Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:00)
Brian, we talked about this before, but in this chapter we have another one of these jarring transitions, like the man with the naked sword appeared. In this one, it's he was waiting for me behind the trash can that stood next to the stairs leading down to my front door. And so we need a name, a word for these jarring transitions. I did some research.

Bathos is the term we use for transitions from serious moments that get undercut with comedic moments. If you've watched any Joss Whedon movies or TV shows, you're very familiar with Bathos. But we don't have anything like that for these moments where calm situations get suddenly tone shifted into serious danger situations. So.

I went to the literary subreddit and I said, hey, is there a term for this? I figured there must be, right? But no, somebody there says, yeah, I've read the series and this is more of a gym butcherism than a technical literary device. And the best answer I got is somebody saying, let's borrow from film and call it a smash cut. So from now on, we're going to refer to these as a smash cut to the man behind the trash can with a baseball bat.

Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to Recorded Neutral Territory, a Dresden Files chapter by chapter reread podcast. taking a look at chapters 10, 11, and 12 today, the spoilers go all the way through Battleground. I'm your host, Adam Ruzzo, and with me, as always, is a thug with a baseball bat, it's Brian O'Reilly.

Baloreilly (01:37)
Yeah, and if you don't let me have this podcast here, see, you're gonna get one right in the kisser, see?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (01:42)
no, is it gonna be curtains?

Baloreilly (01:44)
curtains and any other sort of plot lampshades, any fantasy kitchen sink.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (01:50)
start off like we normally do, putting ourselves in the timeline of this book. Started on Thursday afternoon. What time is it now in chapter 10?

Baloreilly (01:59)
So it's still day two and you're actually gonna have to help me with this because what time did he go meet Was this at 10 in the morning?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (02:08)
I got the impression that he got there like right after sundown.

Baloreilly (02:11)
So, and that's always funny for me, because I've always pictured the events of this chapter happening as it's darkening and we reach night towards the end of the chapter. That's what I've always sort of pictured. But it's...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (02:25)
Yeah, mean,

chapter nine starts with Friday night I went to see Bianca.

Baloreilly (02:29)
Right, so it's gotta already be p.m. or something when Dresden's even rushing to the airport. So it's quite late on the second day of this investigation and we have a just gamut to run with Harry in chapter 10 here. It's not a long chapter but he does a lot of stuff. So he's gonna speed over to O'Hare and have a conversation with Linda Randall,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (02:34)
Yeah.

Baloreilly (02:55)
Then he's going to call Pizza Express and get some information about Victor Sells and his quote unquote other case. And then he's going to get hit and head to the baseball bat.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (03:06)
Yeah, the whole thing concludes with a great concussion like so many good Dresden Files chapters do. So with all these things in place, we're gonna take them part by part. So the first thing is he decides to follow up on the lead that Bianca gave him, Linda Randall's number, Linda being a friend of Jennifer Stanton. He's hoping to get some information from her about the victim of the heart exploding spell and use that to try to help out Murphy so that he doesn't have to

do all the bad research that he thinks is gonna get him killed by the White Council. he goes there and he meets with her and it's a very hard-boiled noir scene, right? It's detective, the PI, first he calls her.

He gets stonewalled, she doesn't wanna talk to him, so he has to do some digging and he has to find out where she is, and he goes to the airport and he figures out which car is hers, and he confronts her in person, and then she's trying to evade his questions, and he's trying to ask the questions, and he's getting information out of his informants, but he doesn't really get any information, does he? There's no new information that he learns from her at all.

Baloreilly (04:10)
It's unclear whether Linda is trying to mislead Harry or actually has no idea what's going on. She hasn't connected the dots yet. On the one hand, it would make sense. This is a really crazy series of murders that's going on. On the other hand...

She's the Beckett's driver and other than Victor Sells, they're probably the people who at this point in the story know the most about what's happening.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (04:38)
Yeah, I've always intuited that she and Tommy Tom and Jennifer might not know that Three Eye is being created. They might just be going there, quote unquote, to party, get some drugs, like maybe Victor has ecstasy or something like that, and because they're drugged up and having this orgy or whatever, they don't realize that he's performing some kind of a ritual that's creating the Three Eye at the same time. The Beckett's almost certainly

do though, because they have a specific motivation to try to hurt Marcon.

Baloreilly (05:10)
Right, they're trying to get into the illegal narcotics game to move into Marcon's territory to hurt his business. That's their goal. And I've always thought that, I don't think Sells is particularly subtle in any of his workings. I don't think it would take, maybe nobody said anything to Linda Randall or Tommy Tom about exactly what's going on, but Jen certainly figured out So he's.

clearly not being so subtle about it that one would be able to piece anything together. And the Beckets, who Linda apparently works for on a daily basis, more than your typical eight hour day, she is basically their butler, for lack of a better word, she has to hear something, she has to overhear some things from them that would allow her to piece

together.

So it's.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (06:07)
Yeah, that's entirely

possible that she put the pieces together until this conversation with Dresden where he's asking all these questions Tommy Tom and the deaths and then like later on she, wait a minute, maybe Victor did this? that might be why she decides to call Dresden in a later

Baloreilly (06:26)
But Dresden gets very little out of the conversation except for meeting the Beckett's and immediately that they look like they're shells of human beings, know, walking ghosts.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (06:37)
Okay, so after he does talk to Linda and doesn't find a whole lot out, he decides to follow up on the tip that Toot Toot gave him about the pizza driver that came to the house. So he calls up the pizza place and he finds out that the pizza driver has A, already been interrogated by someone about this, so he pretends to be that person again to get more information out of them, and B, that there was a photographer outside the house taking pictures

of the action inside the house. So those were some, you know, kind of seemingly important information, it doesn't matter because he meets the photographer later. So this still doesn't give him any meaningful leads to follow up on any new information that he gets to use later in the book.

Baloreilly (07:24)
And that's important because this is not something that Jim is putting here at this call to pizza express for Harry, for the plot. It's for us. It's to give us a picture of Harry's evolving understanding of the case. So we're getting a bunch of evidence all true, really advance what theory of the case is correct.

first of all, we keep saying the case. It's two cases in Harry's head right now. This is the Victor Sells case. Harry's assumption is that Victor is a cheating husband who is having a midlife crisis or whatever. And what does he find out? The guy's ordering pizza to be delivered to his drug-fueled orgies. Okay, that's perfectly consistent with what Dresden already thinks. It's also literally what's happening in the one...

real case is literally first insight into them making Third Eye, but we find out all about this from other perspectives later in the story.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (08:27)
now we move on to Harry, makes the phone call, talks to Linda, makes the other phone call, talks to the pizza-spread gets very little information, and he goes home again meet a thug with a baseball bat that whacks him behind the ear and pitched him to the bottom of the concrete stairs in a near senseless heap. Ouch.

So the guy comes in, threatens him in a way that very much sounds like a mobster, right? Listen up, Dresden, you got a big nose. Stop sticking it where it don't belong. You got a big mouth. Stop talking to people you need to talk to. That almost definitely gives away that this is a Marcon guy, right?

Baloreilly (09:06)
I think it's a Marcon guy, I think it's specifically the Marcon guy that we're later going to find out isn't actually working for Marcon anymore. Because I don't think Marcon would particularly... Marcon told Dresden to leave town, but nothing Dresden's done so far is something that Marcon would want to stop him from doing. Dresden finds...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (09:15)
⁓

You know what, that's

true. Throughout all the other books, Marcon never sends a guy to Dresden to back up any threats that he's said, right? This would be the only example of Marcon directly threatening Dresden. So I definitely buy what you're saying. I think this guy that's turned and working for Victor now, he doesn't want Dresden to figure out.

who's making the three eye because then Marcon might find out and that is bad for him because he's caught in the middle. So I definitely buy that headcanon right now.

Baloreilly (10:00)
And it's two reasons, I think, why it's not Marcon. One of them you just alluded to. I don't think Marcon sends people to hurt you a lot, but not kill you if he thinks you're an actual threat. You know, for somebody like Harry, if Marcon's gonna make a move, he's gonna try to take him off the board. And two, in this instance, either Marcon already knows all the information that Dresden's uncovering, in which case, who really cares?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (10:13)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (10:29)
I'm going to be able to act on it first. Or Marcon, more likely, doesn't know all of the information that Dresden's uncovering. So let him work on the case a little bit more before you push him out of the way, because then he'll do your work for you. So it's somebody who doesn't want Dresden to talk to people like Linda to call Pizza but it's somebody who's trying to push him off of the scent.

Presumably that is Marcon's turned henchman. Now one thing that we have to address here is getting hit in the head with a baseball bat and knocked down a flight of stairs, shouldn't this kill him?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (11:06)
It should at the very least incapacitate him for days.

Baloreilly (11:10)
Right, I mean, this is not one of those things where you might have a You have a concussion, like that's, we know you have a concussion. Have you cracked your skull, you know? Do you have an intercranial hemorrhage? Those are the questions we should be asking. So there's two ways we can rationalize this happening. One is Jim Butcher, really talented writer, knows a lot about a lot of things, not exactly a professor of anatomy.

isn't really thinking, yeah, baseball bat to the head, they do that in the movies, fine. Option two is that wizards don't just a healing factor that allows them to recover from nearly anything eventually, but also by virtue of having such good health and recovery, they're in better shape so they don't sustain injuries that are bad. Harry's skull literally is a little thicker than everybody else's.

and their body is better at the immediate stuff the body has to do to sort of sequester an injured area.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (12:10)
Yeah, that second one is the one that I ascribe to in order to suspend my disbelief. Like yes, I know, wizards, fireballs, all kinds of crazy cool things, but there's a lot of the times when Harry is in such bad shape and I'm like, you would not be able to walk to your car, much less throw spells around for the next four chapters, buddy.

I refuse to believe it. So I have to believe that he's got some kind of minor version of a Wolverine healing factor. Like wizards are just like, twice as fast at healing wounds or something.

Baloreilly (12:45)
So, and I think that that's important because he doesn't go inside and have a glass of water. He spends the rest of the night researching thaumaturgy and works out how Victor's doing the killing So either there's something going on that allows him to do this or maybe it's actually magic and that what Dresden does and why it hits them so hard later

is he's actually casting a bit of a spell on himself to be able to function after this injury.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (13:15)
so when he says,

you're a wizard of the old school, a spell slinger of the highest caliber, you're not gonna roll over for some schmuck with a baseball bat because he tells you he's actually, his intent is converted into some kind of second wind for the rest of the evening in a minor spell he doesn't even realize he's doing. I love that

Baloreilly (13:37)
And I bet that's why people like Morgan can run with a leg wound and you know, we have 300 year old people who are five, six who are masters at, you know, staff fighting. It's all little physical spells. Kinetomancy, the thing that the guy does in Ghost Story. Anyway, so we get to the close of this chapter with Dresden going inside his house to go do the thaumaturgical research and we're on day three.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (13:42)
Hmm.

Right.

Baloreilly (14:05)
with Dresden saying, took me the rest of the night and part of the morning, so presumably there's only a couple hours left of the night and then he worked until three or four five or something, and he has figured out how to do the spell, so he does the very sensible thing to go talk to the police about the murder weapon.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (14:24)
So he lays it out for Murphy. He gives her three possibilities for how this spell could have been pulled off, he tells her, it could have been somebody who's way stronger than me. And she's like, okay, wizard version of Arnold Schwarzenegger, got it. And then,

Baloreilly (14:36)
Okay, sure.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (14:40)
He says, well, it could also be somebody who's really good. Like somebody that can focus really well. ⁓ wizard version of Mr. Miyagi, got it. I love how she's just boiling it down from his super complicated paragraphs worth of text. And then the last thing he says is, ⁓ it's a bunch of killers working together in a big ritual. And she says, ⁓ a cult. She boils it down to just one, two words again. So those are the three options gives to her.

None of them are correct because he did not take the account the concept of storms, which is how it's actually being pulled off. this is a very interesting element because We get to see his thought process and get to learn a little bit more about the magic in the world.

Baloreilly (15:20)
And the funny thing is, Dresden's wrong in all of these. But also, kind of correct. So it is sort of a cult in that Cells is using other people's energy to cast the spells.

And it is, to a certain extent, a wizard version of Mr. Because of course, as we go through this story, it is bizarre, from the perspective of later books, that Sells has exactly the tricks that he has. he creates, at a point in a chapter that we're going to be probably going over next episode, a realistic doppelganger of himself to talk to Harry.

that is weirdly advanced magic. Harry does stuff like that only on rare occasions and it's always very difficult for him to do. It's not that Victor's Mr. Miyagi. Victor is the karate kid. Mr. Miyagi is Nemesis.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (16:10)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (16:19)
And that's the in-universe explanation for why Victor has this bizarre set of specifically highly developed magical techniques and then doesn't know that you can slap somebody through their doppelganger, which Harry does to him immediately upon meeting it for the first time.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (16:40)
but we skipped over an important part of chapter 11, which is when Harry first arrives at the station, as he's making his way up to Murphy's office, he runs into one of the people that has been taking three-eye. They bring him in and they say, yeah, he's a DUI or something, but instead,

it's very clear that he's actually on three-eye because he says to Harry, wizard, wizard, I see you, I see you, wizard, I see the things that follow, those that walk before and he who walks behind, they come, they come for you, unquote.

Baloreilly (17:22)
So there's a couple possibilities for what's happening here. One is, just want to say this and get this out of the way, this could be some early installment weirdness because we're going to talk about some of the things that this guy seems to be asserting and that Harry seems to be asserting in this couple set of paragraphs. And they don't precisely match stuff we find out later in the series. But if this guy has the sight, everything he sees

is supposed to be what actually is, right? I mean, that's the whole point.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (17:54)
Yeah. he says is, I see the things that follow those who walk before and he who walks behind. So obviously we know Harry's backstory with he who walks behind is told in Ghost Story, how Justin sent him after Harry, blah, blah, blah, and he defeated he who walks behind.

And he who walks before is, now it doesn't say he who those who walk before is what he says, but he who walks before, also known as Harbinger, Gatebreaker, et cetera, is the outsider that Harry fights and defeats in cold days. So it's another

Baloreilly (18:28)
And if we remember,

that walker does have the ability to split himself into a lot of different entities. might act.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (18:35)
yeah, those

who walk before might be appropriate, that's true. So he's not only talking about the past, he's also seeing the future with the sight here, which we we know that can happen in a sense, especially in like a soul gaze situation where Harry kind of sees Molly's possible futures through the soul gaze.

I don't know that the site has ever revealed the future as explicitly as this before.

Baloreilly (19:04)
Agreed, which is why I think that can't be the actual explanation. So one explanation we gotta get out of the way, early installment weirdness, Jim has not settled on exactly how he wants this to work, it's just a little weird.

option two is, Wizard, see you. I see you, Wizard. I see the things that follow. And then, comma, those who walk before and he who walks behind, they come, they come for you. Like, he who walks behind could just be there. There's nothing, like, he who walks behind is able to enter our actually.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (19:36)
If he's called,

right? We know he has to be summoned by somebody. But there is a possibility. I think what you might be saying is maybe Hugh who walks behind was never fully defeated. He allowed himself to appear defeated?

Baloreilly (19:46)
Bingo.

maybe he just never left and he's just been following Dresden to whatever extent he thought was

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (19:54)
that's possible, though if that were the explanation, you'd think like the gatekeeper would have known, got the special eye that can see outsiders, the presence of outsiders. So I don't necessarily buy that. I kind of feel...

If we were looking for an in-universe explanation, I think it's the site giving you weird precognizance slash post-cognizance stuff going on here.

Baloreilly (20:18)
So I think that that's a great point and one of the reasons why Harry might not have had any further interactions with he who walks behind attempting to, you know, bring him over to the dark side or something similar is because he's been surrounded by members of the White Council and senior council members almost since, you know, from now, from 16 to almost now. You know, he hasn't had a lot of time until he left Ebenezer and went to Chicago where he could be closely monitored.

he who walks behind. But I agree with you, I don't think that's it. I think what's going on here is that, and we know this from Ghost Story, the whole thing that Justin's trying to do with Harry and Elaine, and that he calls on he who walks behind to do, is not just to give him like two wizard slaves, or just to kill The point of Harry's upbringing by Justin

is to mold him into Harry has so far thought of as like a weapon against the White Council. we've been given the answer, he was being molded to be the destroyer in the Morgan micro-fiction.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (21:25)
He's unsure at that time whether Justin succeeded or not. He's like, Justin may have succeeded. I still haven't been able to disprove that hypothesis, essentially.

Baloreilly (21:33)
And

presumably part of the reason he can't disprove it is because people who can see can tell Harry has been marked. and people can see it, but it's not quite that simple. That doesn't necessarily mean you're bad. It just means you've been marked. So I think what's going on here is that he who walks behind the whole interaction he had with Harry

was to attempt to mark Harry as one of his, as somebody who is on his team, basically. And Harry still got the brand. He just says he's not on that team anymore. So think...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (22:01)
Hmm

Right, and that

choice is what is important. is important, that's a very common theme in the Dresden files, choices matter.

Baloreilly (22:19)
especially for a starboard.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (22:20)
Oh, choices matter especially for a starboard. I'm writing that down. The other recurring theme that we see in this chapter is that all power comes with limits and the site is described here for the first time in the series and it's actually very consistent with all the other books, which is.

you have this power to see reality in the way that it truly is, right? You can see through illusions and you can see past, know, deceptions and all these other things. You can see psychic stains, kind of read people's emotions, things like that. But it comes with this massive drawback that it can be incredibly traumatic because you can never, ever forget something you see with your sight. So if you see something beautiful,

That's great if you see something horrifying like he does later with the Negloshi, it can be traumatizing to the point of being debilitating. that is a real great limitation that Butcher has put on the whole power has limits is very important from a doiless perspective because if you make your characters too powerful, it's very hard to write a good story. See Superman movies.

They don't know how to write a story that challenges Superman properly. It's a very difficult story to write. But if you give this power that can like just see through all illusions, then you have to ask yourself, why isn't Harry using it all the time? It's because it has this massive drawback that wizards that use it and rely on it too much slowly drive themself insane. So it's something you only pull out when you really need to use it.

Or when you're fairly certain it won't necessarily cause you any major trauma in the future. I really like how he's crafted this very cool tool in the wizard tool belt.

Baloreilly (24:09)
And one thing that's really important is that it's distinct from a soul gaze. Harry sees Murphy with a sight in Blood Rites, one of the later books in the series, and she's described as, you know, sort of a ragged angel, which I'm saying because of the detective agency from the books. But that's how she's sort of described, and it's very cool, and it's a great moment of who Murphy is, and it's true to her. But it is not...

supposed to be predictive. Now, a lot of people think in that instance that it is, right? Similar to how you're saying in this instance this seeing of Harry might be predictive. But I think that it's important to note that part of why people might be so traumatized when they gaze Harry, right? The Kraken is traumatized when it gazes Harry in Battlegrounds. Is that

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (24:41)
No.

Yeah.

Baloreilly (25:06)
If you look at Harry with your sight, you see the brand left on him by he who walks behind. If you gaze him, you see what he would be like if he was on that team. And that is what is possible futures,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:20)
Wow.

⁓ interesting. Just like you

see Molly's different futures, they see Dresden the Destroyer as a possible future within that. That's very interesting. The question of what do people see when they soul gaze Harry is one that is definitely gonna be a question for Bob in the future, and we're definitely gonna speculate on it, but that's a very good headcanon.

Baloreilly (25:42)
So the other thing that's interesting to note here is that later on in the conversation with he and Murphy, they get it right, they figure the whole thing out, they solve the case. So it's kind of just thrown in there,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:42)
Okay.

Yeah, they

sort of speculates, yeah, this must be a gang war, the Three-Eyes versus the Marcon's outfit, right?

that turns out to be like the impetus behind this generally, but it was a double motivation obviously, right? Take out Tommy Tom as hit against Marcon, but also take out Jennifer Stanton, because Jennifer Stanton was going to tell the police about him. So he had to do that anyway.

And Linda Randall has to die because she's hired a photographer to document what is going on at Victor Sell's place

Baloreilly (26:27)
And it's important for us to recognize that Harry and Murphy don't put together the Victor Sells side of this, but they know at this point that the people who murder Jan Stanton and Tommy Tom are the people who are selling 3i. That connection is made. So if they can just figure out who that is, the case is solved. We're not really gonna get it through that door. That's not how they're gonna figure this out here.

But in an alternate world, that is how this ends. They just track third eye to the distributor and they solve the case.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (27:00)
Yep, absolutely. At the end of chapter 11, Harry basically keels over in Murphy's office and she decides to take him home. So she brings him home tries to put him to bed, but the phone rings first. Linda Randall's calling with some information. So at this point, we have to ask why the change of heart?

Why does she want to talk to Harry now instead of earlier when he was at the airport? I think one obvious explanation is she's worried about being seen talking to him. So maybe she wants him to go away as soon as possible at the airport, but then later decides she does want to talk to him.

Baloreilly (27:40)
I think that it's more likely that Linda has actually put some things together between now and then. Linda has actually come to some realizations about why Jen was killed and why she was killed on Thursday. And she is presumably still with the Becketts because she's talking to him in code, but I'm guessing she's with the Becketts after they have either discussed

met with Victor Cells, and now she's starting to realize Cells is the one who killed Jack.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (28:17)
Yeah, I think she's starting to put that together and is realizing that the photographer is not good enough blackmail if Victor is the one that killed because he could do that to her before she could get the blackmail out of there. might be why she changes her mind. So they make the date that evening so that she can talk to him again. she has like sort of plausible deniability, right?

while they're talking, she kind of figures it out. Like, ⁓ maybe if I doll myself up and go out with him, I can just say he was a client. And helps to remove some ⁓ suspicion. So that happens. Murphy's like, you just made a date while you're concussed? He's like, yeah, you're jealous, whatever. They have some little banter. And then he realizes he's forgetting something. And...

avid readers will of course know he's forgetting his date with Susan. But then he's like, I was gonna let Monica know. So he's like, he pulls out her number, he calls her tries to give her an update and Monica waves him off. So these two interactions bring up two more questions that I wanted to ask When did Victor decide to kill Linda Randall? Was it because of the phone call we just heard?

or because of the interaction at the airport? Or did he figure out something about the photographer? What do you think?

Baloreilly (29:38)
So I think that Harry does get Linda Randall killed. And I think that Butcher is trying to let us know that that's what happened. And he's not being perfectly clear about it. But it sounds like to me that the course of events is something like the Beckett's get back into Chicago. They know something weird just happened with Linda. They don't buy her She drives them to their home. They either were already

planning on meeting with Victor when they got back, or because they feel like something's up with Linda, they call Victor.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (30:12)
Right, they

have almost as much to lose here. They're really intimate accomplices in this whole scheme. So they definitely need to report to him if they think that she's being flaky.

Baloreilly (30:18)
Yes.

Yes, are in the narcotics game. They are major league drug dealers at this point. So they talk to Victor, and I think one of two things either happens. Either one, Victor is so paranoid that she's dead. It just doesn't matter. He's gonna kill her.

Or two. And I think this is actually what happened, because I think this is why Butcher has Harry concussed for this scene.

They know the Beckett's and then sells that Linda had this weird interaction with somebody named Harry. Harry is about to have this conversation with Monica where she tries to actually take him off the case.

Immediately after that phone call ends, someone calls Harry's house and Murphy answers and then they hang up immediately.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (31:08)
And right, she says Dresden residence. most people have assumed that that is Victor sells, calls Monica, tries to give her the report. She says, no, no, no, we don't need that, thanks. She tries to cancel, essentially says, we don't need your help anymore, does it in code essentially and hangs up. Victor.

then probably picks up the phone and dials star six nine. Now, probably not a lot of people necessarily know this these days, because it used to be more of a thing, but in the olden times, you could dial star six nine on a phone to figure out who called you. This is before everybody just had a caller ID in their pocket on their phone, right? So he hears his wife make a suspicious call from Harry from Vermont.

Right? That's what the kid yells in the house. Your cousin Harry from Vermont is on the phone. Victor might go, wait a minute, the Beckett's just told me that some guy named Harry was talking to Linda. Now he's talking to Monica? So he tries to figure out more information. He gets the last name Dresden and Harry Dresden's in the phone book. So you can easily look him up and find him under wizard. Victor now has all the pieces he needs to put together to say, hey, Linda has to die and Harry has to die.

And those are the two things he does that night. He kills Linda and he sends a Toad demon after Harry. So I think that sequence of events makes the most sense.

Baloreilly (32:33)
And not only is Victor presumably gonna be able to look up this guy in the phone, he can't Google him, right? This is 2000, I mean you can ask Jeevesim or whatever, but you're not gonna get anything. probably looks him up in the phone book, but the only other piece of information that it's possible that he's gonna get other than Wizard is private investigator's license. So between those two things, this guy's gotta go today.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (32:41)
No, not yet.

Hahaha!

Baloreilly (33:00)
and Linda's gotta go today. So that suggests, and we're talking around this, that Victor is in the house when Harry calls Monica. Now obviously from Harry's perspective, wouldn't expect that, that's weird, there's no way he would know that even if he was not concussed. Him having the concussion is probably why he doesn't realize Victor's in the house, but he would never suspect that Victor was in the house.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (33:27)
Right, so it's not his fault, but the actions he took did in the end trigger Victor killing Linda Randall.

Baloreilly (33:35)
But what we should notice is that Harry has no reason to believe that Victor's gonna be home. But if Monica was worried about that, why'd she give Harry her home phone number? That seems like a big slip up on her end.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (33:50)
I get the impression that she's not used to all this cloak and dagger stuff, he's gone missing, she hires Harry to get involved, gives him her number, because she wants to be informed about what's going on with the case. They don't probably necessarily have a cell phone at that time. It's 2000. They probably just have a she doesn't have another number to give him.

Baloreilly (34:11)
And I agree, but it still suggests that, to me, Victor, when Monica comes to Harry, actually has been missing for quite a Because if he was in the house every night, Monica would not give Dresden the ability to call her without saying, don't call me between X time and X time. You know, or something like

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (34:34)
Yep,

that definitely tracks. So he definitely has actually been missing. She wasn't necessarily lying about that part. So that

Baloreilly (34:42)
suggests whatever Sells had with the Beckets after they land about Linda gotten Victor to be suspicious enough he goes And the only reason he's actually here to Star 69 Harry's residence is because something has happened as a result of, you know, probably Harry's investigation, but some of the events that are going on in town.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (34:52)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (35:08)
to put him back in the house. And that's why Monica's trying to get Harry off the case, because now that Victor's back home again, it is far too dangerous for her to have any part in anyone looking at him.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (35:17)
Mm-hmm.

But what else is interesting is he does not yet put together that Monica was the one that invited Harry. He probably A, learns that Harry was talking to Linda and now Harry's calling Monica. Victor's interpretation of this is he's poking around in my business. because Harry uses Monica's betrayal

for lack of a better word, as something that will shake Victor at a critical moment in a fight. so.

Baloreilly (35:49)
And Victor really

sounds like a, you know, typical drug addicted domestic abuser from that perspective, because if he was listening to what Monica said in this conversation, it would be pretty clear that she must know. mean, Harry from Vermont, I want to cancel, he's my cousin who I want to cancel my subscription to something too. he's, the way that she's talking to him doesn't make sense given the context of the conversation on the surface, which is probably why Victor calls back.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (35:56)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Baloreilly (36:18)
But if he was piecing it together, he would know she had to be in some way playing along with Harry, which suggests that not only is he paranoid and ready to murder at the drop of a hat, but he is really starting to lose his grip on what's going on right in front of on a day-to-day basis.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (36:39)
All right, so that brings us to the end of this chapter where Harry finishes having that phone call with Monica. He falls asleep and doesn't wake up until on Saturday when Susan and Linda are both supposed to come to his apartment to pick him up.

So we're gonna close out there and go to our question for

Baloreilly (37:06)
So this week, we asked Bob.

What changes when a person goes full red court? Specifically, what changes mentally spiritually?

So, Bob, what happens?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (37:20)
Yeah, he can't make it this week either. He said he had to pick somebody up at the airport. How would that even work?

Baloreilly (37:28)
Can he drive?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (37:29)
I mean, he can drive a dinosaur.

Baloreilly (37:32)
I don't think they let you into O'Hare with a dinosaur. Okay.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (37:35)
Well, no. I

meant if he could drive a dinosaur, he could probably drive a car. That's all I'm saying.

Baloreilly (37:39)
In any event, since

Bob's not here, we'll have to figure out what the best answer we got from the two of us and the internet is. So Adam, what's the answer? What happens?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (37:51)
So I've always kind of assumed, I even put this question out there and threw it to Reddit, my mind has kind of changed a little bit. My first inclination was that the mind of the person remains mostly the same. It's just that they lose all compassion and empathy and they basically become nothing but a selfish host. Now, obviously they change physically, right? The question here is about their mental.

because the physical changes are very obvious. They turn into the leathery bat thing with a human ⁓ mask. So my thought was always like, okay, it kills off the part of them that makes them human, the empathy, the social behavior. So they're just a selfish, power hungry monster at that point. we had some other great answers to the question that brought up some different ideas. So somebody in the Paranet, the Paranet forum, the way, Paranet online,

is a forum that used to be Jim's official website forums and then they got split off and now they're their own thing. They had some interesting discussions about whether or not a Red Court Vampire, actually retains any significant memory of the person at My assumption was that they did, but we don't, the more I thought about it, the more I realized we've never had a before and after.

Right, we've only met Red Court vampires who have already been a Red Court vampire for a long time.

Baloreilly (39:16)
Yeah, that's certainly true, with the exception of Susan for 30 seconds at the end of changes.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (39:21)
Yeah, for 30 seconds, which doesn't really

tell us anything, right?

My interpretation, the reason I think that they do retain at least a bunch of the memories is that we learn in changes when the Red Court has been killed, a whole bunch of politicians and industry leaders also disappear or die at the same And that was always my interpretation is one of the ways that the Red Court was sort of controlling things around the world and making money and things like that is they would find important individuals.

turn them to become full Red Court vampires and then send them back into their position of power and then use that to influence whatever it is that they wanted. They would have shadow puppets in positions of government, in industry, et cetera, et cetera.

Baloreilly (40:05)
Yes, I think that's

gotta be true. The Red Court's whole modus operandi, the fact that they have flesh masks that are, it seems, what they looked like in life, suggests that they must have access to the memories of the original person in some way, shape,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (40:23)
Right, and so Geek on the Paramet came up with an idea of how this might work. He says first the nascent vampire within a half-turned version that's still a human, that might be spending its time in there absorbing the memories and the personality of the host. And then when that host, that half vampire does

kill someone and fully turn, then the parasite, for lack of a better term, takes over completely having stolen those memories. So that's a different interpretation than I'd originally had, which was that the brain is still in there and it just loses something. This was an interpretation that said, the person is gone. It's fully replaced by something that stole the memories and or

Baloreilly (41:10)
Yeah, and I think that a lot of these interpretations have in common the idea that the, and I'm gonna call it a rampire, because it's blampire and vampire. So it's rampire.

rampire is a distinct entity from the original person. That when you are turned into a half-rampire, are, you there are two wolves inside of you, and one of them is you, and one of them is a leathery bat demon. So, Geek is supplying a great version of that idea, and it's something that a lot of other people took.

like Thicc Sour God suggests that my interpretation is the vampire isn't you, it's a demon wearing an Edgar suit. It has all of your memories, so it's good at pretending to be you. Its personality is probably even shaped by your personality, but fundamentally, when you're turned by a Red Court vampire, if they put what is essentially a demon fetus in you, it gives you strength and extends your life, it gives you a thirst for blood, can influence you, but when that demon gets enough power to be fully born,

It is fatal to the host. You die. the vampire is all that's left.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (42:22)
Yeah, and that raises an interesting question. this, if something else is in there and replaces you, rather than being like a zombie infection, like I had sort of initially interpreted it as like, okay, you're still you, but you've been changed. This interpretation of something replaces the thing that used to be you.

Where does that thing come from? People refer to it as a demon in it because often Thomas refers to his hunger as a demon, right? Just for lack of a better word. where does that demon come from? Is it reproducing like a parasite, like a wasp, you know, reproducing ⁓ it's young inside of ⁓ the body of a host insect or something like that, laying its eggs in there.

or is it like calling in a demon from the never never or something? I don't really buy that second interpretation myself.

Baloreilly (43:12)
So

I think that for rampires, the actual answer is, I don't actually agree with this interpretation, but I think that to be consistent within this interpretation, what has to be going on is both. So your sire, the red-court vampire that makes you into a red-court vampire, is effectively reproducing when they are turning you into a vampire. Their vampire, or they the vampire,

are bringing in some creature of the Never Never that is, you know, doing this hijacking you thing. Some people will say, because if you look at the Lords of Outer Night, it does feel this way, that they're not bringing it from the Never Never, they're bringing it in from outside. And that's why it's so twisted. I don't actually think that's true, only because

I think that's what a black court vampire is, an outsider reanimating a human corpse. So don't think that a red court vampire is precisely the same. I think that if this interpretation is correct, it comes from inside.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (44:22)
Yeah, I could potentially buy that. The thing is, in order for that to be true, these would have to be some kind of race that is not aligned with the outsiders that we learn about in the later books. The ones assaulting the gates, he who walks behind, he who walks before. Those are all aligned in a single purpose. Nemesis, obviously, as well. The single purpose of-

getting into our reality and like devouring it or destroying it or whatever they wanna do to it, right? if the black court or the red court are from quote unquote outside our reality, I don't think they're from the outsider's reality, right? Imagine there's a multiverse thing here and those, outsiders as we know them, Nemesis and Co, they are from a particular reality trying to get into ours and maybe there's other beings from outside our reality.

that make either the Lords of Outer Night or the Black Court vampires like you were discussing. I don't buy into those necessarily, but I think that's the only way it could work.

Baloreilly (45:21)
Well,

here's the other thing though. Maybe they are working with the outsiders because of course, where does the athame that infects Leah come from? Bianca's party in Grave So the Red Court as a form of outsider is not crazy to me, that's not off the wall. think that that's, and the Lords of Atter Night, like the way they exert will is very similar to what He Who Walks Before does.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (45:33)
That's true. That's true.

Yeah, the fact that their

magic is always described as being similar but very different from human magic is unusual, right? That means it comes from a different place or it's used in a different way, right? Obviously, fey magic is different, but they are beings of the Never Never. And we never really, after the first book, get the impression that the Red Court vampires have anything to do with the Never Never. Anyway, I wanna move on

there was another really interesting insight. Excellent Buyer 2913 says that the hunger in a half-turned red-court vampire similar to the behavior that Lash had with Harry, where it's a shadow of the real creature, strong enough to provide strength, but also strong enough to provide And that's what the thirst is. And when the person gives in to temptation and feeds on human to death,

the magical and psychic consequences of that gives the hunger parasite enough power to open the door to the rest of it, similar to picking up the coin. So I like that sort of comparison between those two. And the last one that I wanted to bring up is Sephir 27 brings up the idea, which I think is backed up by a lot of the things here in the Dresden files is that a human is composed of three parts, body, mind, and soul. contend.

that the soul is replaced by the demon, but the mind and the body remain. Quote, so they gain intense hunger, strength and magic while having their innate humanity replaced with a demon. This basically turns them into a sociopath who doesn't care about people anymore. The soul is what the white court feeds upon. It's what Harry uses to power his soul fire. And it's what would be gone if he became a red court replaced by the bat demon. The soul is what is corrupted by doing black magic.

So that is an interesting interpretation of that as well.

Baloreilly (47:39)
Yeah, and I think that's closest to my answer. I think that's very good. And I don't actually know if it disagrees with my interpretation at all. It just, we are emphasizing it differently. I think the fact that there, we know the Jade Court exists. Let's put that aside for a second. The fact that there are three vampire courts and that the human end of the scale is the vampires and they are a human soul.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (48:07)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (48:08)
trapped

in a struggle with a demonic entity. And a blampire is, we know, just a demon that has, like the hardware is the human body, but the software is all psychotic entity from not this reality. That that suggests that reds are neither of those two things.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (48:31)
It is important to remember though, Black Court vampires do have memories of the past because in the short story, I can't remember the name of it, but the one where, it's my birthday too, yes, where he goes to meet Thomas to give Thomas a birthday present and the Black Court vampire who was shunned from the vampire, the masquerade group, they have a different name for it obviously, the LARPing group.

Baloreilly (48:42)
It's my birthday too. Yep.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (48:58)
she was shunned from them, and then she was turned into a Black Court vampire, she came back to get revenge on them. So she still had some feelings and memories of that time as a Black Court vampire. So to that, it almost puts the Black Courts and the Red Court similar in that sense, because we know that Bianca, it's implied heavily that she wanted to be seen as human. She was still holding on to that humanity element.

Baloreilly (49:10)
Yes.

So I think that the difference there, and I believe that I'm referring to, appropriately butchering, a word of Jim here, where Jim said something along the lines of that what's going on there is that because she's running on the human software, right, the physical brain with all of the brain stuff in it is still there. So, exactly.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (49:49)
it's because she's very young, still

has those feelings and emotions and those go away over time.

Baloreilly (49:54)
Exactly. So

that's why she's still concerned about that stuff because the hardware is sort of constraining the software still at that point. But I think that the point is that reds have to be somewhat distinct. And if we're saying that blacks are less demonic than I'm painting them to be, then okay, then reds still have to be in the middle ground between that and whites. So what would that mean?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (50:18)
Yeah, based on everything we've seen that's kind of true, yeah.

Baloreilly (50:23)
I think what it means is that a Red Court vampire is not a human who is struggling with a Demonic entity or just a Demonic entity. I think a Red Court vampire is a human who has sold their soul to a Demonic entity. are

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (50:44)
So do you think

that human's trapped inside there? Ooh, that's awful.

Baloreilly (50:47)
Yes, I think they are, yes,

and I think they are bound to the Red Court vampire where their sort of like set of choices is constrained. I mean, think about the Paolo-Ariana relationship, right? Paolo is a conquistador who Ariana turns to torment. If Paolo's not there anymore, it's not really torment.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (51:03)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (51:12)
and I don't think for all of them it is horrible. So the Ebes, they seem to care about each other in some way. They seem to have some of the feelings for each other at least that they had in life. seem, right.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (51:26)
Right, that's Esmeralda and Esteban

from Changes, the two that are hunting down Harry.

Baloreilly (51:32)
So it appears that they're sort of simpatico with that demon. The demon is, they're not struggling against it, they're not being tormented by it, they've bought in. They've sold their soul and they are with it, they are on the Rodel.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (51:43)
Right, they

Baloreilly (51:45)
And the reason why I do think I'm correct on this is because we see the transformation exactly once for about 30 seconds. And Susan, when she becomes a rampire, does not instantly get hijacked by an otherworldly spirit, nor is she going to be able to totally resist the influence of that spirit. She is still able to fight it

to struggle against it, to take action. She's still in there, in her body, but it is now the dominant force. And had she lived, she would be one of the people in eternal torment at what's going on.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (52:26)
Yeah, and I think you're right. think one of the things that makes a rampire more powerful as they age is coming to terms and accepting the monster that they are. The reason, one of the reasons that younger rampires are weak is because some part of them still believes and is trying to be human in some way.

Baloreilly (52:52)
Yes, and that's distinct from white-court vampires, where the strength of your demon is an thing that is completely external to you. That sets how strong your abilities are, and that's why somebody like Lara and Thomas can be as powerful as vampires who are presumably even older than they are.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (53:12)
Right, I mean, we don't get an explicit like what happens if Thomas and Lara go at it who's stronger, but I think we get the impression that they're roughly equivalent in terms of power and how strong their demon is, but Thomas is only like 30 years old and she's centuries old. She's as old as Lucio or older.

Baloreilly (53:29)
We'll end.

and that they're both equivalent to, you know, the Malvora matron and scavis, you know, the head of that house. That those guys don't automatically, can't just wipe the floor with them even though presumably they're much, much older. Because the strength of your demon is this external thing that's not about accepting it. It's just what's available to you. Precisely.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (53:42)
right.

It's almost like a genetic thing in a sense,

right? Hey, the demon you got when you were born just happens to be a weakling. Sorry, you're the runt of the litter. It is what it is.

Baloreilly (54:03)
And that's why the three vampire courts are so different. White court is really human because it is really genetic and based on your personal skills and abilities and training and doesn't really matter exactly how old you are. And you're never going to be able to be more in sync with your demon. It's an external thing that's just a battery for you.

And that's gonna try to convince you to kill people because it wants to eat.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (54:33)
The one

exception I would make is that you can get better at controlling and resisting that demon over time. But that gets to a point and then you just can't get any stronger.

Baloreilly (54:45)
Right, and that's very different from both of the other kinds of vampires. Black-court vampires, it's a pure, as far as we can tell, clock. The older you are, the stronger you are, period. And red-court vampires, it appears to be something that's a little bit more progressive. It's not purely age, but it's just lineage or something either.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (55:07)
Yeah, they do kind of imply that like you get risen to different ranks and maybe they bestow upon you more power because the Lords of Outer Knight decided that you're gonna be a Duchess now, so here's more power. Or is it the other way around? You've shown that you're stronger now, so that's when they raise you to the higher level. I don't know, that's a hard one to speculate. We'll probably get more in that when we talk about that in changes. But we've run a little long here, so any other final?

thoughts before we end this question for Bob.

Baloreilly (55:39)
No, that's it, we're just gonna talk about what we're gonna talk about next week, which is our new question for Bob. Bob, you read a lot of books. What makes a fight scene engaging?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (55:50)
Absolutely. Apropos of the fact that we are going to be talking about the first major fight scene in the Dresden Files, the mainline series anyway, where Dresden has to fight the Toad Demon. So tune in for that. We'll see you next time.