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I've been reading through the first few Alex Verus books, and holy cow these freaking people. Like, I get that Alex was lonely and bored when he decided to start hanging out with mages again, but who the heck voluntarily hangs out with an entire society of mustache-twirling sociopaths who also have magical powers? The books are fun, but four novels in I'm pretty sure that the only sane person we've met was Alex's mentor in book 1, the crazy hermit guy who lived in the middle of nowhere and refused to have anything to do with mages or magic for any reason.
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Jul 15, 2019 18:53
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Oh, Caldera is pretty down to earth.  but yeah you just sorta have to take as a given that "mage society" is fully feral due to absolute power corrupting absolutely / the "dark" mages effectively winning a long term mage society Cold War.
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Jul 15, 2019 18:59
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There are somewhat normal Mages that exist as background characters, especially in the later books. But Alex isn't exactly the kind of person to meet them. There are even dark ones that just mostly want to be left alone or do whatever. Even people like Cinder are largely reasonable in that they don't just merc people because they're bored. Dude just wants to eat McDonalds and think about fire but his girlfriend keeps dragging him into war.
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Jul 15, 2019 19:23
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:1. I'll lead with the most glaring example: Luccio. Luccio is mind-controlled into a relationship against her will. Harry knows this, is told this, and... the following conversation with her is just Yes, Harry has serious problems when it comes to how he relates to women. The series keeps telling us that. One might almost suspect that this character flaw will matter from time to time. That it will even have... consequences. You seem to think that a character screwing up, suffering consequences, and not even realizing how badly he screwed up means that his mistake didn't have consequences and that we're meant, as readers, not to see it as a mistake at all. I'd certainly agree that Butcher tends towards instrumentalizing women: making their characters serve plot purposes without giving them the same kind of agency and characterization he gives to male characters. I see that as a separate issue from the consequences question. NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:2. Harry doesn't deflect blame because Butcher does it for him. When he gives into his bloodlust and starts slamming that alien around at Splattercon instead of helping that girl ( who dies ), it isn't his fault, it's Lash's. When he does messed up things to those ghouls, it isn't his fault, it's Lash's. When he forces his apprentice to break the laws of magic and to help him commit suicide, it isn't his fault, the devil made him do it. When he's violent and tempermental and creepy, it isn't his fault, it's the mantle. I see this claim as a fundamental misunderstanding of everything the series says about free will (which is hooked in to a long tradition of Christian philosophy I'm sure Butcher is familiar with). Let us suppose that Lash is capable of depriving Harry of agency: of making him do something he would never otherwise have done. Why not simply make him accept the coin, then? As with Luccio and her "mind control" situation, Butcher makes it clear that all such magical influences can do is just that--influence someone into doing something they might have done anyway. Every terrible thing he does in the books he does because he CHOOSES to do them. And the whole point of the second set of words whispered into his ear, the words that come from an angel and not a devil, has to do with the importance of free will. But let's look at Ghost Story page 456. Molly is getting torn apart and Uriel is refusing to intervene: quote:"She isn't strong enough," I snapped. "She can't take on that thing." Certainly Harry doesn't dwell on his mistakes, and he's too quick to excuse himself sometimes. He's also the one who warns Maeve in Cold Days that being able to tell lies means you can make the wrong choice, and that you can lie to yourself. He's a good person to teach that particular lesson. He also has oblivious tendencies. In skimming through the end of Cold Days for that reference, I noticed that he asks Demonreach to "carry the wounded inside" and it eyes him before taking Molly and Sarissa into the cottage. I think he thinks that it was considering whether or not to obey. But he's the Warden. I don't think it has that option. I think Demonreach was determining whether Harry wanted them carried into the cottage, or IMPRISONED. And then he and Mab have a little talk about how Harry has responsibility for everything that Molly became. Not that she didn't have a choice, but that the specific consequences of the choices she made were shaped and enabled by Harry himself. Cold Days page 501: quote:"You've made her life so much harder," I said quietly. I wasn't saying it to Mab, really. I was just sounding out loud the chain of argument in my head. "But so have I. Especially after Chichén Itzá." Harry's not especially introspective, and he tends to cover his feelings of guilt with black humor and bravado. But hit him in the head enough times and eventually he gets the point.
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Jul 15, 2019 19:25
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:There are somewhat normal Mages that exist as background characters, especially in the later books. But Alex isn't exactly the kind of person to meet them. Actually weirdly enough, Cinder was one of the few characters I considered naming as a sane dude. Like, he doesn't set people on fire without a good reason (someone giving him money or the victim having something he really wants counts as a good reason for him, but I can respect the thought process), he pretty consistently does what he says he'll do, he's really a pretty chill guy for a sith lord. I wonder if part of the problem isn't how the story was initially framed? The first book had some other obvious growing pains (Luna being demure and shy instead of a loud, infinite wellspring of cheerful snark, Shireena apparently being the portal sacrifice in Alex's memories instead of Catherine), but our introduction to the wizarding world of alex verus is super raw. Like, I think within the first chapter or two we get: dark mages keep and sell slaves, light mages don't really care, mages in general don't tend to treat non-mages as people, and oh yeah verus was kept in a cage for months/years and regularly tortured, then when he escaped the good guys were like 'Eww, don't get any sith juice on us, also we don't want your torturer to be mad at us'. Then our first real introduction to the council is the grand ball with white mage voldemort and his miserable, enslaved elemental murder pet. The stories actually do lighten up later on, and I could definitely buy that Alex has a tendency to run with a rough crowd and generally immerse himself in the worst magical society has to offer, but that's an awful lot of really, really bad stuff to start with, and by the time they get to Sonder and Caldera your brain is still going '...so this looks like a nice person but they're a mage, are we going to learn that they also run a puppy-kicking cult or something?' Also spider-mom is obviously the best, but she doesn't really count as a mage because, you know, spider.
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Jul 15, 2019 19:58
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Cinder is low-key my favorite side character in the series, for exactly the reasons described. I'm sure there would still be strife if all Dark mages were like Cinder, but it'd be a lot more honest.
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Jul 15, 2019 20:11
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Spider-mom Spider-mom Always Helpful and Always calm Is she nice? Listen friend... Magic clothing she will mend Watch out! Here comes the Spider-mom
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Jul 15, 2019 20:12
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I think book 1 and 2 of Verus would be somewhat different if Jacka went back and re-wrote them today. You'd probably get a little more of Alex' thoughts regarding Mages and society at large, Cinder would probably appear a bit more well-rounded earlier on, his relationship with Luna would probably be different, etc. But we do get people like Lyle and Sonder, who are just kind of normal. Most of the people who aren't actively involved in or trying to directly change the politics are pretty normal dudes. If someone told me that Alex was conceived as a paranormal romance that was re-written to urban fantasy sometime after the first draft I'd probably buy it.
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Jul 15, 2019 20:36
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I enjoyed the few Verus books I read, but I remember the white/black mages stuff being very dumb.
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Jul 17, 2019 19:04
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ZZZorcerer posted:I enjoyed the few Verus books I read, but I remember the white/black mages stuff being very dumb. Yeah, like, they're fun enough, but at least for me the sheer awfulness of both factions is way over the top. Like, heck, I'm in book... 5 I think, and the core plot is basically Verus pissed off the white mages and the wizard cops by trying to bust a magical child sex slave ring. I think the rough idea of "good guys and bad guys are basically the same guys, they just differ on some ideological principles" has potential if used well, but everyone is just so over-the-top evil and corrupt that I have trouble taking anything about the world seriously.
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Jul 17, 2019 21:57
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, like, they're fun enough, but at least for me the sheer awfulness of both factions is way over the top. Like, heck, I'm in book... 5 I think, and the core plot is basically Verus pissed off the white mages and the wizard cops by trying to bust a magical child sex slave ring. I would say fair, but, like, look at reality It's a very noir sensibility certainly. I can get why it would put readers off.
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Jul 17, 2019 22:01
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I would say fair, but, like, look at reality Oh yeah, for sure... this is probably getting down to personal taste, but I think one of the reasons it trips me up is because of how normalized and out in the open all of the horrible stuff is. Like, a lot of run-down neo-noir detectives are run down precisely because the world is a craphole and everyone is corrupt... but that's something that they've usually learned from personal experience, and a lot of the clients and friends who they meet along the way represent the average person, who is often naive about how power corrupts and underestimates how poorly human beings can treat each other when wealth or power are on the line. In Verus though, I think part of why it feels so cartoonish to me is that the corruption is not only normalized, it's completely out in the open and nearly everyone has learned to live with it. Dark mages are completely open and transparent about the fact that they run a thriving slave trade, and light apprentices are sitting around going "Make sure you don't get kidnapped by a dark mag,e because they'll torture or sex you to death and our mage government doesn't care enough to complain". Maybe I'm too idealistic, but I find it super-hard to accept that an entire society would so casually normalize terrifying levels of horrible stuff, especially when mages are a secret society that exists behind the masquerade in the real world, so mages and adepts have mundane society as a reference point for what things are like when slavery and mass torture/murder aren't pretty much legal. I'm not saying that attitude could never happen, and I'm not saying that real life isn't horribly corrupt and messed-up too, but the sheer scope of the bad stuff and the blase attitude of everyone in the setting makes it really tough for me to take it seriously. i enjoy the characters and their adventures, but every time we get to a major light/dark political beat I can't take any of it seriously.
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Jul 18, 2019 02:51
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Omi no Kami posted:Maybe I'm too idealistic, but I find it super-hard to accept that an entire society would so casually normalize terrifying levels of horrible stuff Mass shootings in America.
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Jul 18, 2019 03:54
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Khizan posted:Mass shootings in America. Yeah, but the problem is that the society in Alex Verus doesn't go "Welp, another mass shooting, that's a bummer," they go "Huh, someone did a mass shooting- oops, a mage did it, that makes it legal. Sorry victims, sucks to be you!"
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Jul 18, 2019 05:16
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"Well, that sucks but hey nothing can be done so you just got to live with it, sucks to be y'all" is pretty applicable to both.
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Jul 18, 2019 05:25
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, but the problem is that the society in Alex Verus doesn't go "Welp, another mass shooting, that's a bummer," they go "Huh, someone did a mass shooting- oops, a mage did it, that makes it legal. Sorry victims, sucks to be you!" I mean we literally have a story in the newspaper about a billionare who was running child sex rings for other rich and wealthy people and got away with slaps on the wrist for a very very long time because of his power and influence. Or hell casting couches/'sex for parts/actors abusing people' was such common knowledge and a regular part of Hollywood that people put loving jokes about it in children's cartoons and yet it is only in the past few years it's given any serious focus. In Verus a lot of that stuff is technically illegal but won't be prosecuted because of influence, power, wealth or diplomatic immunity. It's just that due to the small and insular nature of Mage society (and the situations Alex runs into) almost everyone of note falls into one of those categories. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Jul 18, 2019 |
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Jul 18, 2019 05:27
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I dunno, maybe it's just me, but the correlation doesn't justify anything for me; all I can say is that even though the stories themselves are fun, quite a lot of the worldbuilding and basically everything to do with mage society feels silly and jarring.
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Jul 18, 2019 05:40
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Omi no Kami posted:I dunno, maybe it's just me, but the correlation doesn't justify anything for me; all I can say is that even though the stories themselves are fun, quite a lot of the worldbuilding and basically everything to do with mage society feels silly and jarring. It's honestly hard for me to really agree but that is because I think the Verus society is perfectly plausible (or at least as plausible as any fantasy setting.) The idea that a society wouldn't casually deal with the legalization of terrible things or the corruption of authority is frankly more of a fantasy than the magic. I mean you seem to think it's excessive and over the top and that's fine but it isn't right. Anyone in this thread could list off half a dozen comparable things without much effort in reality *right now* let alone in the whole of history. People can and will put blinders on for things that risk upsetting their status quo too much. Everyone in this thread, myself included, does this. In a society of close-knit insular people who have the ability to gently caress with space-time and kill with a word you better believe that most people would err on the side of not rocking the boat because Someone Else's Problem is easier to deal with than having a literal magician out to kill you since even the weakest of the lot (folks like Verus himself) are still more than capable of ruining your life with fairly little effort.
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Jul 18, 2019 06:05
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ImpAtom posted:It's honestly hard for me to really agree but that is because I think the Verus society is perfectly plausible (or at least as plausible as any fantasy setting.) The idea that a society wouldn't casually deal with the legalization of terrible things or the corruption of authority is frankly more of a fantasy than the magic. I mean you seem to think it's excessive and over the top and that's fine but it isn't right. Anyone in this thread could list off half a dozen comparable things without much effort in reality *right now* let alone in the whole of history. I can totally get that, and I'll happily agree to disagree... I can totally see where you're coming from, but at least for me an awful lot of it strains suspension of disbelief. That isn't to say it's unrealistic, as you've pointed out the real world is plenty messed up too, but the way the society and a lot of the worldbuilding is framed and presented to us, it simply comes off as cartoonish to me in a way that I doubt the author intended.
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Jul 18, 2019 06:15
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ImpAtom posted:It's honestly hard for me to really agree but that is because I think the Verus society is perfectly plausible (or at least as plausible as any fantasy setting.) The idea that a society wouldn't casually deal with the legalization of terrible things or the corruption of authority is frankly more of a fantasy than the magic. I mean you seem to think it's excessive and over the top and that's fine but it isn't right. Anyone in this thread could list off half a dozen comparable things without much effort in reality *right now* let alone in the whole of history. It is something of a theme of the series, both the corruption, and what people are blind to. Does Lyle really know what his boss does, and what he got Verus into? It's never clear. It's possible that in book one, he knew his boss did something... but largely turned a blind eye to it for whatever reason, until Verus had the dust-up with him at the party. And then he does it again, with a new boss, after having made a genuine apology. And then you get things like Sonder, and his argument with Verus about halfway through the series. Also White Rose must have been at least moderately secret, as Verus didn't even know until events brought him in. 
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Jul 18, 2019 07:03
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Also White Rose must have been at least moderately secret, as Verus didn't even know until events brought him in. That's a good point- it's also possible, though the story doesn't really establish this one way or another, that Verus is simply biased as a narrator and asserts characteristics to light society as a whole that only apply to the worst of the worst. Like, he has a pretty raw deal: he's an ex-dark mage who is actively on the shitlists of basically everyone who has anything to do with the dark, but characters like Natasha and some of the younger apprentices seem like pretty normal people. So if you told me that 90% of mage society is fine but Verus only regularly deals with the 10% that really sucks, I'd have no problem believing that. It'd point to a framing issue with the story as a whole, but it would also do a lot to make the excesses that we see and hear about seem less over the top.
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Jul 18, 2019 07:11
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I think part of it is that the Verus books are so sparely written, and reveal such little worldbuilding outside of the events that directly and unavoidably impact Verus and the plot, that the only things we know about Mage society are the cartoonishly evil parts that try to kill or use Verus. It's like if you wrote a book about a Capitalist society and only talked about the wealthy plutocrats and their beaten down servants and not, y'know, the iphones and television shows and factories and consumer goods; it would seem like an implausible funnel solely designed to channel pleasure to a tiny elite, and not the corrupt back end of a vast and often useful societal mechanism.
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Jul 18, 2019 09:09
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Omi no Kami posted:In Verus though, I think part of why it feels so cartoonish to me is that the corruption is not only normalized, it's completely out in the open and nearly everyone has learned to live with it. Widely accepted corruption is extremely plausible.
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Jul 18, 2019 14:56
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anilEhilated posted:Ever been to Eastern Europe? In fact regular people will find it confusing when you can't just bribe you way through something, and have to wait months(years)(forever) for the proper procedure, and it's a common complaint they will have when dealing with countries like the US.
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Jul 18, 2019 15:02
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ShinsoBEAM! posted:In fact regular people will find it confusing when you can't just bribe you way through something, and have to wait months(years)(forever) for the proper procedure, and it's a common complaint they will have when dealing with countries like the US. To be fair, that happens in the US. it just happens at a level higher than most people are able to afford. Or on a lower level than most middle class people have reason to interact with.
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Jul 18, 2019 15:14
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Omi no Kami posted:That's a good point- it's also possible, though the story doesn't really establish this one way or another, that Verus is simply biased as a narrator and asserts characteristics to light society as a whole that only apply to the worst of the worst. Like, he has a pretty raw deal: he's an ex-dark mage who is actively on the shitlists of basically everyone who has anything to do with the dark, but characters like Natasha and some of the younger apprentices seem like pretty normal people. So if you told me that 90% of mage society is fine but Verus only regularly deals with the 10% that really sucks, I'd have no problem believing that. It'd point to a framing issue with the story as a whole, but it would also do a lot to make the excesses that we see and hear about seem less over the top. I don't know about that. The first book plays a lot on how the council has it out for Verus, he's living in paranoid fear and afraid that they might, at any moment, come for him. Then it's showed they don't even really care about him, and it's only once Richard is rumored to have returned that they express interest in him. Then there's how his opinions change, to an extent, about The Keepers, Dark Mages ( Cinder and Chalice ), how Talisid repeatedly lectures him that the council isn't the singular body he thinks it is, etc. Even the people like Mordin are relatively 'normal' and just want to quietly do whatever pertains to their interests or chill in the background. Alex is as much of an outlier in Light society as Onyx is in Dark. I'd kind of like to see the society of Alex Verus examined through the lens of say, Aaronvitch, but given that the novels are very much written in the on-the-clock fashion of Dresden and most take place at a very fast pace, I think he's done a pretty great job expanding upon the world without letting it consume his book. The whole 'politics and political conspiracy' angle gets real old real fast if it consumes too much paper and isn't the explicit focus of the book.
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Jul 18, 2019 17:25
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Reminder that Aaronovitch has written a ton of poo poo about the world thru the lense of Luna in "Ask Luna" articles on his website.
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Jul 18, 2019 23:38
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Reminder that Aaronovitch has written a ton of poo poo about the world thru the lense of Luna in "Ask Luna" articles on his website. Jacka you mean but yeah
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Jul 18, 2019 23:56
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I don't care, all London based UF is basically the same.
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Jul 18, 2019 23:57
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New Dresden Files short out soon, this one follows Goodman Grey. e: vvv whoops, fixed Aerdan fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Jul 19, 2019 |
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Jul 19, 2019 00:42
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Aerdan posted:New Dresden Files short out, this one follows Goodman Grey. Man, at this rate we're gonna need a third short story anthology. EDIT: Its a preorder apparently, not out til October.
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Jul 19, 2019 03:44
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Which Dresden book is it where Lara mind and otherwise fucks Papa Raith? Blood Rites? Is that also the one where Justine and Thomas's love is proven and she becomes dangerous for him?
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Jul 20, 2019 03:52
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:It's like if you wrote a book about a Capitalist society and only talked about the wealthy plutocrats and their beaten down servants and not, y'know, the iphones and television shows and factories and consumer goods; it would seem like an implausible funnel solely designed to channel pleasure to a tiny elite, and not the corrupt back end of a vast and often useful societal mechanism. Lmao no that is exactly what capitalism is
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Jul 20, 2019 03:54
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:Which Dresden book is it where Lara mind and otherwise fucks Papa Raith? Blood Rites? Blood Rites, yeah. And no on Thomas, I wanna say it was the one with Morgan. Uhhhhhh Turn Coat? Nevermind, it's the tail end of Blood Rites where that happens, yeah. I got Thomas' post-Blood Rites angst mixed up with his angst over the skin walker stuff NerdyMcNerdNerd fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Jul 20, 2019 |
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Jul 20, 2019 05:04
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Narsham posted:The series has him as the son of a potentially evil wizard alright who's harry's maybe dad, i thought malcolm was just some schlub
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Jul 21, 2019 03:23
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:alright who's harry's maybe dad, i thought malcolm was just some schlub His mother was on the outs with the council, so that didn't help their perception of him.
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Jul 21, 2019 03:50
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Narsham posted:The series has him as the son of a potentially evil wizard, Sorry to raise a necropost, but I thought his father was a traveling magician? Justin was his adoptive father/mentor wasn't he?
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Jul 21, 2019 05:57
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Exmond posted:Sorry to raise a necropost, but I thought his father was a traveling magician? Justin was his adoptive father/mentor wasn't he? Wizard is a gender-neutral term. They’re talking about his mum
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Jul 21, 2019 06:03
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I just caught up with the Rook show, and holy crap this is garbage. We all knew it was gonna be, but holy cow.
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Jul 21, 2019 10:46
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I can't operate on this man, he's my son!
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