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- (00:00) - Intro
- (00:48) - Ch. 33 (Cont.) - Darkness. Then Pain. Then Nothing
- (05:00) - Ch. 34 - The Monsters Got Me
- (17:54) - Ch 34 (Cont.) - Crazy Justine and Thirsty Susan
- (31:01) - Ch. 35 - Harry frees Susan's mind
- (39:40) - Ch. 36 - "Jokes will not save you now"
- (01:00:49) - QfB: How to categorize Ghosts?
Episode Art by Nick Strom; you can find his work here: https://mrnickstrom.com/
Creators and Guests
Host
Adam Ruzzo
Adam has been producing and hosting podcasts for over 20 years. Such podcasts include Tales of Heroes, Tales of Tyria, and Tales of Citizens. Spread throughout this is various video and streaming projects on his youtube channel. The most recent production is Recorded Neutral Territory, which examines the Dresden Files book series in a chapter-by-chapter re-read.
What is Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast?
Recorded Neutral Territory is a chapter-by-chapter re-read podcast for The Dresden Files book series. Each episode, we one to four chapters with a deep dive on the writing, characters, and worldbuilding within this fantastic series. These episodes contain spoilers for all DF related material released at the time of recording.
New episodes drop on Fridays (~3 per month).
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:00)
Yes, for the next one. Although, next week will be the Patreon episode for Outlaw. Or Nutlaw.
Brian (00:02)
Mm-hmm.
Nutla.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:07)
Somebody said that when you look at the cover, the bottom part of the O is a little faded, so it kind of looks like it says Nut Law instead.
Brian (00:15)
If only it was a book about, you know, the squirrels of the winter court, but.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:19)
Exactly.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:28)
one, welcome all, welcome to recorded neutral territory where the spoilers go all the way through 12 months. I'm Adam Ruzzo and joining me as always, it's a vampire with a bad case of blood poisoning, it's Brian O'Reilly.
Brian (00:40)
Why'd you get one with mushrooms? You know I hate mushrooms!
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:46)
Oh, we'll do a vegetarian one for you next
Alright ladies and gentlemen, are here at chapter 33. We ended the last podcast episode a little bit early, just sort of towards the end of 33. As Harry travels through the portal back into the real world and winds up in Bianca's basement, that is where we're picking up right now. He's surrounded by a ring of vampires, Brian, and Bianca stands over him gloating that he's fallen into her trap.
And the chapter ends with darkness, horrible, thick, sensual darkness, then pain, then nothing. And so we're going to talk about what happens to Harry here between the end of this chapter and the beginning of the next one when he wakes up in the laundry room at the bottom of Bianca's townhouse. So the first thing I want to point out is that this is a very different tone.
Harry has been captured and beaten up and well, beaten up quite a lot, taken a lot of blows to the head. have captured and gloated at him and things like that. But this is the first time the monsters quote unquote, get him and really just get to have their way with him. There's no intervention from allies. He doesn't come up with a lucky idea at the last second to save himself. No clever escape.
This is when the monsters actually get him. And it seems important that this happens at least once and early in the series in order to keep the stakes sounding serious and important for the rest of the series. Because if the monsters get him once, they could get him again.
Brian (02:27)
And it's also fair, because Jim is going to have the monsters get other characters in the future. Other people are going to suffer, situations due to being involved with Harry Dresden's story. If that literally never happens to Harry, it seems unbalanced. He doesn't have to suffer in the same way the people who work with him do. And this is a moment where Harry does have to suffer, you know, maybe not.
to the extent that Thomas does when he's captured by the Negloschi, but maybe in some ways to that extent. This is the thing that mirrors what other characters will go through on Harry's behalf. And moreover, this shows us that Jim can bring the story from fun, romped, danger thriller to, oh, this is kind of heavy, this is actually bad.
And that's important because it's why people were so interested in Game of Thrones when they made the first series of the TV show. They killed the main character. Like they actually just did it. They made somebody the main character and they killed it because in the book, Martin gets to the end and chops off the head of the person who you've been rooting for the whole this is Jim doing something that is...
functionally because the series is only gonna have one narrator as close as he can get to
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (03:49)
Yeah, and it's similar to the way that Joss Whedon and some other of the really good writers of TV shows are willing to kill off characters when the opportune moment arrives because it really does raise the stakes.
Brian (04:05)
Certainly, it's why Jim can in certain respects pull punches later without it feeling cheap. In Death Masks, when Harry is captured by Nicodemus, if this hadn't already happened, that sort of affably evil, is more weird than it is torture, wouldn't work. It would just seem like he has total plot armor.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (04:11)
Exactly.
Brian (04:27)
And it doesn't seem that way because we've seen that Jim won't just spare Harry so that we don't have to deal with an uncomfortable part of the book.
which means that, you know, there is some greater reason this is happening.
So that's really important, but it's also really important as a moment of character development because the Harry that comes out of this moment is gonna be different in a few ways, short term and long term. And I think it's important to talk why and what Jim is sort of.
trying to model in this scene.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (05:00)
Yeah, so let's go over some of the little description that we actually do get, because Jim is very purposefully vague here. By the way, if you want to skip over this part of our discussion where we go into detail about the horrible trauma that Harry's about to suffer,
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (05:16)
can skip ahead to 18 minutes.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (05:19)
And then we'll proceed on with the rest of the chapters here. So...
First they tear his clothes from him, and then you get this quote, I felt Bianca press her naked flesh to me, a heated, sinuous dream body that unraveled into a nightmare. I felt the skin split and burst apart around her true form. The sweetness of her perfume gave way to a
That's the description that we get at the end of chapter 33. And the beginning of chapter 34, we get another
lesser description of how he feels after this that I think is also very relevant. he said, first, I forced myself to control it, to stop the racking sobs and to draw in slow steady breaths. Next came the terror, the pain, humiliation. More than anything, I wanted to crawl into a hole and pull it in after me. I wanted to be not. So that is sort of, we get a
bit of a description of what actually happens and then we get his response to that when he finally comes back to himself. And I think from those things, we can draw on some speculation as to what happened here. First, we want to frame this in a couple of different ways. Brian, what would you describe as the various traumas that Harry suffered here with the understanding that we're not professional psychologists, we're just trying to do our best here?
Brian (06:58)
So one thing that Harry has to deal with here is the sensation of being forcibly drugged, the sort of loss of self that comes with that. I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but I was once out with a friend who was on uppers and we're pretty certain that during that night somebody spiked her drink.
And the way that she acted for the rest of the night was ridiculous and crazy and she was flying off the handle and you know, it just, was a crazy night. But we got her back safe and nothing, you know, happened in the sense that, you know, she was with the group at all times and just eventually made her way home and was safe. The next morning, she didn't just feel horrible because she felt a horrible hangover. She felt horrible because she basically blacked out.
for an entire night and knew you know that in flashes she was acting in a way that was just completely not consistent with her self-image she'd sort of lost her her sense of self and this is a very like tame was a terrible experience but it went as well as it possibly could have even afterwards just the feeling that to have
to have your self-possession taken from you traumatizing all in and of itself. And we know what Red Court Venom canonically does.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (08:24)
Yeah, and I gotta tell you, that's one of my personal, like, terrors, right? One of the things that I'm most scared of. If you're looking at like a fantasy story of some kind, and it's got a horror element where one of the characters is like possessed by something, whether it's a vampire, a spirit, a ghost, a poltergeist, whatever it was, and it's described from the character's point of view of like,
being thrown into the backseat and watching somebody else drive their own body, that's horrifying to me. So when we were talking about how we think the Red Court vampires might be that in reality in the Dresdenverse, that's like the nightmare scenario for me. And it sounds to me like that's at least part of what you're getting at here.
Brian (09:09)
Yeah, and not only is there that literal loss of self, just an inability to be yourself coherently in that moment, you're also losing control in ways that are a lot more visceral, that you feel afterwards. Specifically, while Harry's in this state, he's beaten. That's why he's in pain when he wakes up. And that's to emphasize both at the moment,
but also afterwards, the significance by which you've been disempowered through that loss of self. They don't have to beat him. Presumably he's not doing very much to resist. He's not even remembering or processing it properly. They can't even really make him, you know, probably beg in any meaningful sense. They're just hurting him because they know it will hurt him. And to feel like you've been so significantly
at someone else's mercy and that they were merciless is its own kind of horror.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (10:10)
And meanwhile, he's got that drug coursing through him that's probably like pulsing this feeling of everything's okay, man, when a part of him is screaming in the back of his mind going, no, it's not, they're beating me, they're drinking my blood, et cetera, et cetera. So like, on the one hand, yes, he's lost control, but if it was simply them restraining him and beating him up, that's one...
type of loss of control. But another type of loss of control is to make him feel like everything is fine with that, the way that that drug just puts you in the mood of like everything's okay, which is just a different kind of horror.
Brian (10:49)
And then that's extended because we do know that, you know, Harry was violated in a more literal sense. his actual, you know, person, his bodily autonomy, his, his self was literally violated. And you can read this in a, you know, metaphorical or literal sense, because the description given of Bianca is
that she was pressing against him in her flesh mask, which then was torn away. So you can read that as the vampires just, and I don't really think this is a just, I think this is a both metaphorical and if you sort of put yourself in the universe, very similar experience. They just drank his blood. Or they
also raped him while they drank his blood. And to be clear, the reason why I say rape as opposed to just saying sexual assault is this is all sexual assault the minute they tear his clothes off. Right? So all of this, no matter what, is sexual assault. But whether there was, you know, what we would legally consider rape or not is very open-ended. But I think even if that didn't happen,
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (11:55)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (12:09)
the blood drinking stands for a literal physical penetration of the self taking something from him for their satisfaction that is supposed to metaphorically be equivalent and I find it to be an effective examination or an effective method of without needing to use the term or needing to specifically evoke it
the kind of trauma that could result from forcible rape.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (12:37)
Yeah, and the reason that there is some suggestion that there was literal rape involved, but at the very least the metaphorical rape that you're talking about where the drinking of the blood is the violation of bodily autonomy is because of his reaction later that I read earlier. He has a strong sense of humiliation, which is not something that you necessarily get.
at any other point in the series when the bad guys capture him and beat him up, right? He's not humiliated that a supernaturally strong predator can hold him down and punch him in the face. That's not something that makes him humiliated. Humiliation is being forced by this drug to be attracted to this thing that looks beautiful, that you are attracted to, but then get that same desire twisted up.
with the revulsion and the disgust and being forced to deal with, in a physical sense, this horrifying creature that is in front of you now and mounting you or whatever is actually happening in the background that we don't get the details on. And that to me would easily...
go into the realm of humiliation. Like they made me feel things for them that I didn't want to feel, and it tied up my sense of desire with my sense of revulsion and horror in ways that is going to traumatize him for the next book or two.
Brian (14:02)
Right, and to be clear, that scenario is definitely possible. Personally, I'm of the opinion that Red Court vampires can't have sex. That the flesh mask is, know, functionally not functional.
and that the underlying creature is not something that could or would want to reproduce with a human or simulate that act.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (14:30)
Yeah, because we, I mean, they literally don't need sex to reproduce. They do it by biting you and then feeding you their blood, which puts the sort of creature, the parasite inside you. So there's no need for any kind of actual sexual reproduction. So that's definitely true. On the other hand, they're portrayed as having that sexual allure and they act extremely, at least Bianca does, very sensual and, but is that
a camouflage of some kind? Or is that tied into some actual desire that's carried over? It's unclear. I think I lean a little bit towards your angle of things, though. I think they just use it to enhance the flavor of the bloodletting because for them, drinking from a terrified, disgusted,
is better than just drinking from somebody who's spaced out on drugs.
Brian (15:22)
Well, and moreover, gives them a way that, you know, a lure is a lure. It gives them a way to sort of get their prey out of the herd and into a place where they can victimize them. But I think it doesn't really matter because functionally, the reason why Dresden is humiliated is because they violated him and took something from him.
and they drugged him to make him like it. that doesn't really take vampire saliva to have that reaction to real world trauma. But in this case, the cumulative effect of what we get on the page, I think, does read as something that I could really believe produces a similar trauma. And the reason why I think
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (15:51)
Exactly right.
Brian (16:14)
it's important to recognize that Jim is, think, deliberately going for this parallel. And I think does an effective job of convincing us that it's reasonable for Harry to treat these things, to feel emotionally as if it is a parallel, is because on the one hand, he, I think, wants to send a message that I really laud him for, which is that Harry Dresden
heroic figure, very determined, always, working to accomplish the thing that needs to get done and, fighting against the bad guys every turn. This can happen to him and it doesn't make him any less of a hero.
And the second thing is there's a reason he collects their fucking teeth.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (17:01)
And it's very probable that all this trauma that we've been talking about is one of the major factors that leads to the depression that we see at the beginning of summer night, where he's been locked in his basement, not seeing anybody. Obviously a good chunk of that is his guilt over Susan, but I think you could definitely argue a big chunk of it is also trauma as a result of everything that happens here in these two chapters.
Brian (17:27)
I mean, he literally stops taking care of his appearance or going out to see people. You know, it is a consistent pattern. But when Harry finally wakes up, he gets a discovery that is the other half of those events we're talking about in Summer Night, where he learns from Justine, who is also in this holding cell area with them, that Susan isn't the same person she was.
the last time you saw her.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (17:54)
Yeah, that's what happens in chapter 34. So the very beginning of chapter 34, when he that Justine is there with him, something odd happens. Justine is acting very differently than she did at the party and very differently than we'll ever see her act again. And it is explained that she has, or implied heavily, that she has some sort of mental illness, some sort of...
bipolar or schizophrenia, again, not psychologists, not making an actual diagnosis here, but it's very clearly coded that she has some kind of issue with her mental health and that Thomas is actually helping her with that. So that first is revealed when up and she looks at him and he narrates, quote,
her eyes disturbed me. There was something feral in them, something unsettling. I didn't look at her for too long. Even as bad off as I was, presence of mind not to want to look into her eyes. So while he first basically thinks to himself, she looks like she's a little off the deep end, her immediately response is,
I'm not crazy, she said, her voice sharp, edged. I know what you're thinking. And then Harry tries to say that wasn't what I was thinking. And she then says, I can always tell when I'm like this, unquote. So what's very interesting here, Brian, is that he thinks she looks crazy. She then says, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I'm looking crazy. Now we've seen that back and forth. It's a trope in many different
pieces of media. So one possibility, she's just being crazy and paranoid and coincidentally is right, he thinks she looks crazy because she appears paranoid, she does kinda look crazy. Another possibility though, is she actually like just really good at reading people or is she have a little bit of a talent, some kind of extra magical empathy that
allows her to read what other people are thinking.
Brian (19:54)
My thought, when I've read this scene every single time I've ever seen it, is that it's a reasonable but not incredible depiction of somebody who's
essentially in the midst of a psychotic episode. Justine is not only someone who is dealing with mental illness, she's someone who's just been through a traumatic experience that is very similar to the one Harry just went through. And because she's basically simultaneously going off of her meds and dealing with acute trauma, she's gone off the deep end. She's suffering, some level of psychosis or psychotic break or, you know, I mean, she...
When Harry says, I didn't think that, she just doesn't say, I know what you're thinking. She also gouges a few lines into his face with her nails. Like she is really on the edge here and acting very unstable. And alternatively, it seems like it could be some sort of extreme manic episode for like somebody who's bipolar, or it could be some sort of paranoid style.
series of you know the the voices are egging beyond kind of situations and either way what she tells us is that thomas takes that away either that extra energy of the mania or that extra whatever it is of the sort of intrusive thoughts that you can't turn off and he lowers the volume of those things
so that she can think clearly and that she can behave in society even when she's in a traumatic or tense or difficult situation. Because she doesn't have that coping mechanism, effectively medication, and because she's traumatized, she's literally crawling around on all fours during parts of this scene.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (21:47)
Yeah, and so it occurred to me, like when she says, can always tell when I'm like this, ⁓ meaning I think when she's when I'm like this, which means when I'm off my meds, or in this case, Thomas acting as a sort of medication stand-in, what does she mean? She can always tell what other people are thinking or feeling? And so that suggested to maybe she has some kind of magical talent that
manifests as a form of super empathy. And if that's the case, that could explain why the drugs don't work. They only make her sick. She gets the side effects, but no benefit because the thing that is causing her to feel this way, to appear this way is not a chemical imbalance. It's not a hormonal problem like the doctors would tell her. It's like her being able to sense
other people's emotions and it's supercharging her own emotions in a way that makes her unable to function normally. And it manifests as something that looks like mental illness. that would be a very cool sort of explanation for what's happening there. But since we don't ever see her like this again, it's really hard to be certain that that is the case.
Now, why wouldn't we ever see her like this? Is there never a time where she spends a day away from Thomas in the future? Well, no. We definitely know for a fact that she spends a lot of time away from Thomas. When he's kicked out of the family and she's working for Lara, they definitely don't get to see each other. So why isn't she like this when she's Lara's assistant? Why is she so much more capable at that time?
Brian (23:28)
And there's two potential options. One is that when Thomas fed on her in the, you know, culmination of blood rites when she's nearly killed, Justine lost whatever extra biological thing was triggering her mental illness. You know, whatever overproduction of hormones or neurotransmitters or whatever it is that was
her to sort of misfire to a certain extent, that experience stopped it. She got essentially a hard reset and when the power went back on, things happened to be working well again. Which is a little because she has a little bit of talent, she experienced something that would have killed anybody else.
and she came back for it very slowly
the way that Harry's hand recovers after blood rites. And the explanation for why she is no longer experiencing the problems from this potential little talent is that either Thomas ate it, it's gone, or because she had this long experience of essentially recovering from her illness,
as an adult slowly gaining back her mental faculties where she could get used to this sense that she has, she is now just able to manage it the way that, you know, a wizard learns to manage their talent. So I could see either of those as being possible. A couple of things that I love about this is, you know, if Justine is only mentally ill, and I say only, not in the sense that
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (24:56)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (25:09)
that's not enough to explain her behavior, but in the sense that that's something that's not uncommon. If she is only mentally ill, it seems like we'd see a lot more white court vampires with different kinds of mentally ill does and bucks. And Lara talks about feeding off classical musicians, not people who are in the hospital.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:36)
Right, Lara also mentions you are what you eat, so she tries to specifically feed off of high quality individuals, not those that seem broken. Maybe Thomas is the only one that figured out that hey, some of those that are broken have so much to give.
Brian (25:36)
So.
Yes, and that's definitely possible, but again, over the course of thousands of years, the fact that he would be the first person to figure this out is a little surprising if Justine just has a run-of-the-mill, biological issue that leads towards mental illness or just anything like that. If it is the result of talent, then that, as you mentioned, we were talking about this in the pre-show, draws a parallel to the Connie-Irwin relationship, where Connie...
doesn't even become a full white-court vampire in the same sense that everybody else does because she doesn't kill Erwin when she feeds. He has so much life energy that she can take and take and take and take and it's fine. And that's not to say that Thomas couldn't hurt by feeding from her. He obviously does in Blood Rites. It's just that Thomas...
has the ability to continue to have a relationship with her, to regularly feed from her, because she does literally have more to give for a unique or almost unique reason.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (26:56)
Yeah, and that makes this basically one of the only symbiotic relationships we've seen any of the White Court have, as opposed to parasitic relationships.
And they're then together for a long time.
she's never reduced to nothing except that one time when he took too much because he was literally dying. So that, I think, suggests to me that there might be more to it than simple mental illness, like you're saying.
Brian (27:21)
But even if that theory is incorrect, Justine... ⁓ and to be clear, obviously, Harry should notice if Justine is a minor talent, but if Thomas is literally feeding on that part of her, then Harry might not notice because it would be suppressed. So when they first meet, Harry might not get that sensation that he would on meeting another practitioner because Thomas is feeding on her. But...
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (27:47)
Could be.
Brian (27:48)
Regardless of whether this is mental illness or if this is, know, Justine has a little bit of magic to her, it's important to just recognize that Butcher is going out of his way to show that this very capable, very competent, very confident woman who, you know, is at turns both...
Alluring and everybody thinks his eye candy, but we very quickly find out means business and is very perceptive I mean even in this chapter She's laying out facts for Dresden about Red Court vampires that he doesn't know I mean she really It has her act together and is you know always gathering information it seems But it shows that this you know highly capable young woman only exists because she is
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (28:24)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (28:39)
in relationship she's in with Thomas. And that is what Jim gives us to basically signal we can be okay with this. Now your mileage may vary on
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (28:52)
Yeah, whether you buy Jim's premise here that this makes the relationship okay is up to you, obviously. And we'll probably have more conversation about that in the future. We already talked a little bit about that in a previous episode, but let's move on. So after Justine sort of explains to him what's going on, she sort of tunes out and then Rachel's ghost appears and she reveals that Bianca's guilt is essentially trapping Rachel's ghost here.
and she asks Dresden for help, after which Kravos immediately possesses Justine, taunts Dresden. Dresden taunts him back. Kravos leaves promising to get Harry the next time he goes into his dreams so that he can basically torture him in a nightmare that feels like 10 years instead of only torturing him to death alive right now. So at that point, Susan wakes up and we get this serious cliffhanger. Mr. Dresden.
I'm so thirsty while she looks up at him with her cold black eyes. Boy, howdy. I don't have clear memories of that reveal of her being a red court, or at the time, I didn't know that it was a half red court, but it would be revealed in the next chapter, but that is a hell of a thing to reveal at the end of a chapter like this.
Brian (30:09)
Oh my god, it's a total horror movie because Justine sounds like, you know, the video game character voice that's on the loop as you're walking up to the bad thing. She sat on her heels and rocked slow.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (30:18)
yeah, or like the little girl that's
repeating something that's really creepy. You're not gonna like it. You're not gonna like it. It's just, ⁓ man, it's super creepy here, yes.
Brian (30:23)
Yeah.
Yeah,
it's very, very eerie and just, you know, it's spine tingling
And Jim does an incredible job of, you know, with the Justine character, honestly, in this chapter, of having her, the madness that he says is present, sort of allow her to veer between the thing that's giving you valuable exposition and this thing that's adding to the horror and creep factor of the scene. Really masterfully done.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (30:58)
Yeah, it's a sort of slow reveal.
what, wait, that pile of laundry is actually a person? wait, it's Susan while Justine is telling you no and warning you away? Wait, why is she warning me away from Susan? God, black eyes. no, she's thirsty. So what we find out very quickly in the next chapter is Justine reveals that she's not all the way turned yet and that once she kills, she'll be different.
Right? How do we think Justine knows these details about the red cord, about the concept of half red vampires versus full red vampires?
Brian (31:33)
What I think, because I think it's the most complimentary to both of them, is that Thomas told her, because on the way to this party, or their first interaction with Redcord vampires, Justine, turned to him and said, you need to tell me what we're dealing with. And he actually sort of valued her ability to handle that information enough to explain it to her, because he, I assume, would know this.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (31:56)
Yeah, and he's in this brand
new relationship and decides to confide in her and give her the knowledge to armor herself against the dangers in a way that Dresden just has three books to learn the lesson of what to do.
Brian (32:10)
Right, and I think that says something about both Thomas and Justine. ⁓ it's a knock against Harry, but it's also, it's a big sort of jump on his part. You're not just supposed your does other vampire courts, sure. That's not something that I'm sure is a normal white court protocol. And Justine not only has the presence of mind to presumably push for an answer, because I don't think Thomas is just
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (32:26)
Hmm.
Brian (32:37)
dumping it on her. she not only has the presence of mind to push for that answer, she also remembers it and not only remembers it, but is able to recite it chapter and verse to Dresden when she's literally out of her mind with terror and trauma, days later in a basement holding
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (32:39)
Agreed.
Brian (32:58)
Jim does so much with her character in just the couple scenes she's in in this book that it's a little bit of a tragedy that we don't see her again until Blood Rites and then she's really off the screen for quite a while because the very early version of Justine is a very weird character, a very different character in the Dresden Files.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (33:17)
Yeah, agreed. So after Harry realizes, like he looks into Susan's eyes and realizes that they don't have a soul gaze, which means, hey, wait a minute, of course we don't have a soul gaze. We already did that when we first met and you never forget the memories of a soul gaze. So that means Leah could not have possibly taken them. Maybe she just boarded them up inside her mind. So he starts trying to force his way into
Susan's mind to break down that barrier in a way that of course is totally legal aboveboard and doesn't break any of the laws about mind manipulation. He's trying to free her from it, so it's probably okay. But when he does finally say, love you, is when he manages to burst down the walls that were guarding the memories of him and their time together. Whether you ascribe that to, well,
The fairies don't understand love as a concept. And so when he pushed that emotion into her and really meant it, that is what allowed him to break through those walls, or it was his last gasp, or it meant something to her and reached through the walls. Somehow he gets through there. And then when Susan recovers her memory, she kinda just starts saying, you know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I tried to stop them.
Right? That's what she's sorry about. She's sorry that she let them get her. And Brian, it occurred to me that a lot of people really dislike Susan in this book because of her choice to put herself at this party. And we've made excuses for her in the past. We could say maybe she really didn't understand how bad that the danger could be. And she misunderstood Dresden's warning as
the boyfriend who doesn't want you to put you in any danger and wants to keep you in a house with a padded wall so that you never hurt yourself as opposed to he's warning you away from literal death lady. So we've made those excuses before. But I think if Susan right here had said, I'm sorry, Harry, I should have listened to you or I screwed up, I shouldn't have come,
Some kind of mea culpa here where she acknowledges her mistake. I think that would go a long way towards mollifying a lot of the people that are mad at her here. And that's just to feel like a missed opportunity because it feels like she's not sorry about coming to the party. She's sorry about not being able to fight them off herself.
Brian (35:51)
Right, it seems like she still doesn't get it. She still doesn't get what she did that actually led to the events that they're all experiencing right now. And that is a disservice to her character. We're supposed to believe that she's, you know, very intelligent, very perceptive. Later, we're going to see her as very brave, and we've already seen her as very brave in the first three books. So it's puzzling.
that she doesn't get that she sort of caused this by taking the invitations. And listen, I think that there's various reasons why Jim doesn't think he needs to have that moment on page right here. Because obviously, in his mind, he has punished her enough. This is enough.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (36:39)
Yeah, there's
no way that she walks away from this and spends the next several books before she shows back up in death masks, like not thinking this was her fault. Of course, she is kicking herself every day when she wakes up with the thirst going, how could I be so stupid? Right, there's no way that character, the character that goes on to grow and become secret agent Susan,
Brian (36:52)
Right.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (37:08)
is not a character that doesn't have the ability to accept when they've done something wrong.
Brian (37:12)
Yes, but I think that the missed opportunity is actually a little bit for Harry in this moment. look, Grave Peril is a step above the first two books, in my opinion, in terms of how deftly Jim is managing multiple plot threads here and sort of how complex the characters that he introduces are. But in this moment, with the trauma that Harry's just suffered,
and the hopelessness and despair he feels at the beginning of this Reconnecting with the strong emotions that he feels for Susan could very well lead him to lashing out. Not physically, but yelling at her a little bit.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (37:58)
Why didn't you listen? I told you not to go.
Brian (38:01)
Just, you know, tears streaming down his face. He's so upset about what he's seeing. Yes, he just got through to her, but she's gonna have to spend the rest of her life like this. I mean, it could really hit him and he could, and Harry doesn't do this. He really doesn't do this, but this is a unique circumstance. He could kind of lay into her in a way that's a little bit unfair. And I think that would be really helpful in conveying two things. One,
exactly how fucked up Harry is. Because the rest of the things that he does in this book, and we're going to discuss another reason why he might be a little short-tempered for the rest of the book, but the rest of what he does in this book is not the actions of a, you know, stable person. So kind of seeing him on edge in a way that's uncharacteristic for him would be consistent with the rest of the scene.
but it also gives Susan the opportunity to not fight him on it. To let him blame her and just to take that and for us to really see her saying, know, it is my fault, I'm so, sorry. I'm sorry for what you've had to go through. And that's what doesn't happen in this scene. And I think that sort of unresolved emotional moment is a big
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (39:13)
Yeah.
Brian (39:21)
part of the reason why, and what Susan does in this story is really stupid, but it's big part of the reason why people think it is so unforgivably dumb because they don't even get the emotional catharsis of her on page realizing it.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (39:38)
That's exactly right. Okay, so after that, chapter ends with Harry basically saying, okay, I'm gonna go and let Kravos get me, and Susan's like, but he'll kill you, and he's like, yep, I'm pretty much counting on it. And that brings us to chapter 36, where Harry needs to basically fall asleep and let Kravos kill him, goad him into killing him instead of torturing him in a dream forever, then,
know, fighting him off with his own ghost. But this starts with a very familiar scene here, Brian. He starts in a nightmare, and it starts like this, was hanging by one wrist over an inferno of fire, smoke, and horrible creatures. The steel of the handcuffs suspending me, cutting into my flesh, drawing blood. Smoke smothered me, forced me to cough, and my vision blurred as I started to fade out, unquote. That remind you of any place?
Brian (40:33)
⁓ is that Lord of the Rings?
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (40:35)
Yeah, that's what he's falling off the bridge like Gandalf. No, that's Victor Sells' house, the very end of Stormfront, right before Morgan comes in and saves Harry. At the very end after Victor Sells has fallen, you've got the fire, the smoke, the horrible creatures, he's hanging by the steel of the handcuffs suspending him. So that's very clearly an allusion to that moment. And after that, we get
Brian (40:39)
Right, right, right.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (41:04)
Kravos showing up and Brian, Jim loves to write his like just corny, cliched villain dialogue and he really hangs a lampshade on it here.
Brian (41:17)
Yeah, they enjoyed it. If only I could have videotaped it for you. Talking about Justin's experiences at the hands of the red. TV will rot your brain, Kravos. Jokes. Jokes will not save you now. And what is Harry gonna do for the rest of the fight? Joke in a way that ends up saving him because Kravos gets too angry to be rational.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (41:38)
Yeah, and then Harry specifically says, do they produce a cliched lines textbook for villains or something? Go for broke, tell me that you're going to kill me anyway. You might as well reveal your secret plan. Like Harry gets to hang a lampshade on how dopey and corny this villain is, but we also get to sort of revel in the chewing of the scenery that the bad guy does, and you're not wrong.
because I love the thing that pushes Kravos over the edge is when Harry says, like, man, you totally dropped when I took you out with a piece of chalk and a Ken doll. Maybe the link with that doll works so well because it was anatomically correct and then he gets interrupted because that just causes Kravos to go crazy. And of course, Kravos would be so insecure that he would go enraged and see red if someone.
dared to compare him to a Ken doll like The shame.
Brian (42:33)
Yeah, and it's an incredible juxtaposition because in the previous chapter, Harry wakes from a familiar nightmare. He compares it to ones that he had as a child that his father would make him feel better about, but he's having a nightmare. He wakes from a nightmare into a place where he has no plan and he's experienced a violation, and a way, an emasculating violation. And what happens in this chapter? Well now, Harry has a plan.
and he goes and experiences a nightmare, but it's okay. He's gonna handle it. Because now, not only is he going to take care of the situation and is he going to be determined, is he going to, he's throwing the, know, emasculating jokes in the teeth of the thing that's coming for him. Harry's not just winning here because he's smarter than the other guy. He's winning because his outlook is fundamentally
more rational by virtue of not dwelling on his traumas but focusing on what he can do to fix this situation. Honestly, you I don't think that Jim's necessarily taken a lot of psychology but occasionally he's just very very practical in terms of his ⁓ analysis of, know, sort of what works, what helps, what gets you out of a funk. It happens to Harry all the time and this is just a perfect mirror of the last chapter.
but now handling it as adaptively as possible.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (43:57)
Yeah, and so what happens next is that Harry has successfully goaded Kravos into killing him instead of torturing him. that causes Harry's ghost to appear in the dream as Susan is giving his real body CPR, which means that his real self is still alive. So his real quote unquote self in the dream, maybe his soul self in the dream is.
gets to stay alive long enough for him to team up with the ghost and kill Kravos. Now, when he does this, he starts eating and feeling the power rushing back into him as he literally gulps down spirit flesh like a wolf mouth that he's grown on his ghost, on his like spirit self. But we also see that he specifically says he keeps going after he gets back what was taken from him and he just
finishes eating all the rest of Kravos Now Brian, we do see some effects that this has on him, specifically very soon after he wakes up, he gets very quickly irritated, like his temper is extremely short. Justine refuses to come out from behind the washing machine, and instead of asking her politely or just going over and assuring her everything is gonna be okay, he violently causes her to get tumble out.
by using a wind spell to push her out from behind it, which is very uncharacteristic of him. And we then see him literally burn Kyle Hamilton alive, screaming in death with a spell we've never seen him use before that's very clearly a spell that Kravos has made. So there are some obvious effects from this. Here's my question to you. Are these effects permanent or temporary?
Brian (45:42)
Now that's really interesting because I think the answer that is most obvious is temporary. Come on Adam, Harry's not an asshole burning people alive or even vampires using that spell after this scene. Literally the magic's gone. He's not doing it anymore. And there's a good reason to believe that that's true. He seems to kind of leave it all on the dance floor at the end of this book. But...
Harry doesn't tell us that he lost Kravos's magic at any point. Kravos didn't seem to be losing anything that he took from Harry when he was in ghost form. And I mean, the Harry of future books is a lot stronger than the Harry of the last few. Now definitely, certainly, obviously, that's in large part
due to him having better control of his magic and being much more efficient with the power that he could spend. But would I be surprised if he got a 10 % power boost? Not really. And it might just be the case that because that part of Kravos becomes a part of him, it effectively gets washed of its anger, of its evil. You are what you eat. But when that becomes a part of you, it's what you eat.
and Harry continues to feed from the same things he's always fed from, it then becomes, the thing he's taken, becomes a part of Harry no longer driving him the same way it does in these scenes.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (47:10)
Yeah, that's a great way to put it, right? The magical power-up is permanent, but right after he does burn Kyle Hamilton alive, he has a sort of sick revulsion from that in the next chapter. He's like, I can't believe I just did that. And that's his own sense of self and his own morals and principles returning to him and overpowering the like,
Kravos frustration irritation anger that was driving him just a moment before now one way you could read that is okay He threw out the the Kravos anger with the magic that killed Kyle and now it's gone It's out of him. He used it and it's not there anymore But I do like the idea because it feels a little consistent that he gets at least a small magical upgrade here either to the size of his gas tank or his
subtle amount of control improvement or a subtle amount of just raw power improvement here. Meanwhile, feelings, the sort of psychological effects that he got from Kravos would eventually, you know, either waste away or get washed into his own sense of self, his own soul, his own spirit, and become subsumed by the Harry. So the Harry takes control and just gets, so the magic is getting washed.
You get all the dirty Kravos stains out of those clothes that he's taking from him.
Brian (48:40)
And it might be that there are some permanent consequences. For example, how he processes the trauma he has towards Redcord vampires. He definitely doesn't lose all of the Kravos emotion right after that spell. some part of him is revolted, but some part of him says they were vampires. They had it coming. They were monsters. I hate them, I said. My voice rang out too loud in that room. I hate them, Susan.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (49:00)
Mmm.
Brian (49:07)
Harry is on the warpath and Bob says and looking grim wow your aura is different you look a lot like shut up Bob because Bob's going to say Kravos
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (49:20)
Mm-hmm, he absolutely is. So yeah, I think there's definitely some argument to be made that maybe the magical power-up is permanent, but we don't see a lot of effects of this psychological element, this anger, being a permanent fixture. The next time we really see that, it can be easily ascribed to Lashiel's influence in his head, which I think is
in White Night.
Brian (49:40)
But Adam, you noticed something else that he gets from eating Kravos that I'd never picked up on and I thought it was completely fascinating because the spell he uses to get Justine out from the refrigerator is Ventaservitas.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (49:54)
Yeah, so one thing that's very interesting. You know we've been tracking the various spells that Harry has used, and I can tell you for a fact that early on in the book, he uses Ventas Servitas quite a bit. He reuses it to retrieve his staff and Rod in Chapter 2. In Chapter 8, he pushes Kyle and Kelly away after delivering the invitation. And in Chapter 10, he closes the door to intimidate Mort.
Chapter 14 is when Kravos eats him. He never uses Ventas Servitas again until this scene after he gets his mojo back. does use Ventas Servitas? Kravos does in Murphy's office to push Harry away. So it's very clear to me that one of the things that Kravos ate from Harry, in addition to we speculate it, it was like his
ability to turn his fear into a sort of righteous anger that would let him overcome his fear and give him confidence. We talked about how that was one of the main pieces of him that's been missing this whole time. But also, he took specifically his knowledge and power in wind magic, because he never used it again. He used different kinds of magic, but not Ventas Servitas. And then he immediately uses it twice in this chapter and again in the next couple chapters as well.
Brian (51:06)
And that's a
And that's so fascinating because obviously Jim associates air with intellect. Bob is a spirit of air and a spirit of intellect. And that doesn't seem to be exactly what Kravos took from him emotionally. Kravos didn't take his reason. He didn't take his intelligence or anything. So it seems like either, you know, it just doesn't matter. Those two things aren't necessarily.
linked in any particular way, just his knowledge of air magic was next to, you know, his righteous fury in his brain. Or that the way that the elements are tied to a person varies a little bit from person to person. Not for something like Bob. Bob is a pure elemental spirit. He's unchanging. But for a mortal, maybe air builds from your righteous fury and your fire.
comes from self-loathing or unrighteous fury or something like that. And it's just interesting that Jim made that choice, that that's the thing he can't use because Kravos took it And it's so cool that Jim does this here in Grave Peril, doesn't say anything about it, and then later pulls the same damn trick in small favor and makes it a plot point.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (52:28)
Yes, exactly right.
So yeah, that takes us to the end of this chapter where Harry blasts the door with wind and then immediately as he tries to leave, Kyle's hand comes around and grabs him and slams him into the wall and says, tainted or not, we shall tear open his heart and see what a wizard's blood tastes like. Now, Brian, that is yet another insane cliffhanger. I wanna take you back to chapter 30. The end of chapter 30,
is when Michael is carrying him to the truck, away from the party, after everything is being burned, and he passes out. Now, if you're reading the book at night and it's 10.45, 11 o'clock, I should probably go to bed, but I really wanna see what happens when Harry wakes up. That's actually not a bad stopping point. But if you decide to press on Brian, let me remind you, the end of chapter 31,
has him getting thrown head first at his fireplace by a Kravos possessed Lydia. Well, you can't stop there. You gotta keep going. And then the end of chapter 32 is him getting caught on the bridge by Leah saying we can now finally conclude our bargain. Well, you gotta keep going there. The end of 33, he falls into the trap and passes out again. What's happening? When's he gonna be safe? Chapter 34.
Susan has woken up with black eyes saying, Mr. Dresden, I'm so thirsty. You still can't stop. You gotta keep going to where Susan says, you can't go to sleep, Cravelous will get inside you, he'll kill you. And Harry says, I'm pretty much counting on it. You're like, what the hell are you talking about, Harry? I gotta find out what happens next. And now here we are at the end of chapter 36 and Kyle's got him by the throat.
And now you've only got three chapters left, so you might as well finish it, Brian, and now it's 2 a.m. and you have to get up in five hours.
Brian (54:21)
Yeah, it's on the audiobook two hours plus of straight cliffhangers from the end of chapter 31 to just the end of this chapter. So, you know, it's 11 o'clock, you're finishing the audiobook, you're thinking you're gonna go to bed. Well, I just wanna see what happens when Harry wakes up. Now it's one in the morning, right? But you've only got another 40 minutes of the book left. Are you really gonna stop? And then by the time you finish the
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (54:33)
Yes.
Yeah.
Brian (54:50)
Man, that was heavy. And it's 2 a.m. And before you go to bed, don't you just want to hear the opening chapter of Summer Night to know that Harry made it out okay? Right, it's just...
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (54:56)
Yeah, a little palate cleanser, right? it's an assassination
attempt. What happens next?
Brian (55:02)
And when people
say that the writing quality improves in Grave Peril, I literally think it's this. This is where The Dresden Files goes from a really cool, interesting urban fantasy book series where the author clearly knows a lot about mythology and is willing to flex and like really understands exactly what a certain kind of fan wants to see him hit in a book to, holy shit, is this guy good? This is a page-turner. This is like some...
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (55:09)
Yes.
Brian (55:31)
James Patterson, Stephen King, I can't put it down stuff. And it not only goes through the end of this book, I mean, I remember the experience of finishing Grave Peril and immediately starting Summer Night, which is one of the reasons why I like that book so much, because I finally get to exhale at the end of it.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (55:52)
Yes, agreed. And it really says a lot about the pacing that Butcher has really cultivated at this point that's really showing because you have, it's like a roller coaster, right? You've got these click, click, click, you're going up the roller coaster. And that's like some of these scenes where he's learning new information from Justine. And then all of sudden you're at the top of the hill and
Susan's a Red Court vampire now and you're like dealing with all that and then oh, he manages to bring her memories back and now she's okay and you're going up the next hill and everything is calm and then he's like, I'm gonna have to let Krabus kill me and you're like, what the And so then you're going down the next hill. It's like, it's so well done.
it gives you these rush of like, man, a bunch of stuff is happening and then it slows down and you get to catch your breath just a little bit, but it always ends at the top of a hill right before the thing you want to see next is about to happen. It's so good.
Brian (56:51)
And the thing is, Adam, it does have that sense of rising and falling, which is key, because you can go one of two ways, right? And both of which are gonna alienate some readers. One is the Lord of the Rings way, where it's, you know, a thousand pages of just walking around and then something incredible happens. my God, the Rohirrim have arrived at Pelennor Fields and the Andy Serkis audio book is absolutely, my God, it's incredible, right?
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (57:14)
Yeah.
Brian (57:18)
Or you can be, you know, your sort of stereotypical comic book where there's basically no point that there's not a pow, a bam, or a whiff on the page.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (57:29)
Yeah, you get one page, a
couple of panels of, even in the Welcome to the Jungle, there were one page, a couple panels within each of the issues where Harry's taking the time to talk to Bob about what do we think this is? And outside of that, it was discovering a body or Hecation Hag or whatever. So yeah, even within a Dresden Files comic book, it
feels more like full speed ahead.
Brian (57:55)
Right. And the closest you can get to that thrill ride sensation is a book that feels, to a certain extent, like a comic book, where there is basically no respite. Except there are. Because then it wouldn't have that roller coaster sensation. And Jim kind of figures out in Grave Peril exactly...
the amount of break time he needs between climaxes to just have those crazy endings like in cold days where it's just epic scene after epic scene after epic scene and you get just a little falling action and then boom we're going to the next crescendo and he's learning that here and not only does he sort of figure that out here but what he's doing that's really incredible is there's a lot of writers who do that you know
Like I said, you're James Patterson. I read a lot of murder mystery or thriller when I was a kid. know, Tom Clancy, it'll take him 300 pages of schematics to get to the following action. But, you know, then it's kind of a nonstop thrill ride. Jim is maintaining that pace throughout the book, but he doesn't need to have 300 pages of schematics in the beginning. He's doing all of his lore drops.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (59:00)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (59:12)
during the falling actions of the climaxes. that's really incredible. This is the kind of thing that you associate with some story that's really close to the real world, like a murder mystery or a psychological thriller, because you don't have to explain very much. To do this in a fantasy series is really pretty out there.
and really just isn't something that people were doing in the 80s or the early 90s.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (59:44)
Yeah, yeah, it's very impressive. Okay, I think that takes us to the end of our chapter discussion for this week. next week's episode is a patron bonus episode where we discuss the brand new novella, Outlaw. So if you want to hear us talk about Outlaw, then you can go ahead over to our Patreon and sign up there.
to at least the wizard tier and you'll get access to all of our discussions on a restoration of faith, graphic novel, Welcome to the Jungle, as well as a two-part discussion of A Fistful of Warlocks.
Brian (1:00:14)
And just like we did for 12 months, this discussion is not going to be our page-by-page analysis of Outlaw. This is sort of our preliminary reaction, where does it fit into the series? And since we're doing the short stories largely in order, we might actually revisit this topic in the future when it sort of would come in the book series. So this is the beginning of our Outlaw content in reaction to its release. This probably won't be the last time we talk.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:00:36)
Mm-hmm.
Okay, I think that takes us over to our question for Bob.
Brian (1:00:49)
So Bob, this is called Grave Peril, and there's a later book called Ghost Story, and there's ghosts in both of them, maybe not surprisingly. But I don't get it, Bob. The ghosts in Ghost Story have these nice categories that we're told that they fit into. But the Grave Peril ghosts, explain it to me like they're kinds of werewolves. How do they fit into the schema?
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:01:10)
Yeah, Bob would be perfect here. He would have a nice categorization for us, just like the werewolves. But, sent me a text, he said he's too busy dodging vengeance spirits. Did he piss off some spirits somehow?
Brian (1:01:21)
Maybe he made a winning bet on the Kentucky Derby or something? I don't know.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:01:25)
Could be. All right, anyway, put this question out to the Reddit and we got some pretty great answers, but the two that I wanted to highlight, Artichoke Open 295 gave us really good starting place for the sort categorization of some of these ghosts and came up with some examples. And Stern actually sort of crystallized something that I had been considering about using a Cartesian plane.
which is, if you remember back in your geometry classes, would be a sort of four quadrant chart or graph where you have two axes, one that goes through the center and one that goes through horizontally, so it's forming basically a cross. in ⁓ this way, we have two different main axes that we're talking about the...
ghosts in the Dresden files. The first axis is sane versus insane. And we're pulling this from Ghost Story where I think it's Sir Stuart sort of describes that ghosts that impact the mortal world in some way are insane. You have to be insane to impact the mortal world. You're not supposed to be there. so that you can think of that as a
Sane is non-interventionalist, like they don't intervene in the mortal world, versus Insane is a very interventionalist ghost that tries to intervene in the mortal world. The other axis is sapient versus animalistic. Sapient ghosts know that they are ghosts. They're self-aware of what's going on. Animalistic, they don't know that they're ghosts. They kind of are operating on a level of emotional instinct, in a sense. And what that does is it gives us
four different quadrants to sort of place each of the different ghosts into, and we came up with some cool names for them.
Brian (1:03:08)
so the first spirits we're gonna talk about are actually in our Cartesian quadrant four. They are on the same insane scale positive, but on the sapient self-awareness scale negative. These are the same animalistic ghosts, which we're gonna call wraiths, and which you can think of if you've seen any
ghost hunting shows or movies that have this kind of thing. You can think of these as residual hauntings. They're ghosts that don't know that they're a ghost and maybe they even do the same actions over and over and over again without interacting with or being interacted by the outside world.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:03:48)
Yeah, and a perfect example of that in this book is Agatha Hagglethorn, right? She's reliving her death in a very specific way. Now, there's a caveat there because I'm talking about Agatha Hagglethorn before she had the barbed wire curse placed on her.
Because before she was cursed, she would be probably going through this looping process, just like Harry sees her do in the second chapter of the book, but she was probably doing it pretty much on the spirit side, in her own So that did cause an increase in the mortality rate of babies in the mortal world, but it wasn't huge. It was detectable, but not
and she didn't really cross over. Meanwhile, after she was cursed, she very specifically crossed over and was gonna kill like an entire NICU filled with babies. So I think that's a pretty perfect sort of before and after comparison of sane and animalistic versus insane and animalistic.
So other examples besides Agatha of this sane and animalistic ghost that we're calling a wraith or a residual haunting is in Ghost Story, we have the wraiths and the lemurs that are described as basically like doing bad things, but it's all contained within the spirit realm, right? They're kind of acting in a very animalistic, instinctual way. They don't seem self-aware at all. The spirits in Graceland Cemetery,
are also sort of sane and animalistic, with the exception of like Inez probably fits somewhere in between animalistic and sapient. then you also have the spirits in Graceland Cemetery. In this book, Harry describes like feeling them and having to push them back with the power of his light in his amulet when he goes to confront the nightmare in the cemetery. So those also feel more like sane and animalistic that he's only able to feel in the real world of this book.
because the barrier between the worlds has worn down so much.
Brian (1:05:45)
And it also seems to be the sort of background ghosts of ghost story to a large extent. Just the spirits that Harry sees wherever, know, just sort of the landscape of the spirit world is filled with ghosts that aren't really thoughtful. They're not really trying to do anything. And they're also not interacting with the mortal world. They're just these...
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:05:52)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (1:06:08)
shades that are left over from whatever happened in a person's life and they're just kind of, you know, continuing to happen. They are an echo of a sound that has already passed. And the interesting thing that we'll see throughout these tiers is you might say, well, the lemurs are really, really different from the, you know, sort of other spirits of Graceland. They're, they're a lot more vicious. They're a lot worse.
Are they really the same kind of thing? And, you know, I, I, of course, see this beautiful four quadrant schema from Adam and I'm like, well, we could make it a 16 quadrant schema where we include the dimensions of time and a Z axis and, know, and we could continue categorizing them. But I think one thing that we should just mention here is that something that we're leaving out of the schema is the ghost's degree of malevolence. So whether a ghost is
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:06:45)
Ha
Hahaha!
Mm-hmm.
Brian (1:07:03)
benevolent or neutral or malevolent is not affecting our categorization. The Lemurs aren't trying to affect the real world in any way and they're also not thinking through what they're doing. So they are the same kind of ghost as, you know, some Discovery Channel travel, you know, thing where the woman in the tavern keeps crying every night because she can't find her cat or whatever.
You know, it's exactly the same thing from our perspective because we're not considering the inherent evilness of the spirit. But that being said, I would like to nominate our Quadrant Three, the insane and animalistic ghosts, as your classic evil spirits, which I think we can call specters.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:07:51)
Yeah, I think Spectre's a great name for him in large part because Harry dubs some of them the Lector Spectres, right? These are the ghosts that Mort was purposefully keeping around his house and essentially through his own power, keeping them tame. And the implication was that if he wasn't doing that, these things would be out doing damage in the mortal world to mortals.
in whatever way that they do, right? Because they are insane, meaning they're able to and willing to affect the mortal world, but they're also operating on this animalistic nature. So the Lector Specters are perfect example of that. Another one might be in Deadbeat.
Corpse Taker is fighting Gravain outside of Harry's apartment during the the Polka will never die scene and when that happens we see him pull a bunch of ghosts out to a throw at Gravain's zombies and we can kind of think of those as specters as well. Whether those were like the Lector specters that Corpse Taker had somehow gotten around themselves or if those were typical normal wraiths that
they had been poured sort of malice and purpose into through necromancy to turn them insane is certainly up for debate. But the point is that at that moment, they were in the real world and affecting the real world and they also didn't appear to have any self-awareness.
Brian (1:09:20)
Right, and I think they're actually the ghosts that injure or kill one of the warden trainees when they're all holed up in that house after Harry's gotten back on his ⁓ Tyrannosaur. And in the text, I believe they're even called specters. So Jim is sort of consistent about this in a way, when there's a ghost that's affecting the mortal world and it's evil, but it's also thoughtless.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:09:32)
Hmm.
Brian (1:09:47)
he refers to it as a specter. you know what, Jim, fine. We'll refer to it the same way.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:09:51)
And as mentioned before, Agatha Haggothorn, after she was cursed, falls directly into this category of specter because she's still animalistic. She's still not self-aware that she is a ghost. She's just reliving that memory of when she had the murder, suicide of herself and her husband and her child. And instead, after being cursed, she's gone insane and taken that directly into the mortal realm.
All right, and the next one we have is insane, but self-aware or sapient, however you want to put it. Now that is Quadrant Two on our Cartesian plane. And this one, have some examples. Corpse Taker is an example from Ghost Story and Kravos is a pretty good example from Grave Peril. What'd you say, Brian?
Brian (1:10:38)
absolutely. I mean, they're insane in the definition we're given in Ghost Story. They're attempting to affect the real world, but they're doing it for reasons. They have a plan. Possibly both of them have the same plan about effectively coming back to life by hijacking some practitioner. you know, it's, they definitely seem to be the same kind of thing. And I love the name Poltergeist, right? German for noisy ghost. And the reason why
there, it fits so well, is because these are the ghosts that affect reality, they literally make noise, they're the things that knock stuff off the shelf and play tricks on you, but there seems to be, and whenever you read about a poltergeist haunting in, you know, your paranormal ⁓ case files things, the poltergeist hauntings always seem to have some sort of coordinated, maybe malevolence, maybe just...
sort of mischievousness behind them, where they are doing what they're doing in order to drive you a little crazy. And that fits somebody else who we know in the story too.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:11:36)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, ghost story Harry, let's start with the caveat. We know he's not actually a ghost. He's walking around in his soul in that book, but he's close enough that everybody assumes that he is a ghost, right? So that is close enough for our purposes. And if we were to plot that version of Harry on here, he would be insane and sapient he literally uses the spell.
Be in order to materialize and manifest in the physical world. So he is definitely in the same quadrant as Corpse Taker in that.
Brian (1:12:18)
Yeah, he's a funny example of a benevolent, insane poltergeist because he is spending the entire book literally interacting with people. mean, he's talking to Fitz. He's just straight up giving him advice and messing up that whole gang. he's affecting the real world from the drop the same way that a living being would try to do, which is insane, but he also knows he's doing it. He's fully aware of what he's doing and he...
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:12:23)
Yes.
Brian (1:12:46)
you know, thinks that it's something he sort of has the bonus opportunity to do while he fulfills his actual purpose, which is to figure out who killed him. And that brings us to our quadrant one, our positive positives, our sane and sapient ghosts, which we're calling shades after a couple memorable ghosts of this type.
the most prominent of which, I think, is Sir Stuart, who isn't really attempting to affect the world of the living, but he has a purpose, and he knows he's dead.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:13:24)
Yeah, I think it does also extend to the other guardian spirits that had been, Mort has collected around his house, or maybe Sir Stuart has collected them. Like the World War I doughboys and the Korean soldiers and stuff that have a purpose, their death was unfulfilled somehow. They needed to guard something or to protect something. And so they seem to be at least partially self-aware that...
Brian (1:13:32)
Mmm.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:13:49)
They're a ghost and they're using their ghostly powers to protect this house, right? So I think they definitely fit in there, but I think Rachel also fits here. Even though she's not trying to protect anything, she's definitely not really affecting the real world. I mean, she is haunting Bianca in a sense, but she's not doing it because she wants to. She's trapped here by Bianca's guilt. It's one of those, you know,
ghosts that are trapped by a particular unfulfilled purpose.
Brian (1:14:20)
Right, Rachel
is pretty close to the metaphorical origin here. Like she's definitely sapient. She for sure knows that she's a ghost. Whether she's sane or insane, you could make an argument either way. She does ultimately have an effect on the real world, but it seems like she's sort of been forced into it. She doesn't necessarily want to, and it's just kind of the only way for her to get released.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:14:24)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (1:14:44)
You know, if the only way for a spirit to fulfill its purpose is to interact with the mortal world, I don't think that makes it insane. And Sir Stuart walks that line pretty closely too.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:14:56)
Yeah, and another one from this book is, I think, the ghost Harry that we just saw in these chapters. This is literally for real an actual ghost of Harry, not Harry walking around in his soul, and it is aware that it's a ghost and it's not trying to impact the real world, it's trying to only deal with Kravos here in the spiritual world, and it has a purpose and it fulfills it and then it disappears, which kind of fits this perfectly.
Brian (1:15:25)
And it's so funny, Adam, because of course, when you think of Harry Dresden, he died doing the right thing, you think of his death and changes, which as far as we can tell, maybe technically isn't totally a death. But he's already come back from the dead. He does it right here. And that implies that dying doing the right thing is dying being snarky to a villain, which absolutely, Jim, is full send endorsing. So I think that's really we've solved the riddle.
But another ghost that fits this trope is in grave peril, the vengeance spirits at the end. Now again, they're interacting with the real world, but it seems that they are doing this to get the kind of catharsis that releases them from being ghosts. They're only attempting to interact in a way that fulfills their actual purpose, and in that way, they're not an insane ghost like Kravos that is sort of making things up as they go along and trying to...
sort of lengthen their stay on the other side so that they can achieve some tertiary, long-term, maybe never really achievable goal. The difference between sane ghosts is if they are able to their purpose, which it is possible for them to do, that's the end of the story.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:16:37)
Yep, another case in point, Murphy from 12 months. Her shade is there, Harry calls it up. She doesn't try to go into the mortal world and mess with it. She is summoned by him. So I would put her here in the shade category, sane and self-aware. And she tries to help Harry, but she's only here clinging because he's clinging to her and she's seeking to help him.
get that catharsis to let her go so that she will fade away. Same situation as with the vengeance spirits.
Brian (1:17:09)
And it's so interesting because we've seen that ghosts can move between these types, Agatha Haglothorn being the perfect example. And I think it's implied in 12 months that the reason that Murphy's shade is sane and sapient is because of Mort and Fitz. And without their intervention, either she becomes something like a poltergeist, something that is trying to interfere with the mortal world the same as Harry was in Ghost Story, but with the tragedy of
being a real ghost or Harry forcing her to relive these moments as if she were alive would drive her to almost being animalistic, to sort of not knowing that she is a ghost and therefore not really acting within the imperatives of the moment but just within sort of the impression of the character that was left behind.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:18:01)
Yeah, I could definitely see that being the case. Like it took Mort and Fitz and their little bits of therapy before Harry called her up to turn her away from, I mean, just look at her death. How ridiculously mega unfair that was. She went out in the middle of this massive war and she gets killed because Rudolph has bad trigger discipline. Are you freaking kidding me?
That could cause anyone to have so much negative emotion over their death to want to either A, like get vengeance on Rudolph or something. I could definitely see that being like her ghost could have gone either way, but because of the intervention of Fitz and Mort, she became what we see in 12 months, a shade that can sort of console and work with Harry.
Brian (1:18:53)
And one thing that I noticed when we making this list, Adam, is that you don't see a lot of animalistic spirits that are benevolent. And I think it's because of exactly what you said. When a ghost is created, it's normally due to a death in the mortal world that is full of emotional valence, and that's usually pretty negative. I mean, it almost decisively has to be. It would be interesting, though.
if there were ghosts left behind by, emotionally positive things, acts of self-sacrifice and love that created spirits, like the protector spirits that we see around, you know, Sir Stuart's house, that were animalistic in the sense that they didn't even know they were ghosts, right? Mort has worked on those guys, but they were benevolent. And an example of this that doesn't occur
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:19:24)
Hmm.
Brian (1:19:43)
in the Dresden Files, but given that the first story Jim wrote about the Dresden Files took place in World War II, totally could have happened, is like your World War I angel of mons, when an army of ghosts appears with the English army to, you know, fight against the German invasion of France. And that was a hoax, and you can go look it up, and it's, you know, a very interesting story, but...
If that were real, if that was an actual paranormal occurrence, that kind of spirit seems to be very rare in the Dresden Files. And it'll be interesting to see if Jim ever breaks something like that out in the future.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:20:25)
Yeah, so this was really fun. I'm glad that we did this. We won't really need it again until Deadbeat and then Ghost Story, but having terminology that we can use on the podcast here to consistently refer to groups of ghosts with the same categorization is gonna help us sort of talk about this in the future. But with that all having been said, as we mentioned, next week is the Patreon, but the week after that, we're going to do the last three chapters of Grave Peril. And I'm so excited.
Summer Night is one of my favorites and we're coming up on that real fast. But before we get there, our last question for Bob for those last three chapters is, which choice differentiates the Mirror Mirrorverse from Dresden Prime? Because Jim has confirmed that there's a choice in this book that Harry makes in the Mirrorverse that turns him into a very different person.
Brian (1:21:16)
Yeah, and look, think Adam and I both have a favorite answer to this question and I don't think we're gonna get into too much of a disagreement over it. But let me tell you, I'm really glad we're asking at the end of this episode because this is where I really feel like it would be very easy for Jim to start slipping in decision points. Any of these moments with Justine or Susan or Kravos, just any of the things that happen,
Dresden in these chapters are potential departure points. They're not the one that I think is most likely, but I really encourage you guys to think about if Jim wanted to really drive the point home, you know, a butterfly flapping its wings can change what might he choose other than just the single most likely thing? So I'd love to hear both of them, what you think he's actually going to end up picking and sort of the most interesting potential path.
that you could see him travel.
Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:22:13)
Yeah, those are two good ones. So we'll post that one to the Reddit next week and we'll talk about it then. For Brian, I'm Adam. We'll see you next time.