that Harry does fire magic or Ramirez does water magic. It's a different thing. It is anti-magic. It is the anti-matter of magic.

So that cold, that emptiness, that thing that sucks the life out of you, well it's literally because, like, Mordite or something, it is opposite to life itself. That's why it has power over death.

Adam (26:34)
And then in Grave Peril, we get Harry describing what happened to him. And he said, I found myself sitting on the floor, aching from cold

had no basis in physical reality, Unquote. So the main thing that's consistent between both of those is the cold that has no basis in physical And I think that's the cold getting into your spirit. And I think that that suggests to me that you're really onto something, that these two things, the barbed wire spell and the necromantic energy coming from Bob in that scene in Deadbeat are one and the same. And we might learn more about that in the future.

Brian (27:09)
And one thing that I think can sort of bridge the gap is the description we get of the patient that Kumori saves in Deadbeat, the agony that they're going through. To me, it doesn't seem terribly dissimilar from the scant description we get to what Mickey's going through.

So regardless of whether this is or is not necromancy, and this is our first encounter with it, Harry is successful in removing it from Nicki and ultimately getting it out into the light where he can destroy it.

It was kind of a rash decision to go in against the spell without really understanding what it was, but Adam seems like he did a pretty good job.

Adam (27:56)
Yeah, so what we want to do is sort of look at the plans that our heroes are coming up with and then look at their outcomes and say, okay, did they succeed? Did they fail? And whose fault is it? Because sometimes it's the hero's fault for being too...

or they were too cautious or sometimes the bad guy just was really smart and you can't really blame the heroes for that or sometimes some luck falls into it. So we've come up with the Coyote Scale. It goes from super genius to meep meep. Super genius being what Harry does in skin game. Like really, really clever, keeping his cards close to the chest subtle and then you've got below that pass.

It worked out well enough, but it wasn't perfect. Then below that you've got, you got lucky, which is, it kind of worked, kind of had too many negative consequences to call it a full pass. And then you've got meep meep, which is, the Road Runner got away.

Brian (28:49)
when you're running and

all of sudden you realize, there's no cliff beneath me anymore, you know? Exactly.

Adam (28:54)
Yeah, Meet Meet might also be called Yikes.

So in this, how do you feel out of those four grades our hero ⁓ has worked out in this plan to save Mickey Malone?

Brian (29:05)
I think this was a pass. It was impulsive. He didn't know really enough to make a firm conclusion about this, but he was correct to rush to a certain extent, and it did ultimately work. So I don't think we could say he got lucky. He was right to follow his impulse, but he was impulsive.

Adam (29:22)
Yeah, and he didn't really have any lasting negative impacts from this choice. He saves Mickey, he gets the shakes for a little bit, eats a sandwich, and then he's basically fine. So yeah, I agree fully with that particular choice.

Brian (29:34)
But after this scene where Howrie has engaged with SI, he's got to go talk to Michael and Bob.

where we are in the case. So Harry calls Michael, fills him in on his progress, and then receives a call from asking if he remembers the name of the sorcerer he helped put away we know is Leonid Kravos.

Adam (29:58)
Yeah, and he calls Craven the Hunter, which I thought was funny. can't remember the name. This is also the chapter where we get Michael saying, don't yada yada the Lord Harry. That's a good line too. I don't know, I to decide between whether we should put that in the list, a potentially best line from the book, but I don't think it adds up to the ones that we've already talked so far. It's a good one, but it's not great.

Brian (30:01)
Very funny. Yeah, it's a good line.

Uh-huh.

Adam (30:21)
So yeah, let's talk about this thing. Susan is asking him, hey, who's that ritual killer guy that you helped put away a couple of months ago? And Harry tries to come up with the name, and she is actually the one that supplies it. And she says it was at Leonid Cravo. So he's like, yeah, that's it. Now, what has she heard at this point? Because we know the night before, that guy killed himself. And we'll get hints about this throughout the rest of the

When Harry tells Stallings, hey, I need that guy's book, it's important, and Stallings, without telling him why, is like, this is gonna be really hard because, you know, for reasons I can't tell you, like, there's stuff going on, like there's heat coming down because the cop's trying to figure out who let this guy kill himself and what's going on here. What has she heard from the grapevine that she needs to call Harry and say, hey, what was that guy's name? Is she trying to put two and two together?

Brian (31:13)
I bet.

that Susan actually has some sources in the jail, in the holding facility, and they call her whenever something weird and spooky happens. know, some gang has done some really messy thing, and you know, she wants some confirmation about whether it's something that the arcane would be interested in printing. And I mean, this is probably the spookiest thing that's happened in this jail in a real

Adam (31:26)
Hmm.

Brian (31:44)
long time because we just hear that Kravos killed himself but presumably he did so in a ritualistic fashion we don't learn the details of and whatever Susan's source is they heard about this one and went crap I gotta call that lady from the arcane

Adam (31:54)
right.

and I have to imagine she doesn't know at this point that Kravos killed himself. Probably all she's getting is rumors from people that didn't directly see anything that said, man, something really spooky went on in that cell, man, I don't know what to tell you. I was freaked out. And that means that if she knew that he was dead, like if that's what she was learning from people, she'd probably tell Harry, yeah, I think he's dead.

but she didn't say that here. Instead she said, ⁓ I don't know, once I get something concrete I'll let you know, is essentially what she ends the call on. And that to me is like, man, it would have been nice if Harry could have known at this moment that Kravos had killed himself ritually the previous night. Maybe he would have put two and two together, but he doesn't. We just get this sort of foreshadowing from Jim that something weird has happened with this guy and we don't know what it is yet.

Brian (32:51)
Well, I bet that Susan knows that somebody died in the jail.

Adam (32:57)
⁓ and she's

maybe trying to guess who it was.

Brian (33:00)
and probably knows, it was something spooky. didn't Harry put a sorcerer in that jail a couple months ago? Could that be it? Because presumably whoever is her source isn't like Kravos's guard walking around in front of his cell. It's somebody else in the jail who just, yeah, they found a bunch of bird feathers all over the place and there was a dead guy in there. Who was it? No, I don't know. You know.

Adam (33:15)
Right. No.

Right.

Yeah, exactly,

exactly. All right, so that's happening in the background of this. Harry goes to his lab and gives Bob the rundown. come to the conclusion that there's somebody else who must have put the curse on the ghost, a second player in addition to the nightmare. And at this point, we think for sure that we know that the nightmare is the one that savaged Mickey's spirit. There's no real doubt about that in our minds as rereaders, but...

who laid the barbed wire curse on him and how? Because we know that the nightmare didn't lay the barbed wire curse on Agatha Hagglethorn, for example, or any of the other ghosts from the previous two weeks. He wasn't the nightmare yet. He was still a guy in a jail cell with theoretically no way to practice remote magic of any kind on ghosts around Chicago. So, Brian, was...

Kravos as the nightmare, the one who put this spell on Mickey? Or was he like channeling Mavrah or something?

Brian (34:33)
So I think Kravos did put this spell on Mickey, but I think what you're saying is really important because it kind of lends weight to the idea that this actually is necromancy. It's coming from Mavra's bag of tricks. She's teaching Bianca and they're doing it to all the ghosts. And I mean, clearly it's something that Mavra can teach and clearly humans can.

learn necromancy, but Kravos also never does this again. So this seems to be something that it is fairly difficult for Kravos to do, or at least that doesn't come naturally to him. As far as we know, he only does this the one time, but...

Adam (35:19)
Unless you

consider what he does to Murphy later in this book when he steals Harry's chi or chakra or whatever it is and eats his soul and then appears as Harry and sneaks into Murphy's office and then like starts torturing her in her mind, maybe that's a version of this. Harry never opens his sight and looks at Murphy in that office.

So maybe there is a barbed wire wrapped around her that we never see as the audience, because Harry never sees it, and instead of getting it off her, all he does is puts her to sleep to, you know, prevent her from being hurt by it any further.

Brian (35:56)
I suppose that's possible. I always made the assumption that Kravos doesn't use the exact same spell on Harry or Murphy because it's time consuming for him.

and he doesn't have a lot of time in either of those cases, so he just does the worst thing he can in the time he has. And that would make sense if it's a kind of magic that, you know, he's not that talented, but even as a sorcerer, is just sort of difficult for him to do, even though it comes naturally to someone like Mavrah.

Adam (36:08)
⁓ interesting.

That could very well be the case. Okay, so that brings us to the end of chapter 14 where Bob leaves us with a sort of very melodramatic, ⁓ then I might as well help you. You don't know what you're dealing with here. And if you walk into this with your eyes closed, you're going to be dead before the sun rises. You know, one of those classic cliffhanger endings that Jim is like, all right, you know you wanna turn the page and find out what Bob's talking about before you go to bed. thanks

That brings us to chapter 15 where Harry continues to talk to Bob and Bob finally reveals why he is so rattled. It's because Harry, look at this thing, look at what it's done. It crossed a threshold unquote. And he explains, unless you're at like near deity level, you can't cross a threshold and lay a spell like that. And of course the thing they're missing is that it got in through the dream. It didn't cross a threshold, it went around it.

they're speculating here like what's going on and Harry to his credit is looking around and going Bob look at the evidence this thing doesn't look like a deity look at what it's done

Brian (37:38)
I think the interesting thing here is why is Bob so wrong? It must be because this technique of going in through dreams is kind of cutting edge magical tech.

which actually connects back to the larger mystery of the book because it's the same reason why the heart exploding spell in Stormfront isn't something that can be sort of instantly figured out. It's cutting edge magical tech that's, you know, being tried out at the smaller scale to later be blown up into something bigger. So Bob hasn't seen this before, which is crazy, right? I mean, Bob is not just a spirit of intellect. He hung out with Kemmler. The guy knows

Adam (38:08)
Mmm.

Brian (38:25)
everything.

Adam (38:26)
And Etienne

the Enchanter and a bunch of other bigwigs, I'm sure, between those. he's hundreds and hundreds of years old. He's absorbed a ton of information about the magical world. Yeah, if he doesn't know about this, it probably hasn't been done before. Or if it has, it's been by like two guys and they never wrote it down.

Brian (38:43)
And the key is that Harry is right about all of his objections. know, Bob, this can't be a god. If it was a god, we would know. And we can be pretty sure of that because we basically see that happen in Battleground. When F.N.U. is walking around, it is really freaking obvious that things are going horribly wrong. Reality is ripping apart at the seams. That's not what's going on in Grave Parallel.

Adam (39:07)
Yeah, yeah. And

Harry's main argument is like, a god sit outside the house for hours messing with little baby animals? No, that's not what a god would do. If it could get through the threshold, it would have done it right away. Therefore, this thing must have been.

waiting for some reason to try to get around the threshold and the the idea they come to here, which is not an unreasonable one, is that it was trying to possess somebody to get an invitation inside because that of course would go through the threshold without problems and you don't need to be a god deity to possess Lydia.

Brian (39:42)
Exactly. And that is a good theory. you know, well, why didn't Bob just come up with that first? I think it's because what Bob is picking up on, that Harry is not, is exactly what Mort is picking up on that we talked about a few chapters ago. The spirit world that he's in contact with, obviously, is so agitated that even though we're not really seeing manifestations of it in the mortal world to the extent

that we would if there was a god around. are such ripples in the spirit world that it's not a crazy theory. And what does that tell us? Mavrah plays in the big leagues. That's the kind of stuff that cowl pulls off in Deadbeat.

Adam (40:26)
Hmm.

Brian (40:30)
she's doing serious magic, which again suggests that what's going on in Grave Peril isn't just a plan to help Kravoz take revenge on Harry or for Bianca to get one over on the White Council at her party. As we know, because we've yet to even see all the consequences of Bianca's party, Grave Peril is setting the stage for a much larger metaplot and a lot of things that are

going on in it are sort of tryouts or seeds that are being planted to germinate later.

Adam (41:07)
Yeah, that's 100 % true. Now, the other thing that happens at the very end of this chapter is that Harry basically comes up with a new plan. He says, I'm gonna go and find Lydia by using my talisman. If she still has it, I can track it. I'm the one that made it. It's similar to my shield bracelet.

I can use a basic tracking spell and find her, but just in case she's dumped it somewhere, Bob, you go in Mr. You go out there by possessing Mr. Talk to all your contacts. This is daytime. He can't go out on his own when the sun's up, so he can go into Mr. And that actually turns out to be a very important decision because Bob in Mr. is what wakes him up when he's being eaten by Kravos in a future chapter and...

If Bob doesn't wake him up by slashing at him with Mr's paw, does he just get devoured in total by Kravos and not get away at all? I think the answer is yes.

Brian (42:01)
Yeah, maybe. Now the other side of that coin is if Bob is there from sort of day one, can he run interference for Harry, you know, and keep the nightmare from invading his demean? I mean, I assume not, but it's a little bit incons...

Adam (42:15)
Well, he's

stuck in the skull if he doesn't have permission to be in Mr., right? At this point, later on, like Harry gives him a lot more leeway, but at this point in the series, he's in the skull or he's in Mr. until this task is complete or whatever.

Brian (42:22)
Yeah.

That is a great point, Adam, and I think that that actually answers your question there. If he's not in Mr. He Can't Do Anything, and Kravel certainly isn't gonna wake Harry up. At best, Harry's gonna be in the position Mickey was in. So I think that's definitely true.

Adam (42:43)
Yeah, agreed. Maybe he

survives, but basically all of his magic is gone instead of like half of it or whatever gets devoured by Krabos in there. brings us to the end of that chapter. Harry's plan to track Lydia actually is a success. We find that on the next chapter. So he's gonna get a good grade with that, but we'll get to that in a future chapter. For now though, do wanna mention the next episode that we produce is going to be the one that features 12 months. Ladies and gentlemen, it's next week.

So what we're going to be doing is on the 23rd, that is next Friday, after you're hearing this, January 23rd, we're going to have a special patron-only live show where we discuss 12 months and our initial reactions with our patrons. Presumably they will have finished it too by that point because they are probably as big fans as we are. the following week, the 30th, we will have our official public more structured

discussion about 12 months obviously we're not gonna do like a full assessment like we've done for the book so far because we want to do those after we eventually get to 12 months and do our whole long series on it. We'll then do a proper assessment. So this will again be more like a initial thoughts, initial reactions. How does this fit into the wider world kind of reaction show? And then the week after that is the sixth

And that is the Friday when we are going to be picking back up with Grave Peril, specifically chapters 16 and 17, where Harry goes to find Lydia, has to fight Kyle and Kelly, and then comes home and gets attacked by the Nightmare in his dream. So that is a big set of three great, exciting things coming up in the next three weeks, Brian. I'm very much looking forward to it.

So that

brings us to the question for Bob for this episode.

Brian (44:31)
So, bye.

How does magic interact with physics? not on we understand equal opposite forces, that all happens in in physical terms, where is the magic coming from?

Adam (44:47)
Well, I'm not sure Bob would be able to properly explain that because as a spirit of air, just, it's physics isn't his thing, but he can't make it anyway. He's helping Harry develop a new tracking spell. Brian, why does he need another one? He's got like 10 that he can pull out at any given time. He's got one where he uses a nose hair for Christ's sake.

Brian (45:08)
I mean I guess he just needs one that works on whatever new baddie he's hunting. We've got to get 12 months out. I'm sure we'll find out then.

Adam (45:16)
Yeah, yeah. I think

Jim just likes coming up with new tracking spell ideas. But okay, let's talk about magic and how it interacts with physics. As we talked about in this chapter, ⁓ this series of chapters, Harry uses his hands to quote unquote physically pull this barbed wire spell off of Mickey Malone. And that got me thinking about how magic interacts with physics on a fundamental level. So the first question I wanna throw out there, Brian,

Brian (45:21)
Yeah, that's true.

Adam (45:45)
If you ignore the Murphionic field problem where technology gets fried anytime magic is involved, could any kind of scientific instruments detect or measure magic? Not like the heat of a fireball cast by Harry, but like just purely the energy of magic itself.

Brian (46:08)
So ignoring the Murphionic field, Eliquoceraptor says no, because we don't have anything that could detect it right now. But if we knew where to look, it would be detectable. It's part of reality like gravity. And I think that's a good starting point. We know that magic is part of reality. It is all around. Harry describes that at various points in the series. However.

I don't think that you can fundamentally detect magic without magical senses.

So I think for us to have a machine that could detect magical we'd have to have something that was like built by a wizard to convert the sensory input of magic into something we could understand. It's sort of like saying in Plato's allegory,

of the cave. could you see the things that were outside? Well, if you could turn around, yes, but otherwise all you can perceive is shadows on the wall. So if somebody built us something that could project a better image on the wall, we could perceive the magic better, but without those magical senses you just can't see it. It'd be like a deaf person trying to hear something. You know, they could perceive sound through vibrations, but they wouldn't necessarily know what sound

is the way a hearing person could.

Adam (47:39)
Yeah, that actually might be a very good analogy because we do know normies can detect magic in certain circumstances. Like the bad part of town has these negative vibes or when there's, ⁓ various times Harry has described like, there was a warlock living there and the neighborhood could tell. They didn't know why, but they knew that they needed to leave. Like I think the first time he goes to Victor Sell's house, right, in Stormfront, he says like, there was a lot of...

Brian (48:01)
storm front. Yeah.

Adam (48:05)
houses with like for sale signs and other examples of nobody wanted to be out on the street like people can feel it they just don't know what they're feeling and I wonder if you could somehow use that to measure it in a scientific way if you could calibrate a whole bunch of people and say okay when you feel something rated on a score of X to Y say it out loud when you feel something and like then a wizard

as an invisibility spell behind them or something and they're like, did I feel something? Maybe. I don't know, just grasping at straws here. But I think there might be a way if you use people's ability to sense it as the instrument.

Brian (48:41)
You know, honestly...

You know, honestly, I think we actually do see this. It's the ghost lantern that Butters makes with a bop. You need some sort of magic-sensitive construct as a part of the machine, but it could translate things in a way that normal people would be able to sense it. It's just you need something that has that initial ability to perceive magic that is either a spirit or a magically talented person. I think.

Adam (49:17)
Yeah, I mean, that's definitely true. Whether you could go beyond that is the question and maybe it's possible, but so far we have no evidence of that. So that brings us to the next question. Like we know that Harry pulls in magic from the environment and it's sort of explained like how it's out there, but how is it stored before Harry or any other wizard uses it for a spell? Cause I feel like...

a couple of different times in the series, Jim has sort of detailed how like magic still follows the laws of thermodynamics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it just changes form. So magic is in a form that most people cannot access, but wizards can. Proceeding from that, you gotta ask yourself, where is it stored? How is it stored? And why can wizards get access to it before it's sort of refilled? Now,

Eliquosoraptor also provides sort of the canonical answer here as well, but there were some other ones. Well, let's start with the canonical one. So they say, exists in a great big field all around the world. Magic in its unworked or natural state is generated by life, peoples and animals interacting with the world, having emotions, et cetera. This energy is generated constantly by people. But when Dresden uses it, he's sucking up the ambient energy, not drawing it directly from people, unquote. And Brian,

The more I thought about this, the more concerned I became because boy that sounds a little too close to the midi-chlorian explanation for my take.

Brian (50:42)
Yeah, it is a little bit ⁓ of a generic, shall we say, explanation of magical energy. And I think that's why people don't like the midichlorian explanation of the force. It's just, well, it's there because it's there kind of, you know, and I think that there's some interesting ways to...

Adam (50:55)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Brian (51:03)
analyze that explanation that that sort of fit with the the Dresden files better but I want to propose as we continue to look into this that an alternate framework is to say that it's not that magic is this separate thing that's there it's that magic is

way of accessing things that really are there and we know about. And one example of this that you brought up was Aether.

Adam (51:34)
specifically the concept of Aether of the early physicist period. There's also Aristotle and like Greek philosophers concept of Aether, which is fairly different than the Aether theories of like the 17 and 1800s. But the concept there was physicists were starting to come to grips with what light and gravity were. And they're like, well, this stuff needs to propagate through something, right? Because

how does light move through a vacuum? There's nothing there for it to propagate against. And so they came up with the concept of like, there's like this other field that we cannot detect that exists everywhere. And it has this thing that can propagate energy called aether. And that's how gravity waves and how light and electromagnetic waves would work by traveling through this aether. Now, when we, by the time we get to relativity theory,

we no longer need Aether to explain any of these things. Einstein fixed it all and said, here's how the math works. There's no such thing as Aether. It just works this other way. And so the whole concept of Aether got dropped in physics. But now here's my headcanon, Brian. Aether in the Dresden verse is real and it's the magical field that's around us. But the wizards and the other magic users in the world are like, we don't want.

humans to discover this and like build power plants that suck magic out of the out of the air so they went and disgraced the concept of aether in maybe by Helping Einstein feel of relative relativity. I don't know but somehow in the Dresden verse they were able to discredit aether the same way It was done in our universe But in the Dresden verse aether is real and that's where the magic is is basically kept in stores

Brian (53:26)
Well, mean, magic works by belief, right? So if Einstein's description of special relativity works, like it described how the magical field behaved, then it sort of becomes real by virtue of being the explanation for how things work. That is something that could be true, right? So relativity could be true in the Dresden files universe as it is in our world, even though it is describing the behavior of an underlying phenomenon.

that mortals can't detect because it's magic. I like that idea and I think that it's getting at this thing that I'm talking about which is that magic is this part of the universe exist separately from any physical energy. It's not a different detectable thing or a substance. It's some sort of

Adam (54:00)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (54:23)
It is some more base level part of reality. My favorite explanation is actually very close to what Bleden says. Bleden, when talking about the Murphionic field, suggests that it's similar to paradox in Mage the Ascension, the World of Darkness ⁓ game. ⁓ magic nudges a few physical constants around. The fewer constants you have to shove aside, the easier and more efficient your magic is. If you're working like...

Harry does, you're burning out stuff constantly because technologically relies heavily on gravity or electromagnetic fields and how they interact with their constants. So because your magic is subtly altering the law of gravity or the law of conservation of energy or the temperature at which oxygen bursts into flames. Exactly. Right. Because you're making all these small

Adam (55:15)
Planck-like or something like that. The speed of light for

that matter.

Brian (55:20)
Well, that would screw up how a computer works for sure. If, you know, silicon was not propagating electricity the same way the whole time, you would fry some circuitry for sure. So that could totally be a good explanation of what the Dresden ⁓ files has magic do. And the reason why I like it so much is because it connects.

Adam (55:23)
huh.

Brian (55:44)
magic with the idea of God that's articulated by something like the Dutch philosopher Spinoza, which is basically that a deity is whatever sets the laws of physics. Whatever

whatever made the law of gravity what it is because it's arbitrary there's no reason we can perceive that this many quarks have to be a that and this many quarks have to be a that and like you know what plonk length is there's no reason why that

Adam (56:13)
Why

are there eight electrons in each shell or whatever?

Brian (56:16)
Right, so whatever sets those things, that's God. Whether it's randomness or a ⁓ being or whatever it is. And it seems like in the Dresden files, magic is kind of your ability to interact with, to touch the

Adam (56:33)
It is

called the force of creation many times within the book.

Brian (56:37)
So what is more fundamental to creation than momentarily changing what temperature oxygen bursts into flame at?

Adam (56:47)
Yeah.

Now, we do have one more suggestion about how magical energy is stored, and that's from who says, invoke the quantum realm to answer the question. Quote, if it's truly doing business with physics, it may well be at some quantum shenanigans. Every energetic process is subject to entropy, and some of that decay might go into, quote, unquote, the well, if there's space. The energy both does and doesn't exist until it's used.

when it's shaped into a specific form, light, heat, force, whatever, then it's exactly as real as the same effect produced non-magically." Unquote. So basically saying there's some quantum elements going on to where energy that normally would be lost to entropy, instead of going into the environment the way that we traditionally think of it in physics, it actually goes secretly into this special realm, this quantum, you know, universe or realm or what have you.

where it's stored as magical energy for the wizard to use. And that's an interesting idea too. My other thought when I was thinking about this that I was surprised nobody else thought of, you're familiar with the concept of dark energy, yes? my understanding is like, hey, the universe is not just flying apart, it's flying apart faster over time as if something is pushing it. And that's sort of the ground rules of like, that means there's...

Brian (57:55)
Of course,

Adam (58:08)
energy out there we can't see that is accelerating the movement of stars and galaxies. And that's dark energy. But what if magic is also like dark energy? Because what it's, we can't detect it and it's energy that can be accessed only by specific wizards and things like that. You know, that's dark energy in a nutshell. Now, is Jim ever going to make that connection?

official within his universe? I don't know, but it would be fun if he explored it.

Brian (58:39)
So I think that.

both that suggestion and what A-Spert is saying are very good, but they push that question off to another level. Okay, where does the dark energy come from? So I'll send you this one, which is if I ever go write a fantasy series, this is what my magical system's gonna be based off of. We live in arguably the fifth dimension, because you've got the three and then you've got time, and some people argue that gravity is kind of like a dimension all on its own. I don't really understand it.

Adam (58:48)
Yes. Agreed.

Brian (59:10)
But we live in the fourth or fifth dimension. Presumably there are both lower and higher dimensions than that. I mean, we don't know, but you know, there could be. maybe, exactly. So maybe what that dark energy is, that dark matter is, what magic is, is its sixth dimensional stuff.

Adam (59:19)
Flatland, for example.

Hmm.

Brian (59:29)
that we can't perceive or interact with really because it's from a higher level of reality. It's the flat shapes trying to perceive the z-axis or whatever.

Adam (59:39)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (59:39)
And, you know, wizards are shapes that can in some way conceptualize and manipulate this higher dimensional energy. And what a deity is, is just a being that is literally of a higher dimension. When Jim describes something like Mab or the Outsiders as being deeper, they have the same amount of power, but deeper, that's the depth he's talking about. It is a dimension that

we really can't perceive and that therefore interacts weirdly with our world.

Adam (1:00:15)
Okay, yeah, I could buy that. That would be interesting if that became more of an official thing. And I don't know if we'll ever get the answers to these questions. He's gone 17 books so far without delving deep into like how does magic interact with physics. He's happy to play around the edges and it makes sense because as soon as he nails down an official like rule for how all this works, he won't be able to easily break that rule in the future when he thinks of something really cool that he wants to do.

Brian (1:00:41)
Well, you know, I think that Jim has given us the hints that it does work the method that Bledden described before altering the physical constraints because I think it's in backup that Thomas describes what Harry does as essentially quantum physics is very equation based, but.

Adam (1:01:03)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:01:05)
The second that Jim starts to actually explain it, he has to know quantum physics.

Adam (1:01:12)
That's true, you're right. That'd be a lot of extra research.

Brian (1:01:15)
So

you might as well just leave it kind of vague and make some gestures at the physical explanation without needing to commit yourself to staying consistent within your interpretation of string theory or whatever.

Adam (1:01:29)
Right, agreed. Okay, the last question that I had, and this is the question that kind of inspired everything while I was reading Grave Parallel, is I've been rereading peace talks in Battlegrounds, and I just finished The Law in anticipation of next week's release, and something struck me, because Jim has several of the characters in peace talks and Battlegrounds use kinetic blasts to throw themselves in the opposite direction, and I have two examples that I've pulled up here.

One from Peace Talks, quote, and then I crouched, made my best guess I could, gathered my will and thrust my right hand down at the floor while snarling, Forzare! Raw kinetic force lashed down at the floor below me and of Sir Isaac Newton, it also propelled me up, unquote. Now that is when Harry is trying to get out from his lab with Thomas and pull him up to get to Lara and sneak him out of the castle, but,

because of Sir Isaac Newton, it also propelled me up? That got me thinking, well, hang on, Harry has thrown a lot of forzares around in the last 16 books or whatever. I don't remember those propelling him with an equal and opposite force in the other direction. And I had to ask the question, okay, Sir Isaac Newton has his say here and in Battlegrounds, quote,

I brought my shield up in time angling it to my left as I darted right. The car hit the shield which flared into nearly coherent green gold light. Broken glass and fiberglass and metal flew out from the impact. The smashed car spun wildly away but even so Sir Isaac Newton had his two bits. I was knocked to my right, staggered and I had to put my hand on the street to keep from falling." Unquote. So again, he's invoking the equal opposite reaction situation, but Brian

Why does that not have happen when he blasts the Lughuru through three buildings? I don't remember Harry blasting backwards through three buildings himself. He just stands there.

Brian (1:03:33)
Yeah, and this is where I think that there's a lot of good explanations. Elquosiraptor suggests that this depends on how Harry sets up the spell in his mind, right? In a full moon, he tries to stop the charge of the Lugru, but miscalculates the forces involved, and the excess bleeds out into pushing him back. That's that ⁓ repelling spell. Do you remember the name of it?

Adam (1:03:56)
⁓ It's not Defendiaris. I think it's like, it's something like Reflectum.

Brian (1:04:00)
Yeah, something like that, but it literally has that.

Adam (1:04:02)
But that is an example

of him being blasted backwards when something else hits one of his Force Shields. That's true, and I had forgotten about

Brian (1:04:10)
And you found on the Discord, He Who Waits bemused with a great suggestion that I think is a very good answer to this. Do you want to give that one to us? Because I really like this one.

Adam (1:04:23)
Sure,

He Who Aids Bemuse says, the way I've handled it in my head is that he's creating the force, so he also gets to choose what it's anchored to. In the case of blasting the Lugaru, he picked the entire earth, but in cases where he's using it as a rocket, he uses Harry Dresden as the anchor, unquote.

Brian (1:04:42)
Now I do like that, but I want to throw in a different explanation, which is that when Harry's making the spell, he can create a force spell that emanates out from him and hits a thing, and that would push back on him.

or he can do multiple spells So one spell is a force spell that is pushing out from him and keeping him from moving forward. Another spell is a force spell that's pushing behind him to brace him against the reaction from that force spell. And that this complex interplay is part of what wizards learn as they get older. It's part of why they're getting better. They're learning how to compensate for Sir Isaac Newton having his two bits

by effectively casting other spells to catch them from being knocked backwards. That's why when Harry throws a car into cowl in five years, he's not getting bounced into the earth by the force he's exerting on the car.

Adam (1:05:46)
Yeah, that was actually my interpretation. You said a better version of it, but I was thinking the same thing is in one instance, if you just blast in one direction, you'll get pushed in the opposite direction using an opposite amount of force. But if you spend extra energy to blast in the other direction yourself, to keep, to compensate, as you're saying, for the recoil essentially, then you can spend twice as much energy to not go somewhere.

and to make sure the blast is going out in a controlled direction. I do kind of like that as an option too, but the anchoring into the earth versus anchoring to Harry Dresden is also a funny thought. And I really do like that explanation.

Brian (1:06:27)
Well,

I think that's also totally right because we've seen times where Harry has braced his staff against the ground.

while using it as a foci. And I think that's what he's doing, you fundamentally, he's bracing it against the earth. He's manipulating physics in that way. But I also want to throw in two interesting things that this sort of leads me to conclude. First, if you accept the altering physical constraints version of magic that Harry's doing, what he does when he's being smart about it is he just removes that constraint,

Adam (1:06:38)
Hmm.

Or is it the first?

Brian (1:07:02)
Now that takes magic,

you have to do it, you have to do the magic to make it not apply, but yeah, if he can just suspend it for a second, then if he's thinking about it, if he's got the time to set the spell up that way, he can just do that, and that would mean we don't necessarily need to feel or see that bracing force because he's just sort of doing away with that part of the equation. But also, remember when Harry blasts the Lughuru through a bunch of buildings,

do it with a force spell, he does it with a fire spell.

And potentially, part of why it is so much harder to work with telekinetic force is that when you cast a fire spell, heat is a release for a lot of blowback energy, and all you need to do is manage where that heat goes. When you're working with telekinetic force directly, you have to compensate for it in ways that are very, very complicated and require more fine control.

Adam (1:08:03)
Yeah, that sounds very close to what I was thinking as well. But I think that takes us to the end of this episode in our physics lecture here. any final thoughts before we head out for the day?

Brian (1:08:16)
I just can't wait for 12 months to drop. I'm just so excited.

Adam (1:08:20)
Me too. So we will see our patrons next Friday the 23rd and we'll see the rest of you back on the 30th with our 12 months thoughts. We hope that you enjoy those, the book and those episodes. But for our next Grave Peril episode, we will leave you with this question for Bob that we'll be talking about on that episode. What other media, specifically media series are most like the Dresden file?

And that's a very broad question, Brian. There's a couple different ways that you could tease it out, but The Dresden Files has 18 books now. There's gotta be others that are similar to it in some way.

Brian (1:09:00)
and

We're not just asking this in terms of, you know, what are other urban fantasy series? Because that's something that is we would take as an answer to this too. But we're asking a larger question of over the course of the 25 years where Jim has been publishing these books, the scale has changed, the stakes have changed, the protagonist has changed. He's gotten older. He has taken on different roles.

trying to ask which series are tonally or thematically like the Dresden Files, but what other media has this sweep and this sense of progression, and what other heroes are like Harry, even if it's only in parts?

But anyway, will see you guys next week, or in two weeks, if you are not a patron yet. Come

Adam (1:09:53)
Have a good one everybody.