Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:00)
one of the interesting things that I have sort of.

come to is that my English teachers were right in middle school and high school because there are so many interesting references to things that I would not have gotten if they force me to read the classics, right? If I didn't know about characters from all these classical stories that make up Western culture,

Baloreilly (00:08)
Hahahaha!

Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:27)
that Jim Butcher has also read, then the context of what he's putting in here was a lot more lost.

Baloreilly (00:35)
I enjoy in part because it actually makes use of all the other fucking reading I that's practically useless.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:40)
Yeah,

I just hate to admit my English teachers were right, you know?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:53)
Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to Recorded Neutral Territory, a Dresden Files chapter by chapter reread podcast. We're looking at chapters eight and nine of Stormfront today, but the spoilers go all the way through Battleground. I am Adam Ruzzo, and with me, as always, a bouncer for the Velvet Room, it's Brian O'Reilly. Welcome, Brian.

Baloreilly (01:13)
How's it going, Adam? And how'd you get in here? That's good enough for me, good enough for me. Yeah, so chapter eight opens with Dresden getting home from the Sells mansion all the way out in Michigan Morgan has given him the fright of his life. He arrives back at about...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (01:16)
I know a guy. Here, slip you 20 bucks.

Baloreilly (01:34)
two in the morning to get to Chicago. So Dresden's presumably at this point for something on the order 16 or 17 hours. We think he's fairly early in the morning when the mail comes this day. And this is the same day. Dresden is just still going. So he's really burning the candle at both ends.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (01:52)
Yeah.

Baloreilly (01:55)
The fact that he's going to stay up a couple hours after this is the reason why he's so exhausted the next day and just sleeps until, what was it, 3 p.m.

before bed.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (02:04)
Exactly. So

one of the things that starts the chapter is he says, often wish that I had some suave and socially acceptable hobby that I could fall back on in times like this, like the violin with Sherlock Holmes. And we know that later, in White Night, I think, is when he really gets good at the guitar. They don't mention it a lot after that, but it is clear that it's very meaningful to Harry when he's using the guitar to practice to fix his hand. So.

I think we were talking before the show and you mentioned that Jim really likes to put things into the story that reference older things even if he didn't necessarily plan on it. It feels like this is one of those things, right? He's referencing like, yeah, I wanna give Harry something like this, but I don't have it in mind yet. I'll just do it later, but I'll put a pin in it. We'll put a pin in right here in this storm front.

Baloreilly (02:47)
It's definitely that gardener style of writing. A butcher is somebody who plans out everything way in advance and he's more of an architect, but he does enjoy a little bit of gardening. The first person who greets Dresden when he comes home is of course Mr. This is when we meet him as an enormous gray cat. Quote, mean enormous. There are dogs smaller than Mr. End quote. Mr. is a 30 pound cat. Adam, you have a cat?

Multiple cats? You have a cat. I have two cats. Mister is bigger, as big as all of our cats put together. He's like a bobcat or something. I'm saying it right now. We're gonna talk about this more in the future, but I'm saying this right now. There is no way Mister is a normal house cat. I don't believe it.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (03:17)
Yes, I have a cat.

Yeah.

No, think there's been a good theory out there in the Reddit where somebody thinks he's a scion of a Malk or something, and I think that's gotta be it. It's gotta be something like that. But anyway, we're seeing a lot of scion stuff come in as the series progresses, and that gives a wonderful layering to the supernatural, where you don't just have purely supernatural things and purely human and natural things. You have these blendings that...

Baloreilly (03:45)
Yeah.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (04:04)
open so many questions involving morality and what's right and what's wrong. And it's it's beautiful. I love that, that extra texture that it adds to the, to the series.

Baloreilly (04:16)
And I think that, you know, the common criticism that you hear when stuff like that happens, you know, all of the Scions in Chicago know each other, you know, do have any normal friends, right? But I think that part of the reason why that makes sense in the Dresden Files, and it doesn't feel artificial, is, you know, it's the same reason why people who in real life, are neurodivergent will be friends in high school, and they'll only get diagnosed, you know, later on.

These are people who have a set of life experiences, a set of differences that mark them out from the average person. And that's why, even if they don't know that they have this in common, they have similar sort of frames of mind and that's why they get together. know, Mr. if he is a Scion is probably drawn to Dresden because they're similarly integrated into the hidden ways of the world.

just because 30 pound cat needs a six foot nine owner.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (05:17)
Yeah, that's a great explanation for a Watsonian perspective, for a Doyleist perspective, see the law of conservation of characters.

so

get introduced to Harry's place. He's got textured walls, carpets, tapestries, things, of course, the classic Star Wars poster. He goes down to his lab, he talks to Bob, he starts to make some potions. And well, it of course raises the question that a lot of people ask after the first couple of books is what happens to the potions? Where do they go? Why does he stop making them? I think the Doyle's perspective here is that

The potions are both too flexible and too useful, and they also foreshadow too effectively in a sense, right? If Harry wakes up and he makes a potion that's going to do X, you're pretty sure that that's going to come into play later in the book. Every potion is a Chekhov's potion. And there's only so many ways you can throw a twist at the audience to...

introduce some weird thing like, that potion's not gonna work out that way. They do it here in Stormfront, the very first one. he's gonna use the escape potion to get away from the Toad Demon. Nope, accidentally drank the love potion, darn.

those I think are hard to write is what it comes down to from a Doyleist perspective. But from a Watsonian perspective, we actually have an in-universe explanation from Jim.

Baloreilly (06:39)
So Jim was asked at some sort of speaking engagement why we don't see Harry making potions anymore, and he said, quote, the potions were more like a security blanket for Harry. He wanted to be doing something, but he didn't really know what he should be doing, so he was making potions in case they might be useful. Now,

he actually has a clue about what he should be doing most of the time. But, Harry is teaching Molly about potions. That's how she keeps changing her hair color. That was the first potion she learned how to

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (07:11)
Yeah, I mean, maybe the limitations of potions is their short duration.

but I think the the the Doyle's perspective I don't think he just put it he just didn't put enough the restrictions on how useful potions can be to the point where you just ask okay He used the escape potion in that other thing. It would have worked great Why does he just have one of those like on his? Utility belt at all times and if you don't have a good answer for that it kind of ruins the drama of the story so I think that's why he phased out potions again from a Doyle's

Baloreilly (07:37)
I think part of the other reason why he phased out potions is that he didn't entirely. In changes, they do use a potion when they're going into the Red Court base to get the MacGuffin that they need to get to Chichen Itza. And later on in peace talks, they use the blend into the background potion. I believe it's the blend into the background potion to actually get Thomas out.

I don't

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (08:04)
That's fair

point, actually. Yeah, I had forgotten about the peace talks one,

Baloreilly (08:08)
And I think that part of the problem with potions is that when the character makes one, when you see him making one, yes, it foreshadows effectively what's going to happen in the story, but it also just too coincidental that they're always If he had the escape potion on the utility belt at all times, that's not Batman with the grappling hook. That's,

every problem is a nail and the only tool I have is a hammer. It's sort of not just foreshadowing what Harry will do but

very directly either forcing him to use them or just it's not interesting to have potions that he doesn't use the thing that Jim has mentioned on other occasions is that Harry spends a lot of time enchanting his gear potion making directly takes away from the time he can spend doing other improvements to his gear and you know working out other enchantments Jim never wants to show us

Harry enchanting his gear because it's boring. For the same reason, we don't see and will never see potions that Harry makes that aren't used and that didn't come in handy. So it seems weird. Either the potions that you see are always coincidentally useful or he has to bring in a bunch of potions that are never used.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (09:20)
Right, it breaks the Varus Militude a little bit. And a good point too. Even from a Watsonian perspective, if you've got time and money to do one thing and you can use it to create that new belt buckle or make another one of those rings, those force rings, or you could use it to make some temporary potions, consumable potions, long-term you're gonna wanna spend it on those focuses, the foci that...

are going to be reusable forever, or at least until they're destroyed, than going on a temporary consumable thing.

Baloreilly (09:56)
So after decides to make the potions, meet Bob. Harry has his interactions with Bob's interesting personality. And at one point, Harry comments on Bob's obsession with sex. And Bob says, it's an academic interest, Harry. This is a remark that we're supposed to understand in context, right, is not.

It doesn't really make sense. It's clearly not academic Bob is a purient little pervert. But it's really interesting that Bob doesn't even seem himself to know, or maybe he's just not saying it. The very reason why he's obsessed with sex is because 16 year old Harry Dresden was, and that is the last master to claim the skull.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (10:44)
Yes, and we learn in Ghost Story that the impressions that are made when the new person picks up the skull are very important. Butters met Bob before he became Bob's master, ergo, Bob...

with Butters, is a lot like he was with Harry, because Butters expects him to be that way, expects a continuation of personality. If Butters had never met Bob and picked up the skull for the first time, the implication is that the skull would have a very different personality that was more directly reflective of Butters' personality. And so, you're right.

The Bob that we meet here is actually very heavily tinted by 16 year old Harry, which of course, filled with the hormones of a teenage boy, probably pretty obsessed with sex. That's a very good point I hadn't considered before.

Baloreilly (11:38)
And it's funny because it gives Jim a great excuse to have Bob be somewhat more purient than present Harry Dresden. Because if Bob just evolved and changed continually with his owner, and it was not mostly influenced by the person who picks it up when they claim it, then as Harry became a little bit more mature, so would Bob.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (11:50)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (12:04)
But Bob's trapped as the sort of brilliant juvenile because that's what Harry was when he grabbed him.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (12:11)
All right, so they have a little interaction here where Harry tries to chastise him for being such a little pervert,

and so the next section, Harry says, okay, we're gonna make an escape potion and it's, you know, much more effective or efficient to make two potions at the same time, because you got a lot of sitting around doing nothing with one while you can be working on another, so let's make two copies of the same potion. And Bob's like, that's so boring, why don't we try something new? he suggests the following.

Baloreilly (12:38)
quote, Bob's eye sockets twinkled cheerfully. A love potion, Harry. If you won't let me out, at least let me do that. Spirits, you could use it and no, I said firmly, no way. No love potion. Fine, he said. No love potion. No escape potion either. Bob, I said warningly.

Bob's eye lights winked out. I growled. I was tired and cranky, and under the best of circumstances, I am not exactly a Type A personality. I stalked over, picked up Bob by the jaws, and shook him. Hey! I shouted. Bob! You come out of there! Or I'm gonna take this skull and throw it down the deepest well I can find. I swear to you, I'll put you somewhere where no one can ever come get you out ever again. Bob's eyes winked on only for a moment.

No you won't. I'm far too valuable that they winked out again.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (13:36)
does remind me of changes where he throws Bob into Leah's garden and the last thing we hear Bob saying is, you'd better come back. But this does raise an interesting question, Earlier in this chapter, we didn't read it, but earlier on, Bob asks to come out and Harry forbids it. And it's implied that Bob literally cannot leave unless Harry gives permission. So Harry has some control over Bob in that sense, but he

Baloreilly (13:46)
Uh-huh.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (14:06)
then here is having to negotiate with Bob and like threaten him to get his participation in making this potion. So is that a contradiction? What is their relationship like? Does Harry have control? It's definitely implied very heavily that having control of the skull gives you control of Bob in some sense.

Baloreilly (14:24)
And I think that for most wizards, that's exactly how they would treat it. There's no negotiation with Bob. If you control the skull, what we know is that Bob is bound to you. We've seen what you can compel beings to do under a binding. Bob can't stop you from doing with him what you want. But Bob's relationship with his master is influenced most heavily by that master's conception of what the relationship ought to be.

and Harry simply can't imagine having that much control over anything he regards as having a personality, as being something of a person. So because Harry is Bob's master, Bob can negotiate with him because that's kind of internally what Harry needs their relationship to be.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (15:17)
Yeah,

I absolutely buy that. And it's entirely possible that it's not something that Harry even recognizes, right? We're seeing this from the 10,000 foot high view, looking at it across the entire series. And maybe like whatever Harry is writing down these files, as it's implied that is happening, that Harry might recognize it at that point.

Baloreilly (15:24)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (15:40)
but it's not something that's ever implied that he recognizes that he could force Bob to do something if he wanted, but instead chooses to do this. It's sort of a subconscious thing where he just assumes that Bob can refuse anything except being let out of the skull. Like that seems to be the limit where Harry can trap him in the skull and keep him there because that's what Harry wants to be able to do. It's almost like, know, you can't do anything with magic if you don't truly believe in it and...

Harry doesn't believe that anyone with a personality that he thinks of as another person should be bound in that way.

Baloreilly (16:17)
Yeah, I think that's a fabulous way of putting it.

Right, so he might be, the devil on his shoulder might be sort of putting Bob up to being like this towards him. And that might be why ultimately he agrees, saying...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (16:34)
Okay, Bob, fine. You win. We'll do them both, all right? Bob's eye lights came up warily. You're sure? You'll do the love potion just like I say? Don't I always make the potions like you say, Bob? What about that diet potion you tried? Okay, that was one mistake. And the anti-gravity potion, remember that? We fixed the floor. It was no big end. Fine, fine. You don't have to rub it in. Now cough up the recipes. Bob did so, and in fine humor.

And for the next two hours, we made the potions.

Potions are all made pretty much the same way. base to form the essential liquid content, then something to engage each of the senses, and then something for the mind and something else for the spirit. Eight ingredients, all in all, and they're all different for each and every potion, and for each person who makes them. Bob had centuries of experience and could extrapolate the most successful components for a given person to make into the potion. He was right about being an invaluable resource. I had never even heard

heard of a spirit with Bob experience, and I was lucky to have him. That didn't mean I didn't want to crack that skull of his from time to time, though."

Baloreilly (17:39)
And clearly, Harry values the fact that Bob has all this experience, and that's part of why his idealized form of Bob does have an adversarial relationship with him on occasion. Some wizards have tools and they want to use them. Harry has a little bit more humility than that. He has tools that he knows are more experienced than he is, and he wants to learn from them.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (18:09)
And this, this section right here does pretty heavily imply that one of the reasons that not all wizards don't just have potions all the time is because it's a very complicated thing to learn and it takes a huge amount of experience to know what items will make the best potion. Maybe you make an escape potion, but you don't use exactly the right ingredients for you particularly, and for this potion in particular, and it works, but it works for 10 seconds instead of 60 seconds. And so it makes sense that

Harry can only be as good with potions as he is because he has Bob. And probably there are other like alchemist wizards out in the White Council that are really good with potions and that's their thing in the same way that evocations are Harry's thing. Thaumaturgy is really more Harry's thing, but they're both Harry's things. But you get the idea. So there could be a wizard out there that potions are their thing, but it took them a hundred years of study to become good enough to just say,

Baloreilly (18:58)
Yeah.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (19:05)
I need to whip up a potion to do X and I know exactly what I need.

Baloreilly (19:09)
Yeah, you know, Bob's real value is not that he's necessarily able to figure everything out.

We'll talk about Demonreach in just a second. Bob's not able to figure everything out, but Bob remembers everything. So presumably one of those people with a hundred years or plus of potion making experience was somebody who owned Bob in the past, and he's got the resources of a genius potion maker because that was a previous holder of the skull. Harry's very similar, his relationship with Bob and Alfred, Demonreach.

in the sense that both of these beings are tools that allow him to do things that theoretically another wizard could do, another wizard could bind to something as good as Demonreach does, but fundamentally the only reason Harry can do them at his age, and the real reason why they're possible for him to do, you know, in the thick of battle at all, is because he has this assistant of such high quality, which makes you wonder, all those other senior counselors...

Do they have their own Bob-like assistant on the side, or are they coming by all of their skill honestly?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (20:21)
Yeah, I think that all of the oldest and most powerful wizards, at least the ones that go out into the world, right, we're definitely made to imagine that there are a bunch of wizards that just sit in their tower and they study, like, academics, right? But any that go out into the world and, like, do things, act as ambassadors, save damsels, et cetera, et cetera, they're gonna come across magical artifacts the way that you would in a D &D campaign.

And Harry's first magical artifact was the skull. And I think you could make an argument that his genus, Lokai, that island is another like hugely powerful magical artifact that he comes into of. The staff and the blasting rod were things he made. Those are just generic wizard tools that are probably about as good as anybody else could have made them.

But now we also know he has the Spear of Destiny that he uses in Battleground and the other things that he took out of Hades Vault. So he's got quite the collection of artifacts that probably would be, it would take a lifetime of a wizard's life to collect. We also know the Black Staff is definitely like an artifact level tool. I don't know that we've seen a lot of other tools that ancient wizards have brought up into the open, only because...

Baloreilly (21:27)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (21:34)
it would be really tempting for somebody to steal it if they knew it existed. So they probably all keep them as secret as Harry keeps Bob.

Baloreilly (21:40)
Yeah, I definitely think that's the case. Obviously there's a lot of story reasons why Harry and Bob have the relationship they do, but there's also a, you know, writerly reason.

Jim was having with his writing teacher when he was writing Stormfront that she said, you he was like, I have to do all this exposition and she was like, it's fine. Just make sure it doesn't come from a literal talking head. So he made it a literal floating skull.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (22:02)
Yeah.

And the relationship he gives them is slightly adversarial, right? Bob is behaving in ways that Harry finds problematic, where he's always sighing or yelling at Bob about something, but it's always good-natured ribbing, like Bob is like making fun of him for not having a date or whatever, and Harry's like, whatever, Bob, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and that relationship...

allows us to absorb the exposition through that character development, which is so much nicer than just him asking Bob questions and Bob reading them out like a computer. So it was definitely a great way to have that relationship unfold. So the next, sorry.

Baloreilly (22:38)
Yeah, Jim Butcher having

a lore dump the same way stand-up comics do crowd work was definitely a strong choice.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (22:48)
That's a good point. So next is they talk about how he makes the escape potion and I one of the things I do miss about potion making in the series is all the kind of very creative ingredients that Jim comes up with, right? if we're making an escape potion, we're gonna start with Jolt Cola as a-

because it's got to be very, you know, fast. We're getting out of there, so we need a lot of energy. Then we're to add motor oil for smell, because if you're going to get somewhere fast, you're going to do it in a car. So therefore we need to use motor oil. And then Bird's Feather turning into tiny shavings for tactile, you know, the sense of touch. And then chocolate covered espresso beans, all these different things. And then the ones that are always the most, I really want to know about these. He unfolds a clean white cloth.

where he'd kept a flickering shadow stored for just such an occasion. And then he opened up a glass jar where he kept his mouse scampers for sound. I wanna know how he captured those. That sounds amazing. I want a little mini novella of Harry going out to refill his potion stores where he has to capture mouse scampers and flickering shadows. That sounds like a very cool world building element.

Baloreilly (23:59)
Right, and after they have this conversation, they go into making the love potion, which similarly has its own list of ingredients. Rather than a teaspoon of powdered diamond, Harry has to tear up a 50 because he's too broke to afford the diamond.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (24:16)
the one that he

just got from Monica. If he hadn't taken that case, he wouldn't be able to make a love potion the way that Bob wants him to make it.

Baloreilly (24:22)
Yes, the rent is disappearing quickly. And at the end of it all, Bob tells Harry that this is the best potion he's ever made, which I think is very funny because Bob has probably made some potions that were a lot more important, but the sort of juvenile, purient brain to Bob that Harry has sees this one, which is not really a love potion. It's more of a lust draft.

as yes he

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (24:51)
That's what it turns out to be, yes. And even if

you just look at the ingredients, that's kind of clear. The love letter that he was supposed to put in there instead turns out to be a page from a romance novel that is probably, he said it starts with her milky white breasts or something like that, and that suggests that it was not a love letter per se, it was a sex scene in a romance book, so it was really more about the lust than the romance element.

Baloreilly (24:56)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:19)
Obviously there's a lot of romance in those books, but Bob picked a page that was way more lust than romance.

Baloreilly (25:25)
Right, so we definitely sort of see Harry not being as good at potion making as Bob is, or maybe as some readers are, because it's pretty clear from the ingredients list and how much of a kick Bob is getting out of this that Harry should go outside and just smash this potion on the ground immediately. Nothing good is going to come of this. Exactly.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:47)
Yeah, just dump it down the drain.

Baloreilly (25:50)
Chapter 9 opens with Friday night. I went to see Bianca, the Vampyress. But it doesn't actually start there. It starts when Harry wakes up at like 3 in the afternoon after presumably making potions until 5 or 6 in the morning.

to the phone ringing. And is again sort of the two cases bouncing off of each other.

Harry spent most of the previous day, in terms of driving out to Michigan and driving all the way back, on the Monica Sells case, not really on the presumably more pressing murder case. And as if to sort of remind him that that was a bad decision, Murphy immediately calls and wants an update on the murder case.

quote, get to it faster, she snarled. She was angry. Not that this was unusual for Murphy, but it told me that something else was going on. Some people panic when things get rough, harried. Some people fall apart. Murphy got pissed. Commissioner riding your back again?

City Police Commissioner Howard Fairweather used Murphy and her team as scapegoats for all sort of insolvable crimes that he had dumped in her lap. Fairweather was always lurking around, trying for an opportunity to make Murphy look bad, as though by doing so he could avoid being crucified himself. Like a winged monkey from The Wizard of Oz. Kind of makes you wonder who's leaning on him to get things done. Her voice was sour as ripe lemons.

I heard her drop an alka-seltzer into a glass of liquid. I'm serious, Harry. You get me those answers I need, and you get them to me fast. I need to know if this was sorcery, and if so, how it was done, and who could have done it. Names, places, I need to know everything. It isn't that simple, Murph. Then make it simple. How long before you can tell me

I need an estimate for the Commissioner's Investigative Committee in 15 minutes or I might as well turn in my badge today.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (27:50)
this is one of the positions I think that people don't like the Murphy character in the first couple of books. I think it gets worse in Full Moon. People think that she seems so much so disconnected from the Murphy that we know from later books, so different. But I submit that there's a through line from this version of Murphy to the version of Murphy that we know and love in later books. In this one, we have to remember the position she's in.

she has recently been promoted to be in charge of special investigations. It's a position she holds that she is expected to fail at. They have not given her a real sign for her door because they think she'll be gone in a few weeks. So they don't bother making her a plaque, right? That's the position she's in. She's under an extreme amount of stress. This is where she's wanted to get her whole life. She's wanted to be in charge of a department. Maybe not this department, but...

her actual ambitions were dashed when she questioned the wrong person. I remember the exact details that they gave, but she was shunted here. And so this is the best she could do. She's going to take it and make it as good as she possibly can. as a result, she is extremely stressed out here.

She doesn't have a track record of results that she can use to defend herself like she does in later books. She stays in charge of SI because she keeps solving crimes, she keeps explaining things in a way that the higher-ups will understand and praise her for, at least not yell at her for. And so that she can later get some credit for that when things are looking really bad. But...

Right now, she does not have that. So she is angry, she is worried, she is super stressed, she's going to lose the thing. She has been literally spending her entire life trying to get.

Baloreilly (29:36)
And I think we have to think of Murphy's position as being different from most other people who run special investigations. And we can see this a little bit because who replaces her eventually after the events have proven guilty? Stallings. Who is Stallings? Long time professional.

Doesn't have a ton of personality, kind of a calm guy, probably pretty easy for the higher-ups to get along with for the most part, doesn't make a ton of waves. Special Investigations probably has a lieutenant usually who doesn't rock the boat too much, who doesn't mind getting blamed for things from time to time. It's kind of a dent, usually, probably kind of a dead-end job for people who have risen as high as they're gonna rise and are good soldiers. That's not who Murphy is.

Murphy probably gets this job, pure speculation on my part, because on the one hand, she's a young woman in Chicago police, and this is the kind of time period where putting a fresh face forward in Chicago could be seen as a good thing. The 90s were a rough time to be an inner city police officer. And also, she's a legacy.

Her dad was a big shot in the Chicago police. So she appeals to the new guard. She's a visible representation of youth and change. And the old guard, she is her father's daughter. So Murphy gets this position really young. I don't even think she's 30 at this point. That's incredible for a police lieutenant, which means that she's unproven.

She's sort of been anointed as, a person who deserves special treatment and being promoted so quickly. And now she has to deliver where people will start saying that she never deserved this job in the first place.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (31:31)
Yes, absolutely. And I think that leads to some level of insecurity, and that's what we're seeing here in this moment. And I think it is literally a character flaw. I'm not saying Murphy's handling this well. I think it's an understandable character flaw, given the situation we just outlined. I also think it's something that she works to correct, specifically after the nightmare takes a bite out of her.

and she has to regain her confidence again stressful situation of like combat or confrontation with a criminal. She's always had that at this point. It's the politics, the office politics that she's not secure in. But as she regains her confidence after the nightmare took from her, some piece of her sanity, and she had to like deal with that in the following books, I think the therapy that helps her get her confidence back

in the heat of the moment, also helps her with her confidence in this position. At the same time, she has that track record of results, she's there longer than anybody else has held the position, and she's feeling more confident in the politics element as well. She corrects this flaw, and that's why people like her later.

Baloreilly (32:43)
Right, and you know, look at the character journey that Murphy takes from this point. The first time we're hearing about her office politics situation in book one, just to prove him guilty. She goes from the most important thing she can possibly think of is keeping her job so that she can keep doing good to she's easily willing to put her job on the line to save one person she barely knows.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (33:11)
So this brings to another section here, and I just want to read this sentence here, where she basically forbids him to go to the velvet room, and she says, you're a civilian, Dresden, even if you do have your investigator's license. If you get your ass laid out in the hospital, it'll be me that suffers for it. Now,

Here she's using that, I'm gonna be the one that suffers for it, sort of as a deflection. She sees him as a kid with some expertise that she can use, but it's a lot like the medical examiner or the ballistics expert. They're people that she goes to for information, but she's not gonna let the ballistics expert go talk to suspects. That's not their job, that's her job. And she is super lawful at this point in her...

journey in the story. And so she tries to keep everybody in their job. Harry doesn't have a badge, ergo, he's not allowed to go talk to suspects. And meanwhile, Harry, sees himself as what the Wardens should be. Obviously, he kind of sees himself as a incipient hero or a wannabe hero. He's read all those comic books. He references Spider-Man in all the comic books all the time. I think...

even though he never says it in the books or out loud necessarily, he's very clearly a hero archetype and he wants to be the magic cop that protects Murphy does not see him as a magic cop and doesn't treat him that way until much later.

Baloreilly (34:35)
Murphy's meticulousness with regards to how investigations are conducted obviously stems from some sensible feelings and thoughts. You shouldn't let the ballistics expert interview suspects. That wouldn't be useful. But a private investigator...

is an investigator. Part of what they do is talk to people. Gum shoes, know, walk around asking the tough questions. That's the PI. That's your consulting detective. That's what you're paying him for. In this case, Murphy's stress.

is making her be controlling of who does what, of what is her job and what is other people's job in a way that actually doesn't help get the job done. And I think this is why it's important to realize that people who criticize Murphy's character in the early books have a point. Murphy is a flawed person who makes a lot of mistakes and reacts in a way that's not adaptive in all situations.

That's also very human for a young person who has a ton of responsibility. Murphy to me, because she has these flaws, feels like a real person.

as opposed to some sort of, you know, canonized saint of the police force. And it really is what makes Dresden's relationship with Chicago PD believable to me, that the Chicago PD are imperfect in ways that aren't the most efficient way to investigate all the time.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (36:10)
Yeah, and it makes that journey to the point where, her and Dresden are working together like they have done so many other times, and it's just so clear that they're just in lockstep with each other. Like, Harry has the shield, and she's to his right so that if he drops the shield, she can immediately return fire when they come into contact with something. And like, that version of Murphy that trusts Harry implicitly,

to act as a fellow officer essentially for those situations where they're going after dangerous supernatural threats, like that version of Murphy evolved from this one and that journey makes her more real and more enjoyable to read about.

Baloreilly (36:49)
Of course, and the key there is not that it's she trusts Harry, it's that she's learned to trust people, to do what they're actually good at, and doesn't worry if they're stepping on stuff that she's also good at. Murphy's also good at protecting and throwing around lead and, being the enforcer, but so is Harry.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (36:58)
Mm.

All right, so the next section that we get to is Harry basically trying to lay out what makes wizards dangerous while he prepares to go visit Bianca. Quote,

Baloreilly (37:09)
Yeah.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (37:36)
We know things. We aren't any stronger or faster than anyone else. We don't even have all that much more going on in the mental department, but we're god-awful sneaky, and if we have the chance to get set for something, we can do some impressive things. As a wizard, if you're ready to address a problem, then it's likely that you'll be able to come up with something that will let you deal with it. So, I got together all the things I thought I might need. I made sure my cane was polished and ready. I put my silver knife in a sheath and hung it just under my left arm.

I put the escape potion and its plastic squeeze bottle in my duster's pocket. I put on my favorite talisman, a silver pentacle with a silver chain. It had been my mother's. My father had passed it down to me. I put a small folded piece of white cloth into my pocket."

Baloreilly (38:21)
So.

Dresden here explains how by being crazy prepared, wizards can be crazy dangerous. And something that I think is really interesting about this is when this book's coming out in 2000, this is sort of the defining urban fantasy wizard trope among people who are really into this kind of So White Wolf is this gaming company that is putting out all of these urban fantasy RPGs.

the world of darkness. And I've never played the Dresden Files RPG. I've heard that it's great, so I'm not trying to take away from that. hear it's amazing. But these White Wolf games, they're kind of the first urban fantasy gothic horror RPGs. There's one about vampires, there's one about werewolves, there's one about mages. And everybody who plays any of these RPGs all agree, regardless of what their favorite is, the mages are by far the most dangerous.

Because yeah, some of the vampires are essentially terrifying blood gods and basically every werewolf can throw a car through an elephant. But if you give a mage a day and you tell him what he's facing, can absolutely deal with anything.

Because the essence of magic in those books, unlike the other Splats, the powers of a mage are not written in the rule book. They're determined by the player's creativity. It's very similar to how wizards work in the Dresden Files. What Bianca, or later Thomas, or another character with a defined sort of set of supernatural traits can do, is constrained by what they are.

What Harry can do is constrained by what he can think of. That's a huge advantage. And it's the reason why the White Council has been, to give them some credit, pretty effective at defending humanity from becoming vampire cattle slaves for the past, however, many thousand years.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (40:28)
Yeah, and to put that into context for people that are more familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, even in Dungeons and Dragons, wizards often wind up learning huge spell lists, but they can only take certain ones with them every morning. And so being prepared, it's literally called preparing your spells. You have to choose the spells that you think are going to be most effective on this day in the campaign. Are you going to hunt trolls in a cave or something?

bring this set of spells. You probably don't need the one that's gonna open doors, because trolls don't really have doors in a cave, but what if you happen to find a dungeon entrance later in the cave? Maybe you wanna bring Nock with you. So it challenges the player to prepare in the same way that what you're describing here. So it may be not to the same degree as the White Wolf example, but it's certainly part of the wizard trope within a lot of different games.

Baloreilly (41:18)
And it's important, we think, to bring this up because, like Harry, Jim is a tabletop gamer, or least a former tabletop gamer. We're not saying that he is taking any of his ideas from those places, but we're saying that the sort of milieu, when the Dresden files coming out, gives you a better conception of what a wizard is supposed to be to Jim as he's writing Stormfront.

even one as young as Harry can be a threat to anything if they have the time and tools.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (41:52)
So we continue on and he gets to Bianca's place and the beetle dies for the first time, but not for the last time. Harry might as well be a necromancer the amount of times that, well, Mike, Mike's the necromancer. He brings the beetle back to life multiple times. But one of the things I wanted to talk about is the way that the beetle is always anthropomorphized. Here it says the engine gave an almost apologetic rattle as it shuttered to its death. And then he said, I got out of the beetle.

Baloreilly (42:14)
Mm-mm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (42:22)
and stood mourning it for a moment, right? He treats it like another person in his life in a joking sense, right? He knows obviously it's not a person, but he adds a little anthropomorphization in there. And that makes, that element that he does throughout all the books makes the moment when he finds it smashed and changes so much more impactful. This isn't just a transportation vehicle. It's the thing that he's

bonded with the thing that's always been there for him, right? It's his favorite tool to get somewhere. He's not taking a cab, he's not riding on a broomstick, though he did try to make one once. He's taking the Blue Beetle. He has this relationship with this that's obviously not supernatural or able to respond to him in any way. It's literally just a machine. And yet, it affects him so deeply.

Baloreilly (43:15)
part of what we know is that the things that are Harrys...

share an important significance to him in a way that might be kind of magical. There might be some part of whether it's just being a wizard or whether it's because of who Harry is specifically, the things that he considers a part of his identity have to a certain extent some properties that they wouldn't otherwise. One really easy example of this is here where the beetle dies actually super convenient for Harry. It gives him a reason to tell the

gate guard, look I'm not going here no matter what so you might as well call up and see if Bianca will see me. And the message comes back down that in fact she will. Now before Harry goes in to meet Bianca he is searched and his cane, which is a sword cane, is confiscated and his knife, which he brings as another item for possible self-defense, is confiscated. But

quote, Fido the guard, misses a couple things. First, he misses the handkerchief. Now, Harry still hasn't explained what the handkerchief in his pocket is doing, and we'll get to that in a second. second, he doesn't take Harry's pentacle. And Harry immediately tells us that vampires don't respond to symbols like crosses because of what the symbol is. They respond to the power

of the faith that the symbol symbolizes, it demonstrates on behalf of the person holding it. And Harry knows, or at least suspects, that he can use his pentacle as a symbol of magic and his faith in it so that he can, if it comes to it, hold Bianca back.

So I think it's really important to spell something out here, because it sets an important tone for Harry's relationship with magic through the series as a whole. Harry does not have faith that magic exists. That's not faith. That's fact. He knows magic exists. has faith that magic is a...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (45:19)
Right.

Baloreilly (45:24)
good thing, a force for good, the same way people see God as a force for good. And he can use his belief in the goodness of to hold back something like a Red Court vampire. That says something about Harry's character that as far as we know is unique to him among wizards.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (45:46)
Well, I think he does get a lot of that teaching from Ebenezer. And maybe, I don't know, are you suggesting that Ebenezer might have been teaching that to him to mold him into a better person than Ebenezer himself is? Because he doesn't really believe that anymore.

Baloreilly (46:00)
Well, I think that that's a really interesting question because we know of only two other people, well three other people, but two other wizards who have pentacles. Ebenezer is not one of them. You'd suspect that Ebenezer inspired the first one we know, Margaret, Harry's mother.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (46:17)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (46:19)
to make her pentacle. So Ebenezer maybe doesn't formalize these beliefs in the same way, but he literally wrote the book on being a good young wizard, so he probably does hold this belief. But very weirdly, apropos of nothing as far as we can tell, also has a pentacle. So I'm not suggesting that Harry is the only person who has this belief in magic as a force for good.

But I do think it's a very select club, Harry being the only member we know of. And this seems to sort of create a plot thread. The people who feel this way are significant to the thing that's coming in the bat in whatever way it's coming.

After this scene is over, we finally get to meet Bianca. And we're not going to read the description of her. It's long and not particularly elucidating. But one important thing is that Bianca is costumed as someone out of time. She wears gloves that go halfway up her arm, the dress she's wearing. It's got a plunging neckline. It's got a slit in it, seems, but it's a classic sort of glamorous outfit.

It

seems like Bianca is from a period that's almost the film noir period. Bianca is dressing up as, or naturally wants to dress as, somebody from 60, 80 years ago or so. And that's the first clue that we have that Bianca is certainly older than Harry and has been a vampire for longer than he's been alive. But maybe among vampires isn't that old. She's from this century.

She's perhaps not even lived longer than a normal human lifespan at this point.

and it's important that Bianca's young because her reaction to what's about to follow suggests that this might be the first time something like this has ever happened to her.

for just doilus reasons in Grave Peril, it's important that she's old enough to where she can be placed into a position of authority. So we think her costume here suggests that she's from this century and that it's not just a costume, this is the kind of thing she feels like she should wear. It's also why her mannerisms are evocative of film noir here, of sort of the 40s and

you know why she expects a chair to be held out for her because Bianca is literally from that period. That's why she finds those things especially charming. Quote, So Mr. Dresden, what brings you to my humble house? Care for an evening of entertainment? I quite assure you that you will never have another experience like it.

She placed her hands in her lap, smiling at me. I smiled at her and put one hand into my pocket, onto the white handkerchief. No, thank you. I came to talk. Her lips parted in the silent. I see. About what, if I might ask? About Jennifer Stanton and her murder.

I had all of a second's warning. Bianca's eyes narrowed, then widened like those of a cat about to spring. Then she was coming at me over the table, faster than a breath, her arms extended towards my throat. I toppled backward over in my chair. Even though I'd started to move first, it almost wasn't enough to get away from her raking nails in time. One grazed my throat with a hot sensation of pain, and she kept coming, following me down to the floor, those rich lips drawed back from sharp fangs. I jerked my hand out of my pocket and flapped open the white hanky at her.

Releasing the image of sunlight I'd been storing for use in potions. It lit up the room for a moment. Brilliant. The light smashed into Bianca, hurled her back across the old table into one of the shelves, and tore pieces of flesh away from her like bits of rotten meat being peeled off a carcass by a sandblaster. She screamed.

flesh around her mouth sloughed and peeled away like a snake scales."

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (50:37)
This is such another great moment of like a sudden tone shift. We pointed them out a couple of times before, like the man with the naked sword. I had all of a second's warning is a great sentence because it comes right after him just sort of, this whole scene is set up in like a traditional noir like shakedown.

the usual suspects, like let's get some information so we can figure out what's going on here. And you think this is gonna be something where they sit down and Dresden tries to get information out of her and she's gonna try to lie in a way that he can't catch her in a lie and that's the tension of the scene. But no, it just immediately erupts into violence. And it's only because Dresden became prepared and because the guard didn't take away his hanky with sunlight in it that allows him to save his life in this moment.

They sort of get into a standoff at this point. I just do love that sort of quick change. Butcher does it so well. Now, he then talks about what she looks like. She's this horrible monster now because her flesh mask is gone. And Dresden tries to convince her and say, hey, I'm just here to talk. I'm just here to get information. I did not kill Jennifer Stanton. Why would I come here if I did? So they have sort of a détente. They agree to a truce.

because he finally says, swear, I give you my word, I had nothing to do with her death, et cetera, and they finally get a chance to talk. that brings us to this part that you highlighted.

Baloreilly (52:04)
Bianca, this whole time, has been walking around as this horrifying description of this rubbery, almost fake-looking, nightmarish creature. And as Dresden sets down the pentacle and turns off the light that he's using to keep her at bay, she's able to regain her flesh mask.

she settles her dress back down she regains the fair form, the glamorous form that's been described earlier. But Harry can't get over what he's seen. He'll never look at her the same way again.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (52:47)
or any other Red Court vampire for that matter.

Baloreilly (52:51)
And she can very clearly tell. It's really interesting to explore what's happening in Bianca's head in this scene. I want to actually just ask you the question. He asks about Jennifer Stanton. Says, I came here to talk about her murder. immediately attacks. We know Bianca said that she thinks he's the only one who could have done it. So...

Why did she wait to attack him? Why didn't she just like, he walks in, boom, you know, have somebody shoot him with a gun immediately?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (53:22)
So my interpretation of this is that she thinks he did it. He shows up at her place and he comes in, she's assuming that he has some kind of a demand or something to say or some kind of like explanation. She wants to hear him out before she kills him. When he says, I'm here to talk about her murder, she sees that as Like, I'm here to talk about her murder.

look what I did to yours, I can do that to you too. Like that's how she reads it when he just says, I'm here to talk about her murder. That's how she reads it. And so she immediately responds to that gloating. She can't contain herself anymore. She wants to wait to hear what he has to say. I think she's fully planning to probably murder him before he leaves this building. Because as you say, at least as far as Harry's guesses here, what we have in Stormfront, she seems to fully believe that he did it.

until he's able to convince her that he didn't.

Baloreilly (54:22)
Right. So I think that's totally true. I think that the other interesting thing is Bianca might not know at this point if the murder that happened was Harry Dresden coming after Bianca of the Red Court or if it was the White Council coming after the Red Court in Chicago for some reason. So

The reason why not to immediately blow him away is because you don't know if this is some sort of diplomatic, Klaus Fitts war is the escalation of politics by other means kind of thing, or if Harry acted alone. And as soon as he starts gloating, it doesn't matter to her anymore. This hints to us that Bianca is indeed, by Red Court standards, fairly young and inexperienced. Because someone like Paolo

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (54:58)
Mmm.

Baloreilly (55:15)
would have smiled and laughed and just sharpened the knives a second longer while he's figuring out if he needs to worry about the ramifications of killing Harry or not.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (55:25)
yeah, he expressly does that in the bar. He keeps his cool no matter what kind of wise ass remarks Harry throws at him when they have that conversation in the bar. And you're right, she can't control herself. Now, to be fair, some of that might be because of the pocketful of sunshine she just got in the face. It's entirely possible that that wrecked her energy and her ability to control herself.

And that might be why we see later, she can't control herself when she realizes that he's bleeding and she has to send him out and then apparently kills her assistant and blames Harry for it in the end.

Baloreilly (56:07)
Yeah, and moreover, I think it's also that Bianca's very afraid. She knows that she has to defend her turf. She probably has to kill this person if he's come after one of hers. But...

She actually doesn't know if she can kill a wizard of the White Council. She's probably never been in a situation like this before. So because she has that fear, she thinks she has to act before Harry tries to, kill her. And when he opens with the, in her mind, gloating, want to talk about it, she thinks this is a prelude to, you know, him probably doing something similar to her.

So.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (56:51)
Yeah, I think

Maybe it was, she was keeping it together until that moment when he referenced it then she couldn't take it anymore and she just had to take him out. So yeah, it's an interesting thing to speculate about.

Baloreilly (57:01)
Now, she then has the pocketful of sunshine, throw her across the room, her flesh mask is stripped away, etc. And I think that when Harry is trying to convince her that he didn't do it, he might actually, on some level, convince her. And now, she really hates him. Because if he-

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (57:23)
And Harry's interpretation

of that is specifically because he's seen her without her flesh mask. Harry's interpretation, quote, more than anything else, Bianca wanted to be beautiful and tonight I destroyed her illusion. He's kind of suggesting that she has some kind of trauma related to the fact that she's still thinking of herself as human and wants to pretend that she's human as much as possible. She doesn't want to

deal with the fact that she's not anymore. And he forces her to deal with that. And that brings up, that brings her trauma right to the surface.

Baloreilly (58:00)
Right. He has frightened her.

and he has seen her as a monster. And as we're about to talk about, he keeps looking at her like she's a monster throughout the remainder of their interaction.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (58:13)
Yes, absolutely. That's why this is so important. And Paula, the assistant, dies as a result of this. The being exposed to sunlight weakens her so much that she can't help herself. And instead of just taking some blood from Paula, she murders her.

And Harry is blamed for that. If he had never come here, if he had never done whatever, she could be caught in that denial. This wasn't my fault. I'm not a monster, right? We know that she seems to want to see herself as not a monster. So who does she blame? She blames Harry.

The last sentence of this chapter is another one of those really great final sentences. It's another kind of a tone shift too. Like he just got out of this super dangerous situation and we sort of have a denouement. He gets out there and he gets what he came here for. He gets a phone number that might give him a lead on some more information and then he says...

Maybe I should have listened to Murphy. Maybe I should have stayed home and played with some nice, safe, forbidden black magic instead. It's that sort of wry tone that you get out of, everything's fine, because now he's just joking about it in a sort sardonic way.

Baloreilly (59:20)
Yeah, that's

one of the great ones. The other one from this chapter that, you know, didn't fit the tone of our earlier conversation was I'd made the vampire cry. Great. I felt like a real superhero.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (59:34)
That's right. Yup. All right. So that's the end of chapter nine. We're going to talk a little bit more about Bianca next week when we talk about, when we reveal our question for Bob next time. But let's move on to our question for Bob this week.

Baloreilly (59:50)
So this week, we're gonna ask Bob if he, as a spirit of intellect with all of the knowledge that he has and all of the memories that he holds, can come up with a better system than the Doom of Damocles for wizards who have strayed from the path and used forbidden magic. Okay, Bob, I've been waiting for this all week. What should we do?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:00:16)
Sorry to disappoint, he overslept and now he can't get here in time. I know!

Baloreilly (1:00:20)
He's a skull! How can he- He

doesn't need to-

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:00:25)
He gets tired, we know he gets tired, you think it's just an act?

Baloreilly (1:00:29)
It's certainly just an act. question is what was the real reason. But if Bob can't make it, then Adam, I'm sorry, I gotta put you on the spot. Can you come up with anything better?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:00:32)
I don't know. That's what he gave us.

All right, well,

I kind of expected this. He's kind of started a pattern of not showing up. Every time he promises he'll be here, but this time, so I did a little research. The Doom of Damocles, or the Sword of Damocles,

Is a story. It's a parable, an anecdote from classical period, right around the beginning of the early Roman Empire. Specifically, it talks about real life character named King Dionysus I, who was a Greek warlord who ruled Syracuse in that period. And the story, which might be apocryphal, we don't know whether the story is true or not, but we know the character of Dionysus I is real.

Damocles was a courtier He was flattering his king Dionysus, exclaiming that Dionysus was truly fortunate as a great man of power and authority without peer, surrounded by magnificence. In response, Dionysus offered to switch places with Damocles for one day, so that Damocles could taste the fortune firsthand.

Damocles eagerly agreed, accepting the king's proposal. He sat on the king's throne amid embroidered rugs, fragrant perfumes, and the service of beautiful attendants. But Dionysus, had made many enemies during his reign, arranged that a sword should hang above the by the pommel by only a single horse's hair from its tail, to evoke a sense of what it would be like to be king. Though having much fortune, always

having to watch in anxiety against dangers that might try to overtake him, whether it be a jealous advisor or servant, a slanderous rumor, an enemy kingdom, a poor royal decision, or anything else. Damocles finally begged the king for permission to depart because he no longer wanted to be so fortunate, realizing that while he had everything he could ever want at his feet, it could not affect what was above his crown. Now, people have taken this story to mean different things over the time, but generally, think Cicero specifically says, doesn't...

Dionysus seemed to have made it plenty clear that nothing is happy for him over whom terror always looms. In other words, if you are in a position of power and facing imminent and ever-present peril, that makes it difficult to enjoy the benefits of power, which is why people in power are so miserable. That's one interpretation. And it's actually one kind of closer to, more directly applicable to the Dresden files, because Dresden is a person in a position of power.

So let's talk more about the actual question is the doom of Damocles the best that we can do for this situation? I would start by saying, I think that we can assume that until now, it probably has been the best system.

it's been going on for, we're assuming at least hundreds of years. If there were something better, wizards would have found it. They do have compassion, senior council is not a bunch of people that don't care at all about humans or puny little talents anymore. They obviously have compassion. They obviously hate what they have to do. We see that in them, especially even Morgan at Molly's trial is like,

just so clearly against the outcome that it looks Merlin is forcing on them. There are situations at the beginning of Proven Guilty where we see they obviously don't have as much of a problem because the thing they're killing doesn't seem to be human anymore. There's no compassion there, right? So, anyway, my view is they probably have tried a lot of other things and this is the only one that effectively curtailed warlock activity. What about you?

Baloreilly (1:04:11)
Yeah, so I think that answers we got on Reddit for this are very elucidating. The top comment we got suggested that...

you would need so much to try to rehabilitate warlocks more effectively that you couldn't even necessarily it in the past history of the White Council. And Lillia Hakami actually said that she thought that the Merlin might be trying to establish a new system by turning Dresden, the Wizard of Chicago, into the, community college for wavered warlocks.

Now, I think this is a very interesting theory. I think the one problem with it, which I think you might, be about to leaven this wonderful idea with, is that it could be dangerous because you aren't controlling these warlocks very tightly if you're just sort of creating a support group for But,

Ultimately, I think that there is some truth at the core of this answer. If you can merely connect with these people and get them to believe that what they did truly was wrong, you've effectively kept them from being that person.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:05:23)
Yes, if you examine what the Doom of Damocles does, what Morgan does first he has that whole rehabilitation period with Ebenezer, and Ebenezer turns out to be just the right person to help him, keeps him isolated so there's nobody for him to experiment on hurting if he ever gets into the wrong

But what happens after? He's put under the due of Damocles of if you screw up one more time, we'll kill you immediately. And that sounds heartless, but I think how it's implemented actually has a good deal of compassion. A, you put a huge deterrent because they think that's the only thing that might convince a burgeoning warlock from getting further addicted.

Right? And if that deterrent does work, then that's great. It'll save the day. If it doesn't, then you instantly kill the person before they can be causing any harm to themselves or other people that they love. Right? The warlock that we see in proven guilty has enslaved their family and friends and killed a bunch of them.

So it's compassionate to find them and kill them before they do that to their friends from a certain perspective.

Baloreilly (1:06:35)
Yeah, and I think that one thing that was really interesting as far as trying to build more sort of structure into that idea of, well, you we can just give them some more support, you know, that grapples with the true sort of horror of what happens to a lot of young warlocks. It came from Aisbert.

who was saying that, quote, as far as treatment, you need a psycho-neuromancer in good standing with a high level of training experience as a vanilla psychologist. If you have that and the warlock is sane enough to consent to treatment, then there might be a pathway to recovery. So there's a class of warlocks who are just too far gone, and they're not gonna get the Doom of Damocles in the first place. But for the ones where you're considering the doom, what you might want to do is you might want to allow a wizard to literally

go in and mess with their mind kind of the way Molly does in Proven Guilty as a way to nudge them away from an addiction to black magic. Now of course the problem is you know...

how can you keep this person doing that from violating the laws themselves? You need sort of an anti-black staff, the white caduceus, to fix these people. But if you were able to sort of come up with a wizard like Injun Joe, who maybe would be capable of doing something like that, this could be a step towards a situation where it's not that you're not putting a huge deterrent

and a potential death sentence on the warlock in question, but just that you are more willing to let warlocks who are borderline, like the council thought Molly wasn't proven guilty, more of those borderline cases to be put under the doom with additional supervision and guidance.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:08:29)
Yeah, I think the only reason that doesn't happen is it's a huge responsibility to take someone on like that. And unless someone personally knows the warlock in question, there's probably not a random wizard that's gonna be like, yeah, I'll spend the next four years training this person, no problem. We know that obviously Ebenezer does that for Harry. Would he have done that for Harry if Harry wasn't his grandson?

Baloreilly (1:08:53)
Right, and I think that something that was being grappled with in the thread a lot was how can we kind of make it a little bit less dire for the person sponsoring the warlock? because under the current system, if the warlock acts out, the sponsor is also dead. So is there some way we can

better test whether the sponsor did everything right before we simply apply a death sentence to them assuming they corrupted the warlock further or whatever or were further tainted themselves.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:09:29)
Yeah, I'm not sure that that is a punishment for failure so much as a, if you truly believe that this person is redeemable, you're to put your money where your mouth is kind of a situation. You are not going to say, I'll vouch for them unless you really, really believe a hundred percent that they are going to be redeemable. Because if you say that and you're wrong, you die

However, as you point out, it's a huge deterrent on someone taking that compassionate step. So it's certainly a problem. Now, I did want to highlight a couple other interesting posts from people in the Reddit here. Crackmuppet said, we have to remember that black magic is not only addictive and mind-altering, it is supernaturally so.

Consider those who have difficulty grasping how even mundane addiction works. Now, supercharge that to something that is nigh unknowable for someone put in the position of a Merlin. So we know people in real life who just don't understand addiction. They don't understand alcoholism. They don't understand...

drug addiction or gambling addiction or anything or how hard it is or people that struggle with it, right? And so they're just crack puppet is saying, yeah, let's take that supercharge it and then apply it to some guy who's like 250 years old they're just not going to get he says is the doom is not the best option, but perhaps it is the only reasonable option.

from their perspective.

That's some great insights. And I think the other thing that brings to mind there is, okay, so you don't have the resources. What if you start small and then when you do manage to successfully rehabilitate a warlock, that person can become a sponsor for the next one. you would slowly get a collection of people rehabilitating addicts who have been there. That is a real method of using people who have...

kicked their addiction to counsel people who are currently addicted and help them break it because they have already experienced it.

Baloreilly (1:11:24)
Right, Melifocars, anonymous, if you will.

One comment that we really loved that we're not, guys, by the way, this post spawned some incredible discussion that we're just simply not gonna have time to talk through all of because so many people wrote such in-depth suggestions. But one thing I wanted to read from a long post by crazyeddy740 was, a former friend of mine told me it was easier to kick meth than liquor because you have to look for meth dealers.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:11:27)
Ha

Yeah, some great creative ideas.

Baloreilly (1:11:57)
and they sell liquor in grocery stores. Since black magic is only a single act of will away, it's going to be even worse.

And that I think is the key to this whole puzzle here exactly. It's so hard to figure out what will happen because as soon as someone's crossed this line, you know, there's very little that you can do to prevent them from doing it again. That's why so many people, and I'm not gonna have time to list everybody because it was just a cavalcade of people said that the paranets

and Tresden.

can play a significant role in identifying potential problem cases earlier. And that minor talents can find young major talents and just inform them what the laws are and why more effectively in the era of the paranet than they ever could have before.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:12:53)
Yeah, the real crux of the whole problem is the secrecy element, right? They can't just tell the world, hey, doing these things is gonna mess your life up. Don't even think about it. So teenagers are just going to experiment with this stuff like Molly did, thinking they might be helping people, but then getting addicted to it and going down a negative road and then you wind up like the Korean get at the beginning of Proven Guilty. say for the sake of argument, you are

looking at the effects of smoking on people that cause lung cancer, right? We plastered that on every cigarette pack, on every, billboard, on ads, hey, smoking causes lung cancer, smoking causes lung cancer. And that campaign did pretty effectively work to change the culture around smoking and the number of people who were smoking significantly reduced. Now imagine trying that same except you can't tell anyone

and everyone, you have to figure out how to target only the people who use magic and tell them, hey, black magic causes whatever. That is an impossible problem.

Baloreilly (1:13:58)
Right, but if you're not gonna identify these warlocks sooner, your alternatives other than a death sentence or a support group seem pretty limited, which is why I will say Reddit. I was a little upset.

that no one took me up on sort of developing my Thorn Manacle ankle monitor system a little bit further. And I've thought about it since I made the post, because we can effectively strip Warlock's magic, but we can do it one better. So according to Jim, the way that Thorn Manacles work is when you try to cast a spell, yes, the spikes come and spike you, but...

the magic you're using is diverted into the Never Never. So that's what's actually going on. So it is something that you could literally put on a potentially redeemable warlock for a long period that would siphon off any black magic they try to do away from the people they're trying to cast it on. So what's the point, right? We've got this warlock who's wearing a Thorin manacle ankle monitor. are we just gonna put it on him in perpetuity? Well, we could do that.

But this is actually a way I think you could get more people to sponsor Warlocks. If, in the beginning of the relationship, the apprentice could only use magic when the wizard removed the thorn manacles, just like Harry can only use magic when you take the thorn manacles off of him.

then the mentor can very carefully guide the reforming warlock in the use of magic they do that day in the practice they get.

And only when that mentor feels that the young reforming warlock has the responsibility to have their magic at the ready on a day-to-day basis do they remove the thorn medical.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:15:49)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there were a couple of things that addressed the wizard prison idea. Butcher hasn't come up with something as horrifying or effective as Dementors for his universe. So we don't really have, I mean, I was thinking like, okay, what if you had cells where like water was constantly flowing around the cell or something to that effect? Like you wouldn't want it constantly dripping on the person like Harry is held under the

Baloreilly (1:16:10)
Ooh.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:16:16)
by Nicodemus, but maybe you could draft something so that there's constantly water flowing around the cell which disrupts the magic. I don't know if that would work or not. A circle of water constantly falling around, maybe that would, but then, like, it just takes one evil wizard that's outside that prison to come and disrupt the water flow, and then boom, you've got a huge problem with dozens or hundreds of warlocks now owing that guy some, their life, essentially, their freedom.

Baloreilly (1:16:41)
Yeah, you're begging

Kempler to come and just disable the security system for an afternoon. So this is a really hairy question and I don't think that there is any one answer. I don't think it's wrong to just say, look, the doom of Damocles is probably the best system they can come up with. I think generally most people were in agreement that relaxing the burden on mentors, making it not equally a death sentence for them. And

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:16:44)
Exactly. Exactly.

Baloreilly (1:17:11)
some way empowering minor talents to do some early intervention were two clear things that the council needed to do. But one other thing that was mentioned constantly was that the problem with the White Council is as soon as somebody who knows how to use the

changes that have happened in the past couple decades to build a better system comes to power? Well, we're in a whole new century now where those things no longer work. So because of the lifespan of wizards, it's actually almost impossible.

for them to make any choices that are responsive to a specific set of immediate circumstances. And therefore, it makes sense that even if we think there were some common sense improvements, the council really doesn't have a good mechanism for adopting them in response to conditions on the ground.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:18:00)
Yep, absolutely. All right, so we have tried to solve a major problem within the Dresden files and probably failed, see if Dresden does help to solve it. I am really interested to see what evolves from the paranet, because I do think it's going to be something bigger than it currently is. It's implied that now that he is the Wizard of Chicago not attached to the White Council, that he is maybe going to found his own little barony, for lack of a better word.

next week we're gonna look at chapters 10, possibly 11 and 12 as at the same time here. And we're going to ask an important question that sort of sprung from today's discussion. When did Bianca become a monster? Or in general, when do Red Court vampires become monsters? Because we can see she seems to be grasping on to some of her humanity, but we definitely see that the Lords of Outer Night are not.

So somewhere in that period between becoming a Red Court vampire and becoming someone as old as the Lords of Outer Night, they become monsters. When is that? We're gonna talk about it next week.

For Brian, I am Adam, reminding you to always keep a pocket full of sunshine, just in case.