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the_steve posted:Speaking of dark pasts, and the way they keep alluding to poo poo in Dresden, I wonder how long it'll be before they end up revealing that the White Council orchestrated events so that Harry's dad would die and he'd end up with Justin and subsequently at the Council's mercy, some lovely "forge him into the tool we need" thing, kinda like Terry in Batman Beyond. There's a micro fiction on Butcher's website that gestures in that direction. Morgan Microfiction
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Nov 19, 2020 19:00
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The microfiction was nice, but it seems to point in the other direction to me. If the council is doing black bag stuff it'd be McCoy or Morgan doing it. McCoy seems super unlikely in this case, and this confirms Morgan didn't do it. Seems like it was either natural or very subtle nemesis.feedmegin posted:Without even reading back, I'm assuming the new title of this thread is a Anita Blake reference right? It is, yes Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Nov 19, 2020 |
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Nov 19, 2020 19:23
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I've always been of the opinion that Justin killed Harry's dad to get him as an apprentice/enforcer. He may have done the same thing with Elaine, too. Also, I just realized that Elaine is also starborn since she's the same age as Harry. I wonder if Justin needed one for some reason (especially since he had ties with He Who Walks Behind) and got Elaine/Harry as a spare.
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Nov 19, 2020 19:54
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I don't remember if there was speculation of Harry's starborn status in this thread. I only read Battlegrounds a few weeks after it came out. Am I the only one getting the impression that the book is setting up a starborn Thunderdome situation or something? If you defeat another starborn, you get their power, so you can Pac-Man yourself to more power. This explains a bunch of things various people allude to, and both explains/illustrates how stupid the WC interactions with Dresden.
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Nov 19, 2020 21:45
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Xtanstic posted:I don't remember if there was speculation of Harry's starborn status in this thread. I only read Battlegrounds a few weeks after it came out. My half-assed guess is that being starborn somehow makes you a focal point for Destiny. Like, Fate just says "Yeah, I'm gonna follow this guy around.", Which obviously affects the world around them. It's why Harry, a slightly above average wizard and detective keeps getting pulled into bigger and bigger plots, it's how some scrawny mortician became a Jedi of the Cross, or a normal human mob boss became the only human signatory of the Accords. Starborn are the butterfly flapping it's wings in China to cause a tornado in Texas, a walking ripple effect. The fact that they're resistant to Outsiders is just a side effect of that.
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Nov 20, 2020 00:31
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the_steve posted:Speaking of dark pasts, and the way they keep alluding to poo poo in Dresden, I wonder how long it'll be before they end up revealing that the White Council orchestrated events so that Harry's dad would die and he'd end up with Justin and subsequently at the Council's mercy, some lovely "forge him into the tool we need" thing, kinda like Terry in Batman Beyond. I don't think that will happen, and I don't remember any allusion to it.
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Nov 20, 2020 00:42
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Beachcomber posted:I don't think that will happen, and I don't remember any allusion to it. I meant more about how they're alluding to Starborn being some big drat world-shattering deal. They keep playing up how super secret awesome it is, to the point that Listens-to-Wind straight up says "Dude, I do not think I have the security clearance to tell you about it." Edit: Though now that I think about it, doesn't he have Bob back for keeps now? Why not ask him what the deal about Starborn is? the_steve fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Nov 20, 2020 |
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Nov 20, 2020 01:05
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OscarDiggs posted:Okay, well I came here specifically to find books to read because I hit a drought, so if there are honest to god consequences, most of my complaints are gone. Have you tried the October Daye series?
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Nov 20, 2020 01:16
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the_steve posted:I meant more about how they're alluding to Starborn being some big drat world-shattering deal. They explain Starborn in the last book. Starborn are immune to the deadly static that Outsiders generate in people's minds. Basically they can look at Cthulhu and not have to roll for sanity.
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Nov 20, 2020 01:55
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Beachcomber posted:They explain Starborn in the last book. Starborn are immune to the deadly static that Outsiders generate in people's minds. Basically they can look at Cthulhu and not have to roll for sanity. Yeah, but I think that's more of a side effect than the main bulletpoint, otherwise they wouldn't be making such a big deal about keeping Harry in the dark since he knows that part already. There's more to it than just what you said, and that's the part everyone is still cagey about
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Nov 20, 2020 02:29
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Also that's bullshit given what happened when he looked at the Naagloshi with his Sight.
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Nov 20, 2020 10:20
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DreamingofRoses posted:Have you tried the October Daye series? I havn't, but you're the third person to suggest it, so I think I'm contractually obligated to give it a try at this point.
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Nov 20, 2020 10:59
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Also that's bullshit given what happened when he looked at the Naagloshi with his Sight. Naagloshi aren't Outsiders, they're of reality
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Nov 20, 2020 14:28
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Also that's bullshit given what happened when he looked at the Naagloshi with his Sight. Naagloshi aren't Outsiders, though, and whatever advantages being Starborn confers seem to be Outsider-specific. Being immune to influence by Nemesis didn't make Corpsetaker any less a danger to Harry's mind either, and it didn't make Elaine immune to Justin's compulsion back in the day.
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Nov 20, 2020 15:04
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Rygar201 posted:Naagloshi aren't Outsiders, they're of reality Depends on the myths you read. Some versions say they're First People that rebelled when it was time for them to move on from Fifth World (where we are) to The Place of Melting Into One (not to be confused with Sixth World/World of the Spirits of Living Things). Not sure which version of the myth Butcher is using, but given how powerful and reality-warping the Naagloshii was that jobbed the White Court and required Listens-to-Wind and the bond with Demonreach just to push to a stalemate, it's probably the ones I'm thinking of and not the ones used in the Iron Druid books where they were just really evil people that gained a sort of immortality through black magic. Also, the Naagloshii didn't explicitly attempt to dominate Dresden's mind, he went with direct physical attacks.
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Nov 20, 2020 15:05
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The naagloshi didn't hurt Dresden's mind because it was alien or didn't belong in this reality. It hurt him because it was so overwhelmingly evil and nasty. Just like a dumpster full of liquified rat doesn't have to be from outside reality to create a stench that Makes The News.
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Nov 20, 2020 15:16
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Depends on the myths you read. Some versions say they're First People that rebelled when it was time for them to move on from Fifth World (where we are) to The Place of Melting Into One (not to be confused with Sixth World/World of the Spirits of Living Things). They are the First People that rebelled. Bob tells Harry this. That still doesn't make them Outsiders though, which are very specifically beings from outside the bounds of this reality, including all parts of the nigh infinite Nevernever.
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Nov 20, 2020 15:25
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Yeah, in the mythology of the books (as distinct from actual mythology), Outsiders are a very specific sort of thing, completely separate from anything that is part of the universe. Gods, immortals, Fae, Angels, demons (both the Fallen Angel and the Nevernever critter variety), First People, vampires, ghosts, and anything and everything else are in one category, and Outsiders are in another. That's why there's a specific Law about Outsiders that can be summed up as "don't".
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Nov 20, 2020 16:19
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Cthulu isn't an Outsider, either. More like one of the Old Gods that are imprisoned in Demonreach.
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Nov 20, 2020 16:31
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Cthulu isn't an Outsider, either. More like one of the Old Gods that are imprisoned in Demonreach. Has Cthulhu even been mentioned in the Dresden books? (Honest question, I genuinely can't recall.) It would make sense for Lovecraft's critters to not be Outsiders, honestly, but just Things From The Nevernever that sprouted due to a sufficient number of people believing in them. (I could see Lovecraft being a "This Is How You Deal With These Particularly Dangerous Monsters" White Council op the way Bram Stoker's Dracula was, but I'd rather Butcher just avoided him entirely, tbh).
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Nov 20, 2020 16:39
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docbeard posted:Has Cthulhu even been mentioned in the Dresden books? (Honest question, I genuinely can't recall.) Pretty sure they've been referenced obliquely, I think in the side story about the Oblivion War, specifically.
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Nov 20, 2020 16:59
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The Oblivion War stuff refers to nasty beings of the Nevernever. The Old Ones of the Cthulu mythos are probably but not explicitly related. The most in depth the series gets about them is the Molly and Ramirez short story. For whatever reason google book is inaccessible on my work PC, otherwise I'd quote relevant passages. As far as I've seen, the google play sites are the only sites I can't reach from my work network. It's very strange.
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Nov 20, 2020 17:16
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ConfusedUs posted:Hey man, I get it. I also have no idea why someone would do a hate-watch or hate-read or hate-whatever on the regular. One offs, sure. Sometimes you just need to know more about something even if you hate that thing. But to regularly consume a form of entertainment that you loathe? I don't understand why anyone would do that instead of anything else. It might be too late, but to try to stop this right here, I do NOT want to pile on bi-racial over this. I am personally curious about this one thing and that's all.
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Nov 20, 2020 17:19
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docbeard posted:Has Cthulhu even been mentioned in the Dresden books? (Honest question, I genuinely can't recall.) If you really get into lovecraftiana, Cthulhu was *relatively* benign. He was just an alien from elsewhere in the universe who picked our ocean to crash into, basically. There are other things Cthulhu was afraid of.
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Nov 20, 2020 17:21
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Also I keep reading Dresden because this thread keeps talking about that series and I can't say "thing that happened in the book was bad" if I didn't read the book. Okay, good enough. I mean, not really. There's a whole lot of follow-up questions I'd like to ask but I'll leave those to "your why is your own why." Thank you for answering. Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you really get into lovecraftiana, Cthulhu was *relatively* benign. He was just an alien from elsewhere in the universe who picked our ocean to crash into, basically. There are other things Cthulhu was afraid of. I think the large majority of the Mythos wasn't so much benign as indifferent. If your walking through a field you might cause multiple disasters by stepping on a bunch of ants. In Lovecraft, we're the ants. Except for Black people who hatch from eggs like birds or lizards* *I assume that's not true but was Warren Ellis exaggeration of Lovecraft's racism in that one Planetary/Authority crossover. I mean the man taugh high school biology. Surely that required him to know human biology. Everyone fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Nov 20, 2020 |
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Nov 20, 2020 17:24
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Everyone posted:Okay, good enough. I mean, not really. There's a whole lot of follow-up questions I'd like to ask but I'll leave those to "your why is your own why." Thank you for answering. No, Lovecraft was a hilariously overwrought racist that thought anybody that wasn't white was an alien/lizard/servant of the Old Ones. I mean, he literally wrote a poem in 1912 titled "On the Creation of Niggers" HP Lovecraft posted:When, long ago, the gods created Earth You'll find a lot more detail on his poo poo like this if you dig up the magazine he authored called "The Conservative" that ran from 1915 to 1923. Or you can read this blog post by Nnedi Okorafor. http://nnedi.blogspot.com/2011/12/lovecrafts-racism-world-fantasy-award.html Also there are several articles around the internet with some variation of this paragraph: quote:One of Lovecraft’s notable tales concerns a troubled detective who comes across a “hordes of prowlers” with “sin-spitted faces . . . [who] mix their venom and perpetrate obscene terrors.” They are of “some fiendish, cryptical, and ancient pattern” beyond human understanding, but still retain a “singular suspicion of order [that] lurks beneath their squalid disorder.” With “babels of sound and filth,” they scream into the night air to answer the nearby “lapping oily waves at its grimy piers.” They live within a “maze of hybrid squalor near an ancient waterfront,” a space “leporous and cancerous with evil dragged from elder worlds.” One could be forgiven for mistaking this space as an evil abyss populated by beasts from the mythical Necromonicon. However, this vignette is from his short story, “The Horror at Red Hook.” And the accursed space is not some maleficent mountain of the The Great Old Ones, but the Brooklyn neighborhood right off the pier. The brutish monsters, conduits for a deeper evil, are the “Syrians, Spanish, Italian and Negro(s)” of New York City. Also: HP Lovecraft, in a letter complaining about impure neighborhoods in New York, circa 1915 posted:I hardly wonder that my racial ideas seem bigoted to one born and reared in the vicinity of cosmopolitan New York, but you may better understand my repulsion to the Jew when I tell you that until I was fourteen years old I do not believe I ever spoke to one or saw one knowingly. My section of the city is what is known as the East Side (nothing like New York’s East Side) and it is separated from the rest of the town by the precipitous slope of College Hill, at the top of which is Brown University. In this whole locality, there are scarcely two or three families who are not of original Yankee Rhode Island stock — the place is as solidly Anglo-American as it was 200 years ago. Some Pinko Commie fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Nov 20, 2020 |
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Nov 20, 2020 19:43
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Yeah people who don't know better tend to assume that Lovecraft was typically racist for his day, but no he was so overwroughtly racist that he experienced social censure about it in the early 20th century. He was truly impressively lovely.
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Nov 20, 2020 19:54
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Imagine how racist someone had to be in the 20s for other people to call you out on it.
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Nov 20, 2020 20:05
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the_steve posted:Imagine how racist someone had to be in the 20s for other people to call you out on it. You don't have to imagine it. You can read biracial's post and click on the link. I did not click on the link because the quoted sections are already making my brain throw up inside my skull. I think I'd rather go back and finish Narcissus in Chains than read any more of that. Sure, NiC is gross and kind of awful (in a not my cuppa way) but it's not gross, awful and horrifyingly racist all at the same time.
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Nov 21, 2020 00:02
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I will freely admit I started laughing my rear end off about halfway into that quote. The term "overwroughtly racist" is so accurate it should be Lovecraft's official label, put as a plaque underneath every single portrait and work he ever did. I cannot imagine how much of a troglodyte he must have been in real life. That man deserved to get noogie'd every single day for the entirety of his life.
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Nov 21, 2020 02:45
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"AAAUUGHH what unsightly horror is this, this tube of sickly meat, ground from the muscle and sinew of some grotesquerie from some far primitive shattered shores? What foul odors doth assail my nostrils, what poisonous spices toxin my mouth with its fetid taste?!" "Sir that's a burrito. This is a Taco Bell." *visibly and passionately recoiling in horror* "UUUUGHHH what mongrel breed of vermin gapes its brown jaws at me! What wretched sounds issue from its unsightly maw! My ears bleed at the piercing ghastly quality of the blaring voices, my mind hath been splintered to pieces by its unholy tongue!" "Sir you need to leave. You're banned from this location forever."
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Nov 21, 2020 02:53
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Gologle posted:I will freely admit I started laughing my rear end off about halfway into that quote. The term "overwroughtly racist" is so accurate it should be Lovecraft's official label, put as a plaque underneath every single portrait and work he ever did. I cannot imagine how much of a troglodyte he must have been in real life. That man deserved to get noogie'd every single day for the entirety of his life. By a lot of accounts he was pretty well liked and regarded - at least by other writers. Of course, those other writers were either sufficiently pale or never let on that they weren't. Gologle posted:"AAAUUGHH what unsightly horror is this, this tube of sickly meat, ground from the muscle and sinew of some grotesquerie from some far primitive shattered shores? What foul odors doth assail my nostrils, what poisonous spices toxin my mouth with its fetid taste?!" To be fair the description of Taco Bell food is not completely inaccurate...
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Nov 21, 2020 05:38
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Lovecraft has always come across as someone more worthy of pity than of hate to me. The man was pathologically terrified of the world, though I'm of course not excusing his complete bugfuck-level racism at all. Either way, I don't particularly need or want to read his works.
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Nov 21, 2020 11:31
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docbeard posted:Lovecraft has always come across as someone more worthy of pity than of hate to me. The man was pathologically terrified of the world, though I'm of course not excusing his complete bugfuck-level racism at all. You don't. He invented or at least refined the idea of "cosmic horror" but his racism was far from the only thing about him that was "overwrought." He's still a better writer than his spiritual protege, Brian Lumley. Jesus, does that man love exclamation points. Really, I'd like to see somebody like Christopher Nolan take on cosmic horror. I think Nolan would bring a kind of chilly distance to it that would be extremely effective. Not specifically Lovecraft/Cthulhu Mythos, but maybe something in the vein of In the Mouth of Madness.
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Nov 21, 2020 14:59
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Everyone posted:Not specifically Lovecraft/Cthulhu Mythos, but maybe something in the vein of In the Mouth of Madness. I unironically love that movie. Like a lot.
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Nov 21, 2020 22:35
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Wasn't there a script for del Toro's aborted take on At the Mountains of Madness doing the rounds a few years back. I'd liked to have seen that.
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Nov 22, 2020 02:07
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Deptfordx posted:Wasn't there a script for del Toro's aborted take on At the Mountains of Madness doing the rounds a few years back. I've seen those floating around but not sure how legit they are. He *has* been wanting to do that movie since forever, though so they may be the real deal. Didn't he pass on directing the Hobbit to do it and then it got pulled or something?
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Nov 22, 2020 06:38
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Proteus Jones posted:I've seen those floating around but not sure how legit they are. He *has* been wanting to do that movie since forever, though so they may be the real deal. Nah, he was on the Hobbit and then got timed out of that. IIRC that was due to studio fuckery with the budget. DreamingofRoses fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Nov 22, 2020 |
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Nov 22, 2020 15:47
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Everyone posted:By a lot of accounts he was pretty well liked and regarded - at least by other writers. Of course, those other writers were either sufficiently pale or never let on that they weren't. A lot of the nastier things often attributed to Lovecraft come from stories in anthologies he edited, by other authors. These are things that stand out even by his standards - you have to read past the surface to see that Innsmouth comes from fears of miscegenation, these guys sometimes treat a black guy the way Lovecraft treats Azatoth. Might be that you could find a clue in that about why they didn't mind him so much.
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Nov 22, 2020 19:35
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I can’t believe it took me 85% of Dead Lies Dreaming to realize the protagonist’s family name isn’t Stark-ey, it’s Star-Key.
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Nov 23, 2020 00:35
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