SE-03 | Twelve Months Revelations

This is Part 2 of our two part series diving into the Lore and Worldbuilding of Twelve Months.  This episode focuses exclusively on the Justine, Thomas, Lara, and White Court.  We also grade our predictions that we made back in December.  How many did we get right?

• (00:00) - Intro
• (01:39) - Justine
• (10:10) - Thomas' Future
• (34:26) - Lara and the White Court
• (01:25:46) - Rating Our Predictions

QfB: https://www.reddit.com/r/dresdenfiles/comments/1ml2h68/rnt_character_analysis_detective_ron_carmichael/
Patreon (bonus episode each month): patreon.com/RNTPod
Episode Art by Nick Strom; you can find his work here: https://displate.com/artist/fadelias/dresden-files

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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.

Host

Brian O'Reily

"Brian has been reading fantasy for nearly thirty years, from T.H. White to Steve Erikson. As a tutor, he professionally talks about nerd stuff, though he hopes Recorded Neutral Territory is more interesting than most of it."

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 (00:00)
Does Maggie know Thomas is her uncle? And if so, or even if not, does she know he's a vampire?

Brian (00:08)
She definitely doesn't know he's a vampire

because Harry's terrified of trying to explain the birds and the bees. ⁓

Adam (00:15)
yeah, don't talk about the white court. Black court vampires, sure. Give her Stoker's book.

Brian (00:17)
Right.

Exactly, exactly. He

just doesn't want to be like, so Maggie when a man and a woman love each other, okay Well, it's not love by definitionally for white court. So when they ⁓

Adam (00:30)
Yeah.

Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to recorded neutral territory where the spoilers go all the way through 12 months. I'm Adam Ruzzo and with me as always is the next Black Court vampire to be killed by Dresden, it's Brian O'Reilly.

Brian (00:52)
I have you now, wizard. Wait, is that a falling aircraft carrier?

Adam (00:58)
Yeah, you should probably step out of the way. But in the meantime, let's talk about 12 months, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, this is going to be a spoiler-filled episode, so please don't listen to it unless you are ready to learn more about what happens in that book and about what will happen in future books based on the new lore that we learned about in this book.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (01:19)
Now it's worth noting that this is the second part of a two-part series where we examine the lore and world building of 12 Months. So if you haven't heard that part, go back and check that out. That's special episode number two, 12 Months Reloaded.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (01:32)
Speaking of lore and speculations, let's jump right into it. The topic is Thomas and Justine.

Adam (01:39)
first question I've got to ask you, because I've seen this asked quite a few times on the forums, how did Mab acquire Justine so easily, and more importantly, so conveniently for the plot?

Brian (01:50)
So I think easily is an assumption, not something that we know on page. And I don't know if it was easy. I know that MAB is extremely resourceful in the sense of both having an immense amount of resources to draw upon and in the sense of being very quick thinking and intelligent and able to come up with cunning plans. So I think,

It was probably very difficult to acquire Now, I think the question that we're sort of getting at here is how come Mab could do that so much more quickly and effectively than Lara, who also has a lot of resources and is very personally resourceful.

And I think on the one hand, it's because Mab is just Lara, but to a greater degree in all senses. She has even more resources, even more capabilities. She's even older and smarter, and she's able to use magic to a greater extent to assist her. But on top of that, I think Mab, as the being primarily responsible for keeping Nemesis in check, is just

the best person at tracking down a single shard of he who walks beside when she's got an excuse to devote that much of her attention to the mortal world for that purpose.

Adam (03:19)
Yeah, and I think sort of the assumption is, okay, if Mab could just snap her fingers right after Dresden said, hey, go take care of this, and she had Justine like a couple weeks later or something to that effect, then why couldn't she have done it sooner? And-

To one answer to that is, well, maybe she wasn't allowed to. We know that Mab has a huge amount of restrictions on how she's allowed to use her power, especially when it comes to directly interacting with mortals. That's why the knight exists, quote unquote. So it's entirely possible from my perspective that she was unable to bring her power to bear or a greater part of her power and her resources to bear on the problem of finding Justine.

until Dresden, a mortal, made a choice to have her do so with his obligation. At that point, she was free to basically draw out all the stops and then find Justine more quickly than she otherwise might. Or they were both looking for Justine the whole time, Lara's team and Mab's team, and then just eventually found her in time. That's also perfectly reasonable as far as I'm concerned.

Brian (04:32)
Well, I think that's exactly where I was going to go next. We know that Lara has gotten close to Justine because the strike team is wiped out as we find out earlier in the book. So Lara got close enough to grab her. It just didn't go very Mab has exactly the sort of things you would send to grab, you know, Justine in that form, you know, to get a shard of he who walks beside. So that might be the real difference here.

where Lara could find her and did find her, but couldn't bring her Mab was just building off of that partially completed homework and what she's really, really much better at when she's given a free hand due to the deal she made with Dresden, she can bring her in.

Adam (05:18)
How does Justine wipe out one of Lara's strike teams? Is it like River in Firefly where she just like closes her eyes and just like instantly kits everybody in the head or something ridiculous because Nemesis is controlling the body and has

perfect form and sees the future and whatever? Or did Nemesis reach out to like black circle contacts and those are the people that helped her and took out the strike team?

Brian (05:44)
I think that Nemesis probably enhances the capabilities of those it is possessing in certain ways. I don't think it usually enhances their physical capabilities. For example, Cat Sith we know was to a certain extent degraded in terms of his physical capabilities due to Nemesis possession. But for someone like Justine, who is probably not normally very physically imposing, it probably does add something.

Adam (06:02)
Hmm.

Brian (06:12)
I think however it probably also comes with some magical knowledge that a mortal body can use when it is possessed.

Adam (06:22)
Yeah, or even

maybe like a psychic attack that wouldn't necessarily... I get the impression that Nemesis, he who walks beside, probably isn't the strongest combatant amongst the walkers or the outsiders, etc., because their role is so specialized on infiltration. That having been said, still a frickin' outsider, still a walker, even though it's one of thirteen...

Brian (06:24)
Exactly.

Adam (06:48)
it probably still has the ability to do some kind of a psychic assault on Lara's team. Because Lara's team is almost certainly gonna be all mortals, right? Like well-trained, like Riley people. So that seems like that could get over them, even with just Justine and the walker, if it has the access to that kind of attack.

Brian (07:01)
You

You know, it could also be a circumstance where Lara has... It could be a circumstance where Lara is sending a strike team mostly of whoever is available to get there quickly enough. The actual problem is tracking Nemesis. Once you've found it, you've got to get somebody there immediately because it's going to be moving.

Adam (07:23)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (07:33)
So they send their local Tufts, who are probably highly trained or ex-military or whatever.

Adam (07:38)
Yeah, some local mercenaries

they've hired, something like that, yeah.

Brian (07:42)
But all they see is a 20-something year old, 30-year old pregnant woman. How scared are they gonna be?

Adam (07:50)
and they've got orders to take her back alive, period. Exactly, at all costs, no harm must come to her or the child. That makes the job way tougher, could make it much easier for her to lull them into a false sense of security and then hit them with some kind of an ambush, whether it's a psychic attack or it's allies or what have you.

Brian (07:54)
Probably unharmed.

And who knows, it might be that really when Lara knew that she'd found Justine, on page it's sort of an aside, the strike team failed.

Adam (08:20)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (08:22)
Like that was the expected outcome. maybe that was absolutely not the expected outcome. Maybe Lara is concealing an immense I really thought we had it situation. I can't believe she turned to the tables on the strike team. And maybe the way that she did that Nemesis made a quick stop to acquire a gas mask and some chemical weapons. That it was like it could be any number of things where these mercenaries just walk into this trap that they had no reason to escape.

Adam (08:33)
Hmm.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Brian (08:51)
and if it wasn't for this subtle bit of preparation, you know, they absolutely would have had her and that's the problem with hunting nemesis. It's an ancient being that's willing to do anything to stay out of the trap. So unless you can really attack it in force with people who understand what they're up against, it's very very hard to stop without harming the host. Obviously you could just

kill Justine and that would be probably pretty easy for Lara's people. Mab can do that. That's what Mab can do differently. So I think the important question is, obviously in one sense, Thomas's position is sort of status quo antebellum in the most literal sense. His life has gone back to the way it was before Peace Talks.

Literally, he cannot mention to his lover, you know, what has happened in the year since. But obviously, these experiences have to change Thomas's present and future in ways that go beyond just emotional pain. So, Adam, what do you think is going to be different about Thomas or

How do you think Thomas's role in the story will change now that we've gotten the conclusion of the Justine Plot?

Adam (10:18)
Well, he's carrying all of the terrible knowledge and he's going to have to hide that from Justine. They have a pretty close relationship. can't imagine that wouldn't cause some strain. And that might be a point of conversation between him and Dresden in a future book where he asks Thomas, how are things going? And he's like, Justine can tell.

that I'm lying and I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this. And Harry will be like, you have to keep doing it, man. She'll go insane if she ever finds out. Like that kind of a conversation could happen. There could even be some more problems with that that have to have, you know, Harry step in to, I don't know, help mend the barrier that got put up with Justine. I don't really think that's gonna, it's gonna go that far. It might just be.

that conversation of like, relationship's rockier now because I can't tell her about this. So that's a big difference because I think that's gonna cause their relationship to have problems where it didn't have before. But how else is his different? Brian, I don't remember exactly who said this. Somebody on the reddit, and I'm very sorry I didn't write this down, but a really interesting theory I am now 100 % behind. Lara is now

as the queen of the white court. She basically accidentally dragged her entire court into winter's thrall, right? We talked about that. But because she's compromised, if anybody in the white court ever finds out that she is compromised, they're gonna demand a different leader, right? That is a weak part of her armor. Now, I don't think Harry's gonna tell him. I don't think Mab's gonna tell him, but they may, that's still a weakness, a risk, a concern.

Thomas is also, we always know, has a stronger hunger than Lara. He's much younger, but he has a stronger, more powerful hunger than her. So, if Harry wants to get her and she wants to get the White Court out from under Mab's thumb, maybe they engineer a way for Thomas to become White King. Maybe by killing Lord Wraith and her stepping down or going away or

faking her death or something happening, that would be an interesting future for Thomas to become white king and take over for Lara, who now is, I mean, I know she likes that position. I know that she wants to be able to protect her people, but she's also compromised and she's rational enough to know that that means she's a bad leader because she cannot protect her people from herself.

Brian (12:58)
So I definitely think that, let's separate this into two pieces because I think that it is more interesting to consider all of the ways the first thing could happen, or the second thing could happen. Thomas could become the king of the white court if the current monarch dies. Who's the current monarch of the white court, Adam? Right.

Adam (13:11)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's Lord Wraith.

Brian (13:26)
If Thomas is going to become the White King, all we would need is a reason that Lara wants to kill her dad. wait, we've got loads of those. So that could happen, without anything negative happening to Lara. There's a reason to get rid of Lord Wraith now, not just to keep him around as a puppet. He is essentially working against Lara's interests and she is not going to stand for that.

Adam (13:34)
Yeah.

Brian (13:54)
and maybe she does something to essentially take him off the board but retain him as a figurehead, or maybe she decides it's time for things to change. Now, if she decides it's time for things to change, that could result in her taking power directly, which could later be compromised in exactly the way you're saying, leading to Thomas taking power directly, or she could say, hey, Thomas, do you want to be the new White King?

because I'll still run the show, but for various reasons, it would actually be better if you did that, right?

Adam (14:31)
Right, if

it was more of a partnership where she still helped him in the background, orchestrating things as a monarch, but he slowly took over the day to day, ⁓ then at the very least, if Mab ever ordered Lara to do something that she thought was bad for her people, she could have Thomas overrule her or Thomas could overrule her, right? And then,

That would give them some plausible deniability or something like that. But Brian, the other reason I really liked this theory about Lara looking for a way out is that little conversation she has with Dresden where she seeks to ⁓ kind of come to an accord on how their relationship is going to manifest in this marriage. And he makes the joke, the crack about, well, I want dinner promptly on the table at 5.30 every day or something like that, right? Obviously that's him.

playing up a chauvinist asshole who's making a clear joke there, but she says, you know, that's more appealing than you think it is. And she explains how rough and stressful the role of leading a supernatural predatory court is. And so it could be she's looking for retirement, you know, after 10 years, 15 years of leading this group.

from the backstage and then participating in it for another 200 and some odd years as like an enforcer, maybe she's looking for a change that could be an indication. Again, if she's being serious when she has that conversation and not manipulative, which I am willing to believe it is.

Brian (16:08)
So

I think that there's a couple possible readings of that text, and I think that that is a plausible one. It's not one that I really like, because I don't think that Jim needs to be in the business of literally marrying off his female characters and then removing them from positions of power. Like, I think he should...

Adam (16:27)
And let me rephrase, I don't think, I'm not saying

she's gonna, like, yes, she's not gonna be queen of the white court under what I'm talking about, but she is gonna be married to the winter night and maybe running the paranet or like being the, I'm not saying she gets a demotion completely. I see her still doing something of importance and strength and power in the universe, just different from what she was doing before.

Brian (16:45)
Of course.

Yes, and that remark was intended to be very stark, ⁓ but I agree that Jim would not remove her from the story utterly if he did that. I just don't think that he should do it because anything is going to be seen as a step down from running a...

Adam (17:01)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (17:15)
international organization with a multi-billion dollar budget that controls some number of world governments. You know, the white court is one of the more significant operations on the planet. So you can't move from that. You can't lateral into anything, you know.

Adam (17:34)
So I don't disagree, but I think while it would be a potential downsizing in power to go to, running like the position that you talked about of Lara being the liaison between the humans and the supernatural community or something like that, right? If the better future society turns into something much bigger. But even if that would be a step down, morally and ethically, it would be a step.

Brian (17:50)
So.

Adam (18:00)
up for her character. So I think that those might balance out in a sense.

Brian (18:05)
It seems like Jim is perfectly happy to allow characters to participate in organizations that do morally dubious things because their existence is necessary for the greater good. And there's very few circumstances in which Lara stops effectively exerting control over the white court and it gets better for I'm not saying it necessarily gets a lot worse if Thomas is running things, but obviously Lara is more experienced at doing so than he is and could at the very least

Help him substantially if she continued to operate the way she is But I want to take a second part of what you said because I did see this on the subreddit a little bit and I I think that this is Reading of the text that lacks in a little bit of nuance it is simultaneously possible for Lara just like Harry to sometimes be overwhelmed

by the nature of her job and the choices it forces her to make and to want relief from that without actually being willing to hand it over to somebody else.

Adam (19:10)
That's absolutely true. And so I was building that hypothesis off of what I read on Reddit and that one small piece of evidence that suggests that that might be where the future is heading.

Brian (19:23)
Michael says to Harry in Skin Game, think, when Harry says, I guess if I'm the winter knight, means Mab can't have some other psycho do it. And Michael's like, you just thought of that now? That was like the first thing I thought of when I heard of it. So ⁓ Lara is sort of in the same position where me and my brother can run the white court.

Adam (19:35)
You

Yes.

Brian (19:47)
effectively and make sure that none of these lunatics are in control of it. That's, you know, and whether that means that Lara openly takes power or she openly lets power pass to Thomas in exchange for giving him more responsibility. I could see all of those things. The other thing that I thought of, though, as a potential way that Thomas sort of more takes over the White Court and Lara steps back from handling the White Court directly.

Adam (20:03)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (20:15)
is if she gets one of the few promotions that it is possible for her to get. And I don't remember if we discussed this on the Patreon episode or in the earlier part of this recording, but Mab is literally bringing the white court into winter in the marriage she is forging between Harry and Lara. She literally says to Lara when they're openly discussing how Lara is gonna try to get out of it, maybe you'll like being

Adam (20:35)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (20:45)
my vassal. Maybe you'll want to stay. So that's how she sees it. She has vassalized the white court. Well, there's also a lot of hints that Mab knows she is going to die. So one of two things could be happening. Either one, Mab knows that she is going to die, which means the Winter Lady is going to become the new Mab.

Adam (20:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (21:09)
and

they're gonna need a new lady. And I just removed the need for you to have sex to feed. Isn't that interesting?

Adam (21:15)
Yeah, how convenient.

Brian (21:19)
Right, so we can have the lady literally married to the knight and there's no sex issue getting in the way there and it's all peachy keen and Lara takes a step up into winter. Or you can view the possibility as ⁓ Mab for various reasons, and I think there's a lot of potential sources for these reasons, Mab does not want to molly to

ever get promoted to her job. She thinks that that would be bad because Molly is, pick any number of, reminds her too much of her younger self and she doesn't want to do that to her. Or she doesn't think that Molly is ready to be as cold as someone needs to be to, right.

Adam (22:06)
Right, too mortal. Like,

even the Mother Mab is too mortal for that position. So yeah, Molly would be worse in that sense.

Brian (22:12)
Mab, yeah.

But Lara, unlike Molly, has a lot of practice being a manipulative and human monster. So it's possible that Mab is going to try to create a scenario where the mantle passes directly to Lara, which would effectively remove her as leader of the White Court, because you can't do both.

Adam (22:34)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, right, the White Court would

stop following her if she was also the Winter Queen, I would imagine. Unless part of all of this that we've been discussing does make them an official vassal, the whole thing. Through some other ritual or some other power grab or deal, the entire White Court becomes a vassal and like, ⁓ you're part of Faerie now. ⁓ I don't see that happening, but that's the only situation where she doesn't stay.

of the White Court in the circumstances you're describing.

Brian (23:12)
to the point of the original question, even in that scenario where the white court is officially brought under the domain of winter under Lara, who is the new Mab, Thomas would still probably end up being the white king in whatever form that office remains because Lara Mab is not going to be able to focus enough attention on that realm to handle everything anymore.

Adam (23:20)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Agreed.

Brian (23:41)
There's sort of a lot of different ways that Thomas could end up White King. I think that's pretty likely. mean, Jim had the opportunity to make him not a vampire anymore. And Thomas was like, no, that's not where I want my character to go.

Adam (23:52)
He did.

And that felt like a

he could guarantee that he and Justine could just go off and live happily ever after, then I think he probably would have strongly considered excising the demon and destroying it when Drezin gave him that choice. But realistically, he is the brother of the White Queen.

and the half brother of Harry Dresden, even if nobody else knows that necessarily, that could come out one day that makes him a target, that makes Justine a target, and he cannot protect them if he's vanilla mortal. And he wants to help.

Brian (24:33)
and he wants to help. mean, he doesn't,

you know, so the, think that that choice means there's very few arcs that are sensible for Thomas outside of being able to take a more direct hand in reforming the White Court. And with the Lord Wraith's shenanigans, I think Jim has set the stage for that. So I think that's a very prescient comment. I just don't want to pigeonhole

Adam (24:45)
Mm-hmm.

Agreed.

Brian (25:02)
well that means it's gonna happen this way. I think there's a lot of ways we could end up there and all of them are plausible. Jim did a really good job giving himself a really nicely foreshadowed potential goal and a lot of different paths to sort of garden his way there.

Adam (25:21)
completely agree with that. And while you were talking, Brian, and you said there is one path that Lara could get that's like an upgrade when you were saying she could potentially become Mab, I actually thought of a very different path that could technically be considered an upgrade. What if Lara is no longer the queen of the white court because she wields Amarokius?

I would not have said that that was a possibility before 12 months, but Jim has gone to a lot of trouble to redeem her character and potentially give a reason for her to leave the court because of Thomas's potential move into becoming the White King for the reasons that you were describing that's one of the only places for him to go. So if...

She's not going to be Mab, but I think the Mab thing is a really good idea. I think it's a strong contender. This other one, I think though, is a dark horse. think she, like, cause everybody, probably Jim has heard, everybody's guessing Thomas as the next wielder for Amarokius, but what if it's Lara? That would be a crazy twist, I think.

Brian (26:24)
I think it's really important to keep our mind open to possibilities like that, because I think that is reasonable in the sense that Jim has put in a lot of work to show how much Lara cares about her family and protecting them and, you know, the love that she has as a protector for people.

Adam (26:28)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Brian (26:45)
she is a mama bear just taking the form of a nagel print. But I think that it is not likely that Lara takes up Amorakius only because I think she would need to be mortal to do that. And I think unless it's to the way she gets out of the bargain,

Adam (26:50)
Yes.

Brian (27:10)
I think we have seen that she also is going to keep her hunger, which is a part of her, as we see in the soul gaze. And she's not going to give that up just to become...

Adam (27:24)
Yeah, I think that's probably true. Now, I have one more question regarding the Thomas Justine thing before we talk a lot more about Lara and Harry and their situation at the end of this book. Because I think that Lara and Harry's relationship

building is one of the biggest parts of this book, but how does Mab know that Nemesis didn't jump to the infant?

Brian (27:46)
Well, for that to happen, would have to leave Justine, who would then presumably be insane.

we can tell that Justine, not crazy, therefore still possessed by Nemesis, or not crazy in the way that she would be crazy if her mind was shattered by Nemesis being gone and her having all of the memories of right, so that hasn't The other thing is, I don't mean to speak for Jim's views on...

big questions. I don't know the man personally as much as he seems like a guy I would like. I don't know him personally. But it is a real choice to say that the child in its present state has free will that can be suborned by Nemesis.

Adam (28:32)
⁓ that's interesting, yeah.

Brian (28:34)
So I think that Mab would just sort of say, well, of course it can't infect the child yet. You can't infect a fetus. You might not be even able to infect an infant, but a fetus certainly has no for its will to be suborned, so it's not a vector for he who walks besides.

Adam (28:53)
Hmm.

That's a very interesting consideration too. Another Watsonian explanation is we know that Winter, Mab and the Gatekeeper don't have a way to tell 100 % if Nemesis is inside someone, even if Nemesis is trying to hide, right? That's kind of the conclusion that we came to based on the evidence that we have. But what if Mother Winter does? What if Mother Summer?

but they aren't normally allowed to use that ability. You can't just position them at the gates all the time. They don't have the authority or they're restricted somehow. That might be why Mother Summer needed to be there at the birth to make sure that it did not infect the child. That's kind of my other Watsonian explanation. The Doyleist explanation though is Jim's not a monster. He's not gonna infect a child. He's not gonna...

He's already said like, Mr. and Mouse are safe. Like he's not gonna have them die on the page. Maggie's not gonna die on the page. Like that is just not available. Those are too dark for what he's trying to do. So that's the doilest answer is, why, how do we know the child isn't infected? Because Jim wouldn't do that. I know that Jim has done a lot of bad things to Harry and the people around Harry, but there is a line and I'm saying that's past it.

Brian (30:18)
And I also just think that that's not the trope, right? Like part of the Dresden Files is when you're looking for how do things work in the story, you are allowed to look at outside fiction because in universe, a lot of what happens is based on myths that we know, which has inspired that fiction, right? So like a changeling child, that's one creepy kid kind of thing.

Adam (30:22)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Brian (30:46)
That's when the fairies steal your kid and replace it with the fairy. The kid has to be gone. Like the fairies know if you've done that, if you've replaced the kid. ⁓ You can corrupt You can have the child in some way changed. They come out wrong. They come out with unnatural powers. That was gonna happen anyway. It was already coming out with a demon. So the only thing that I think...

Adam (30:49)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yes, exactly.

Brian (31:13)
would have made sense for Jim to do is what I suggested in our predictions episode was that the child could be altered by Nemesis in ways that would make it ideally placed and have certain instincts and inclinations that could aid in Nemesis's cause. But the devil doesn't possess the baby. devil possesses the father or the mother and you conceive the Antichrist.

Adam (31:36)
Hmm.

Right, something to that effect, that's true. And not only that, unless there's a massive time skip in the next like six or seven books, the kid's not gonna be old enough to impact much until the very end. mean, Ivy, exactly, by the time Ivy is like four or five years old, she's got enough motor skills to actually do major magic because she's...

Brian (31:58)
unless they had archive level exactly.

Adam (32:10)
Like the consciousness is 2000 plus years old. I don't know exactly how long, but in this case, the kid, until they're four or five, not enough motor skills to impact much of anything, generally speaking. It's gonna be hard to explain that, hard to write that. So I think that we're probably not gonna see much of this child again, maybe just to tear at Thomas's heartstrings, but.

Other than that, think it's probably mostly out of the story. What are your thoughts?

Brian (32:39)
Yeah, I think that's probably right. And I also want to just circle back to the information we get from the gatekeeper, which is that there's no way to tell sort of when you see someone whether or not they're infected. But we actually can be pretty sure that there is some way to tell if you've purged someone of infection, and it's whatever Mab actually does.

because she does it successfully So there's something about being frozen at the heart of winter that allows you to purge nemesis and be confident you did so. I mean, if Mab wasn't confident, she would just kill the things instead of attempting to cure them. She's Mab. We can know that if the odds weren't very highly in her favor, she would not take the risk. So...

Adam (33:23)
Yeah.

Yeah, and it's entirely

possible that she didn't know when she first tried to get it out of Leah whether that would be successful. But because she's done it once, she knows she can do it again. that could mean you can't detect it when it is in someone, but you can detect it if you've trapped it inside of this athema, this bodkin, right?

Brian (33:55)
which

means that functionally it wouldn't matter if Nemesis jumped to the child because Mab will know when she's got the shard in a bottle and when she does she's done and all Nemesis could potentially do is to delay the inevitable by doing it at the moment of birth or something which maybe it will do and that's another thing that you know Mab's never gonna tell anyone about and it's one of the many horrors that she has to deal with but

Adam (34:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brian (34:22)
that's not something that's going to impact the pages of the story.

Adam (34:26)
Yeah, I think I agree. All right, let's finally move on to what is probably the biggest lore drop in the whole book. And that's the White Court history that we get from Lara, where the demons are outsiders. Now, this wasn't a huge surprise. If you've been paying attention, the White Court is very much associated with outsiders

From the first time we meet the white court proper in blood rites, we know they're calling up outsiders. So it's possible that maybe the hunger that's inside Lord Wraith has been in him for so long that it's able to,

communicate with him more directly and tell him how to get to outsides. I mean, there's other possibilities for how the Lord Wraith got access to open the gate for outsiders, but I think that plus a number of other clues suggested that they're more connected to the outside than we might've thought.

Brian (35:24)
Okay, so are you ready for the big interconnected theory that's even bigger than just this one lore drop?

Adam (35:34)
Okay, okay, let's

hear your Einsteinian ⁓ one formula to rule them all. I know I'm mixing my metaphors there, but.

Brian (35:43)
That's what a vampire is.

Adam (35:44)
All vampires are outsiders in some form.

Brian (35:47)
Yeah, I mean, we've got a lot of evidence suggesting this. On the one hand, the White Court confirmed that's what the hunger is. It's an outsider locked in a struggle with a human spirit. The Red Court, the Lords of Outer Night, do the outsider psychic whammy. And let me just say again, the Lords of Outer Night, their name is the Lords of Outer Night. What else could it be referring to?

Adam (36:06)
Mmm.

Exactly.

And we know didn't they call up outsiders during the war to fight the White Council as well? That's a specific plot point, but they're like, holy shit, they called up outsiders. We didn't think the Red Court could do that. So that to me is another good connection. And yeah, what is Dracul? What is Dracula? Those are questions we don't have answers to. Maybe outsiders is the answer in some form.

Brian (36:20)
I believe they did, yes.

I always had the theory that the Black Court were outsiders for two main reasons. First, we now know that Dracul is starboard. So yes, he controls the Black Court. Why? Because they're outsiders and he's a starboard. So that's why they have to do what he tells them to But beyond that, we know that the Black Court is effectively no longer human.

Adam (36:59)
Mmm.

Brian (37:08)
They're dead and the thing that is running the Black Court puppet vampire body is no longer the human spirit that was inside it. It's something else.

And it makes the most sense to me that this is an outsider. That's why it's immensely strong and weird and why nobody likes it. And it is just has strange vulnerabilities like garlic. Like what thing that was from this earth would have like a version to garlic that makes it burst into flames. ⁓ something that's not even from this universe. Sure, that makes sense. So if

the all vampires are some flavor of human bound up with an outsider, it explains a lot of the reasons that vampire courts and outsiders keep crossing each other's paths. What consequence does this have for the white court history we learn from Lara? Well.

Adam (38:10)
Hmm.

Brian (38:17)
First of all, it suggests that this might be a similar reason why the other courts exist. Mad sorcerer kings in towers calling down insane monsters from beyond the outer gates. It specifically suggests that maybe that's what happened to Dracula.

Adam (38:34)
Hmm.

Brian (38:35)
Dracul's son, who was not his dad, also wanted to gain power from commuting with the outside and he messed it up and turned himself into one of those things. And it suggests that Lord Wraith himself, because he has maintained that connection and communication with the outside, might be lying about his birthday to his kids.

Adam (38:45)
Hmm.

Hehe.

Brian (39:03)
and may be one of the figures from that original story.

Adam (39:08)
it was really interesting to hear about the whole Sorcerer King thing and talking about, yeah, the White Council, know, the first days of the White Council can trace their roots to when the people rose up against the Sorcerer Kings. And Lara's like, yeah, yeah, that sounds right based on the history that I know. But what I'm talking about happened even a thousand years before that. And I was like, whoa, okay, well, we're really talking in the deep. And so that means that we're talking about Etruscan and Latin history from like,

1300s BC. That's probably earlier than almost all history that most people are familiar with. It's earlier than like the classic Greek stories.

Brian (39:48)
go pin it down. believe if I'm remembering correctly that either the 1400s or the 1600s BC is the Bronze Age collapse. Adam, just in post, just pick whichever one of those is right and put that in. I think it's one of those. So it could be that this is a Bronze Age collapse story.

Adam (40:03)
Ha ha.

Oh, that would be an

incredibly clever, yeah, okay. 1200 BCE, roughly. So, boy, if Jim is pin, I don't know how big of a historian he is, but for those unfamiliar, the Bronze Age collapse was a widespread collapse of civilized peoples in and around the Mediterranean area where you just have these major powers with huge cities and populations just appear

to disappear, like the history that we have when we dig down in old cities, they just stop at a certain point. And like what happened all around the Mediterranean? History suggests that maybe there was some kind of a natural disaster that caused an economic disaster. And then that sort of chain reaction, like they had a big web of trade that tin, I think is one of the ones that they think maybe tin ran out and that caused.

a whole bunch of economic problems in a lot of different places and it caused wars, which caused conquest, which caused more et cetera, et cetera. But it's so far ago, we don't really have any good written records and there's always been that question. What caused the Bronze Age collapse? Was it these, an invasion by sea people since it all happened around the Mediterranean? If Jim is lining up, yeah, the Bronze Age collapse was the birth of the white court going rampant around the Mediterranean.

That's genius. I love it. That's so cool.

Brian (41:37)
So

it could be that or this could all be connected to an earlier star-born cycle where this was part of the outsider's plan to get something in place to destroy the world and that whole confluence of events led to the Bronze Age collapse causing the formation of the White Court and this other thing and this other thing.

Adam (41:45)
Hmm

Yeah, because that would

be about the right time scale, right? If you go back, you know, 666 years, four times, you get to about year zero, and then if you go back two more cycles, you're somewhere around 1200, 1300 BCE. That's pretty close, you know, that you can fudge it if you're Jim and just say, yeah, this is the way it works.

Brian (42:23)
So, and that's exactly the point I was gonna make, which is I don't think Jim is necessarily going through the scrolls and saying, ⁓ well that's when El Nazir got his complaint about copper for the first time. So that's gonna be what I'm gonna date, you I don't think he's doing that. But I think that he is probably broadly sort of saying, hey, what time period do I know a little bit about? Where is it enough of the misty past?

for me to place this in history and get be able to get away with it but there's enough we know about it where it can work its way into some other stories we have the thing i'm not sure about is whether Atruria was actually as civilized as he's sort of making it out to be at that point i don't know to what extent

Adam (43:15)
Yeah, I think

it's deepened up in the midst that we don't really have any good written records of what was happening in Latium and Etruria. These are places in modern day Italy, by the way. Etruria, the Etruscan people were north of modern day Rome. So if you think of Italy, just think of the area north of Rome, and that was sort of Tuscany. Exactly, exactly. So.

Brian (43:37)
If you know where Tuscany is, that's where the name comes from.

Adam (43:42)
The thing he set up here with this history is that the Etruscans, we remember that Etruscan language that's like a dead language, that is the White Court's official language, just like Latin is the White Council's official language. And he confirmed in this book that the White Council rose up with the rise of Rome. And so that explains why Latin is their language of choice. And the fact that this happened so much earlier than that,

gives Jim cover to just make up a lot of fun stuff about the Etruscans and the Etrurian Empire, or whatever it was, because we don't have a lot of great records before the Roman period in that area, as far as I know.

Brian (44:25)
Yeah, it is definitely far enough back that we get into the realm of legend, which is where he wants to be, that it's exactly where he wants to be. So it's interesting that he uses this sorcerer king mythology to set up the existence of the White Court. I think it's all as part of an effort.

Adam (44:30)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (44:51)
which I think has only worked in the fandom to a certain extent, to humanize the white court, to make us feel a certain degree of sympathy for at least the problem of being a white court vampire. this is something that I feel like certain people...

are never going to get on board with. But I usually am able to. It is the sort of, okay, we're playing Vampire the Masquerade. My character has two choices. Either one, I know that eventually I'm going to hurt somebody. Or two, I walk into the sun and kill myself. Right? Those are ultimately, right, that's the only two things that can happen. So the...

Adam (45:32)
Yeah, those are the choices.

Brian (45:38)
Game is interesting if you go the route that some people see where, no, your vampire is an irredeemable monster because they know that by continuing to exist, that's what they're doing. So they are just a bad person. Have fun with that. Right. Or there is this sort of challenge mode. Find a reason why it's morally good not to walk into the sun.

Adam (45:52)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, Dean Koontz wrote a version of Frankenstein, the idea was Frankenstein's monster in his version of it knew he was a monster, knew he had this urge to kill that he couldn't sate, right? He had to keep killing like wear down this urge. And what he wound up doing was

specifically putting himself in situations where bad people were around him, know, gangsters, murderers, know, whatever, and killing all of those people, and then he could walk through society. So he basically turned Frankenstein into like a superhero, like a Punisher figure that just, well, I have to murder people, so let me orchestrate it so that I just happen to be surrounded by people that deserve being murdered.

Anyway, trying to bring this back to the White Court history here. You know what else happened that probably most people have heard of around the 12th or 13th century BCE that Jim could also potentially add in either as an aside or as a big part of this theoretical time period? the Trojan War and the sack of Troy with the Trojan horse. Most people have heard of this, but...

Even the people in Greece who are writing down the history of the Trojan War that we read about today, they were writing it down hundreds of years after it happened. So we have a very foggy memory of how correct and accurate these accounts were, similar to how we have a very inaccurate memory of how these events in Italy happened in that time period.

Brian (47:32)
Yeah, I mean, I think that whether Jim is ever going to say it or not, headcanon Helen of Troy was obviously a White Court vampire. Like, obviously, the face that launched a thousand ships. Like, yeah, of course, that's the most White Court vampire character that could ever exist in history.

Adam (47:40)
Right?

I mean,

honestly, if you want, it's, here's an interesting originally we're talking about this outsider that was bound into a human was single entity that has since sort of broken into pieces every time they multiply, which is slow, but it's been like 3000 years and now there are a bunch of them. How many?

I don't know, we've met Lara and her sisters and presumably there are a whole bunch of other, you know, sex vampire, lust vampire, wraiths out there, or maybe even a different last name. We've also got the Malvorans. There's gotta be at least hundreds, right? Now, what if each individually is slightly weaker when there's that many of them, but they just never really noticed it because for the last thousand or 2000 years, they've had a roughly stable population, but maybe early on.

Brian (48:24)
There have to be at least hundreds of them. Yeah.

Adam (48:42)
Maybe the first one or the first two were way more powerful. And maybe that's why Helen of Troy could just launch a thousand ships and didn't need to be close the way that Lara or Thomas need to in order to put the whammy on somebody.

Brian (48:56)
So now we're explicitly getting into Vampire the Masquerade where that's exactly how that works and Helen of Troy literally was a vampire and like, so I think, potentially true, but as soon as you start introducing the concept of generation, you start getting towards that IP and they've already sued underworld over it. So I don't think Jim is necessarily going to call anything like that out explicitly, but I certainly think it's,

Adam (49:06)
Aha!

⁓

Brian (49:25)
probable that at least there is a Because the functionally you're going to be correct for one of two reasons either one That's what happens or two. There is a winnowing process, right? As these vampires continue to live Lara says their life expectancy in practice isn't really that long they tend to be drawn towards, you dangerous game So as these vampires continue to live the ones that survive

tend to be the ones with the strongest demons. So you can get one like Thomas, who, whether because of just, you know, the genetics of his father has a super strong demon because he's second generation in that sense, or because his mother was a wizard and therefore a lot of life energy was available for his hunger to, right.

Adam (49:53)
Hmm.

That was, that's immediately what I thought. Like she's

unknowingly feeding the fetus and the demon larva or whatever it is there way more like pure life energy whenever she's doing magic while pregnant. And that causes it to start out way stronger. That sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Brian (50:33)
Which would provide another reason why the early Whitecord vampires were stronger because we know that they're now from a magical bloodline of sorcerer kings. there's no way that, definitely the early ones were going to be stronger. The oldest ones are going to have the strongest demons. It's possible that that's because the hunger is fragmenting, but...

Adam (50:42)
⁓ yes.

Brian (50:59)
regardless we're gonna end up with the same sort of playing field. I think the interesting thing that I was trying to get at about the Jim puts in, in humanizing the White Court backstory, sort of making it a reaction of people to a situation that was ultimately a reasonable one given the situation they were in.

is that it sets up a lot of stuff. sounds like some theories we've had about the Lugaroo curse, for example. But it also provides, and this is what I was describing earlier, a Jim to pose the question, okay, white court vampires exist for a very important reason, to contain this outsider that has made it into our reality.

They also can feed in at least as ethical a manner as I do. I mean, I'm not a vegetarian. I eat animals that I fully believe have sensation or sentient in that literal sense and therefore don't enjoy the prospect of dying, whether they understand that in any regard or they just don't want to feel any pain or something.

think it is logically compatible just as a wolf eats meat, that it is ethically justifiable for me to eat meat, and then I can't complain too much if think, you know, vampires believe they have the right to eat too. So, I personally don't think that it's impossible for Jim to have an ethical whitebird vampire. I think he did, Thomas feeding from the hair salon, you know, customers in that

section of the series. I think that this is sort of tru- Tomas, yes. But I think that this backstory also partially serves a function that Jim is trying to bring his fan base around on, which is that you can be a White Court vampire and you can have done terrible things, mostly because Lord Wraith was in charge of the White Court, and that's kind of the tone he set.

Adam (52:44)
I think you mean Tomas. Tomas was feeding from the hairdressers.

Brian (53:10)
and we can now that he's gone, that you're trying to be a good person because that's the whole way the White Court got started in the first place. People in a bad situation, partially of their own making, trying to make the best of it. actually it is like the ethical thing for Dresden to do is not to enslave all of them and force them to jump off of a cliff.

Adam (53:32)
Right, agreed. Now, it's really hard to see any ethical situation that a Malvora or a Scavis would be involved in. You could kinda actually see it with Malvora, who is the ⁓ Darby Crane, who was creating like horror movies that theoretically, I guess he could go to a movie theater and just absorb all the fear that's going on in there. That would be like an example of Thomas's hairdresser thing though. I think...

Brian (53:49)
Yeah, produce horror films. Yep.

Adam (54:02)
the majority of Malvora, like the majority of Wraith, are doing things more hands-on, know, trying to scare people more directly and completely, not in a safe setting kind of a situation. And then the Scavis, boy, I can't think of a way to ethically feed off somebody's despair, to be honest. That's really hard.

Brian (54:20)
Well,

so that's the interesting thing. It appears that the white court, first of all, you can feed on whatever. Magical Wraith is in fact Darby Crane, right? He's a Wraith who switches feeding habits because he's a real bad guy.

Adam (54:35)
Right. They

say it's a

Brian (54:40)
Well, I just, how does Wraith make new vampires? He puts his unwitting children into a situation in which they're going to want to have sex, and then they do and they kill the person they're feeding from. Malvora probably puts its children into a situation where they going to be around someone who's very, very afraid. And they...

Adam (54:53)
Right.

and then they start feeding on them and

that makes them more afraid and then the cycle, they're dead and now you're, yeah, exactly, exactly. That's entirely possible. Okay, sorry. We were getting kind of sidetracked there on the others, but we were talking about ethics and it reminded me that it's harder to be a Malvora or a Scavis that can be ethical.

Brian (55:09)
They have a heart attack, right?

Well, but I

think the thing that you're saying has a logical counterpart even for Scevis where we don't know enough about how the feeding works for the white court because we really only understand it for house wraith where they feed on lust but lust is kind of a thing that they create in order that they may feed on it.

Adam (55:33)
Hmm.

Right. Well, I would

say that we do know that scavists also creates or generates despair in their victims somehow. That's what was happening to Elaine and the Ordolebes. That's why they were killing themselves because they were doing something to generate that despair and like juice it up ⁓ inside of their victims.

Brian (56:02)
Yes, but

the question is, if you make a beautiful tragic movie that makes people cry, you feed from that in the same way? You know, I listen to Nirvana songs sometimes, Adam. If Kurt Cobain was a scavist, that would make sense.

Adam (56:21)
I just thought

of something, okay. What if you're a therapist specializing in depression and you don't juice it up, you just suck it out of them. So the customers come back next week and they're like, doc, I'm feeling depressed again. And you talk for him for an hour and they're like, I feel so much better, doc, thanks. And the doctor's like, yes, delicious. I mean, sorry, we'll see you next week.

Brian (56:30)
Well, that was the other thing,

Or you're a therapist who specializes in teaching people how to manner the symptoms of their bipolar disorder. So when they're talking to you, it's okay if they feel little sadness sometimes and they get used to dealing with that in a healthy way. That's not necessarily a bad thing either. Now I do agree that it's way harder than just the sex vampire thing, which by comparison seems pretty ethically simple. You just do something that makes people a little hot and bothered and that's nice amuse-bouche, right? And I think that we're,

Adam (56:49)
Hmm.

Yes.

Brian (57:13)
running into a situation where it is going to be very ethically complicated for new white court vampires ever to be created, right? If Lara is running the white court and she is allowing white court teens to turn into vampires, that means she's drafting the kids into the war effort by blooding them early,

Adam (57:22)
Hmm.

Brian, Lara's development, her sort of redemption arc-ish as it goes through here, she's now set up to be a more ethical partner for Dresden since she doesn't personally have to feed on anyone. She just takes the magic from the world around them, fed into her via Dresden like twice a month.

She's now theoretically more powerful than she was before. How did you feel about this whole transformation? Did it feel like it fit well? Was it consistent with what we've learned about her and the universe before?

Brian (58:08)
I think it's best to take this question in two parts, which is how do you feel about Lara's redemption or her ethical development as a person? And how do you feel about the development of Lara's relationship with the Dresden?

The first part, think, aces. Absolutely perfect. I think that what Jim did is a little bit subtle, and if you're not primed to look for it as you're reading the books, if you're sort of just looking at the text on the page, it seems very, very fast. But we've gotten so many hints from literally the pages in which we meet her.

that Lara doesn't want to be the person that her father has turned her over the past 11 books, that change has gradually seemed to influence how Lara deals with the world around her. Where in the beginning, she just seems to be not

always duplicitous and out to get you to now where she seems fundamentally trying to do the right thing. And I think that that was a very slow transformation that Jim actually handled really really well.

Adam (59:34)
And for her continued transformation, he's set up in this book, and I think maybe even before it, the whole concept of you are what you eat. And now Laura is explicitly dining on Dresden morality, more or less. So that may also be impacting her future decisions, future choices.

Brian (59:55)
Yeah, so I think that Lara, as a person who, when we meet her, will kill Thomas because she was commanded to and he's getting too big for his britches, but doesn't want to. Thinks that, I can't, I'm upset that it has come to this. I'm not gonna let you see that really, wizard, but I'm willing to openly say that I'm upset that this has come to us, but I'm going to do it. Two, I'm in control of the court.

and my brother helped me do that so I'm going to keep his secrets and I'm going to leave him alive even though I know his hunger might be stronger than mine. To... okay now I'm going to deal with my enemies more ethically because in White Knight she's definitely not doing that. White Knight is the book that I think people correctly read. Lara is really a monster in White Knight. She is the instigator of the entire set of serial killings.

Adam (1:00:45)
Right.

Brian (1:00:50)
She's not making anybody do it, she's not her dad, but she's perfectly comfortable with human lives being thrown away to make her political job easier. And in the long term, maybe that's the trolley problem and she's actually saving more lives. mean, maybe that was her justification to herself at the time. But she's certainly operating with a callousness that I think most people would consider ethically unacceptable. However, what happens in that book?

Harry, this person who she seems to be growing to respect, explicitly basically says, you're a monster and I want nothing to do with And I feel like that energy from Thomas and Harry has changed how she sees the world. It's not just about you are what you eat. It is in a less metaphor, or I guess a more metaphorical sense.

Lara is becoming more like the people who are a durable influence on her and who she respects, who is no longer Lord Wraith or the leader of House Malvora or whatever. It's and Thomas and even John Marcon, you know, other people who treat her with respect and agency, but have lines that they won't cross.

Adam (1:02:10)
And remember, in White Knight, end goal wasn't to destroy those women or the wizards in general or whatever. in Dresden's words when he's confronting her, he says, I think she, Lara,

did it to defied her enemies and focus their efforts into a plan she could predict rather than waiting upon their ingenuity. I think someone wanted to turn Scavis and Malvora against one another, keeping them too busy to undermine Wraith. It was you." Unquote. So even then, Harry's giving her the credit of, she didn't do this specifically to kill those women, to hurt the...

the wizards or whatever, she never thought that plan was gonna be a good one or it was gonna be successful. The White Council was gonna figure it out and demand justice. She did this to clean her own house out. And she didn't mind at the time it was worth the collateral damage. But would the Lara of 12 months have decided that that was worth the collateral damage? Maybe, maybe right now she's, she bought herself

a lot of room to be more ethical and more moral, because she got rid of the parts of her house that would pull her against that direction.

Brian (1:03:28)
I think that exactly what you're saying is what you should look at in 12 months. Lara has done a lot, a lot of bad things to gain the freedom she possesses in the start of 12 months. Mob takes it away from her. We'll see how that affects her character, right? But she's done a lot to gain that freedom. And what does she do with I mean, fundamentally, it seems like

runs essentially a very similar shop to the one Mab runs. She presides over a nation of monsters that do hurt people, but she tries to make sure that they do it in the way that has the least negative impact, and she points herself at things that are even worse than her and tears them to shreds. So yeah, that's kind of the thing I would want you to do. Okay, I have this curse slash blessing. I have this power that

carries a cost, what am I going to do? I'm going to minimize the cost to the greatest extent I can and I'm going to use the power to accomplish important things that are good for the world.

Adam (1:04:34)
And what do we see her personally doing with regards to her feeding once she has the agency to do so what she wants? Well, Lord Wraith, as she tells us in this book, would have a ritual feeding every year where I imagine he like ripped the life out of, I don't know, dozens, maybe hundreds of women or men as it were.

That to me, obviously very unethical, but he's got a ginormous gas tank and he's trying to prove how disciplined he is by only feeding once a year. Meanwhile, what do we hear her doing? Again, assuming you can trust her, which I think we can in the way that she talks about it in this, is she has this sort of herd, that's the way she describes it. It's more than a little dehumanizing, but it's not untrue.

because she is a predator and she needs to build it up. So she has this herd that she treats with some amount of respect and dignity insofar as she's not murdering them and she wants them to be happy and healthy because she believes you are what you eat. And so she only wants to restrict her diet to be ⁓ physically healthy and mentally healthy people so that she gets the most, you know, pure life energy that's not going to come with a bunch of side effects.

that's kind of the impression I got from it. And when you put it that way and you say, well, she specifically avoids killing them, like she rotates through all of them so that none of them are significantly reduced in their capabilities. They're probably all happy to be there because it's a big rush. It's a fun time, like the jogger in Deadbeat for Thomas. So to me, if I was put in that position, the way she describes it feels like one of the most ethical ways to go about it.

while maintaining power to ensure that that ethics is more or less the norm within your household.

Brian (1:06:30)
Right, and there's a couple things that are suspicious about Lara's story. first is the perfectly blue eyes thing. Okay, if you could do that whenever, don't you? Why is it only now that you're doing this? Well, maybe because it involves overeating, which she says it does, in a way that...

Adam (1:06:38)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:06:53)
isn't fun, which she implies, which potentially means the mass slaughter of whole loads of people at once. And it's possible that, maybe she's responsible for kicking the eye of Balor out.

Adam (1:06:54)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:07:09)
the only reason she's doing that is because I mean this makes it marginally more likelihood that I could have a meal on Thursday and it's got nothing to do with helping anyone else it's purely self-interested

Adam (1:07:21)
Mm.

Brian (1:07:22)
It's possible that everything Lara's doing is a cold sociopathic manipulation designed to extend her influence and life, right? Der wills are mocked, the will to power. Lara is a pure Nietzschean being who is beyond the normal human morality in all senses and is just, you know, ⁓ a predator ubermensch. I just don't think that's the story Jim is writing, guys.

Adam (1:07:50)
Agreed, agreed. I think the possibility of that being the case is a useful thing for tension within a lot of the scenes of this book. And I think that Jim has been playing around with that possibility since Lara entered the stage. That's why they have a frenemy relationship and not a pure ally relationship. That's the central tension of

Brian (1:08:01)
Yes.

Adam (1:08:18)
Is she manipulating me or is it just Maybelline? So that I think is something that we're gonna have to eventually determine for sure. Harry is gonna have to come down on a side of finally deciding, no, she is as sincere and she's always been sincere with me, right? That's the kind of thing he'll have to eventually decide for sure and that will be a cue to the reader.

that they can stop wondering whether every interaction with her is secretly manipulation because the, I mean, that's what trust is, right? Trust is built on a distance in time. The longer you interact with someone and the more their trust proves to be worthy, the more, the less likely it is that they've manipulating you that whole time. Cause at some point in the past would have been a great time to stab you in the back.

and they didn't take it. And every time they don't take it, every time it's proven that they're not manipulating you, that's building trust. So the longer Harry and Lara interact, and they interacted a ton in this book, and now that they're gonna be married, they're probably gonna be interacting a lot in future books. She might become more of his sidekick the way that Murphy was throughout a lot of the books, or maybe that'll be bare, hard to say, but that means that their trust is going to continue to build as long as she doesn't ever betray it.

Brian (1:09:45)
And it is perfectly acceptable for Jim to put us in a situation where we never get word of God confirmation whether Lara really wants to be a good person. He might never tell us, he might never put it on page, he might never have Harry say, and that's when I knew Lara really was Mother Teresa in white court vampire form, right? But.

Adam (1:10:07)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Brian (1:10:10)
I think that it's likely that we're going to continue to, as we have been, get hints that Lara is growing in a way that I think every reader in the series, if she was a real person, would want her to. So as we continue to get those hints, can, of course, you know, we can be worried that Jim's gonna pull the rug out from under us at any moment.

But we can also, you know, adding tacks to the theory saying, no, I mean, it seems like she's really changing because exactly as, and I really do.

love the first scene that she has with Harry in 12 months where they go on the date and Dresden pushes her as to why she's providing relief for the starving and you clothing the needy or whatever and she goes through all of the manipulative reasons why it's good but is also like and maybe I don't like to watch people suffer either

Adam (1:11:05)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

and the way that she describes that

not gonna read the whole quote, but she says, you I could tell you it was because of this reason, which you probably wouldn't believe. I could tell you that it's a manipulation. It's for these reasons. I could tell you because it's my self-interest. But among all these pressures,

I would take it as a personal favor if you would consider this possibility, that just occasionally, I think so too, referring to that she thinks it is the right thing to do. So that to me is a wonderful thing by Jim to try to just keep sliding that into the reader's heads. Like, maybe she really does believe this.

Brian (1:11:59)
And that doesn't mean that Lara isn't manipulative. It doesn't mean that Lara doesn't make hard choices that you, reader, might morally disagree with. It doesn't mean that Lara doesn't hurt people because she thinks that it is justified or necessary. It just means that Lara's not a sociopath. And I think that we can say that that

Adam (1:12:05)
Agreed?

Brian (1:12:26)
We don't really have lot of textual evidence suggesting that she is. All things seem to point in the direction that Lara has more and more, and to a certain extent always has, believed that other people's lives were worth something.

maybe not the same way for you know that whole time that you and I believe it and maybe that her development of you know assigning value to human beings was significantly more delayed than you know the average person on the street but it's never seemed like something that she didn't do at all and it certainly seems to be something that she does so I think that Lara's

redemption from an agent of her father's will and a true monster to somebody that Harry can literally be in bed with was very gradual and very well executed. I don't necessarily feel the same way about the

Adam (1:13:31)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:13:37)
magic feeding thing that I feel like was not entirely sudden because Jim did a great job of absolutely saying that it was possible with Connie and Erwin and kudos to him because I did not even it didn't even enter my mind that what happens in 12 months is possible but of course it should have on the basis of how Connie and Erwin interact with each other however

Adam (1:13:39)
Hahaha.

Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian (1:14:05)
I do feel like we kind of neatly sidestepped the moral question of how can Dresden be in a, not a relationship within the romantic sense, but how can Dresden be in a close working relationship with someone who it needs to risk hurting people as a part of their sort of, you know, balanced diet.

Adam (1:14:33)
Hmm.

Brian (1:14:34)
That is thornier thing that I kind of wish Jim had given us a little bit more time to explore and think about before he made this change. How did that strike you?

Adam (1:14:46)
Yeah, to be honest, until you sort of mentioned it, it felt really like, I guess I was all wrapped up in the like, ⁓ I get all this history about the white cord and isn't that cool? And ⁓ she didn't have to eat for a whole month. Why is that the case? And then, you know, the slow reveal of like, and actually she can just eat magic. And that kind of makes sense.

it didn't occur to me until you mentioned it after the fact that I'm like, yeah, Jim kind of just neatly sidestepped that with what amounts to be a Dez X Machina or something. Now, the thing itself has consequences for Dresden.

and Lara, like negative consequences. Harry didn't wanna do that to her. He doesn't want to be a slave master essentially. So he feels horrible about the whole thing. And I think that's what made it more palatable, unless like I didn't really notice it as a sort of Dez X Machina as much, because it didn't feel like, this is just the perfect solution that I'm just gonna figure out right when I need

And there's no downsides. Like, there are obvious downsides. that I think made it an easier pill to swallow for me.

Brian (1:15:51)
I agree and I think that it works narratively and it's fine. I tell you what I was looking forward to though. was looking forward to Dresden being in a relationship with a dangerous person. In this case a dangerous woman who by the nature of their relationship holds power over him that she could use to harm him and he has to trust her.

Adam (1:16:04)
Hmm

Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:16:19)
not to do so, to act ethically and morally to make sure that he is not harmed. And I don't mean that in the sense of I wanted Lara to feed on Harry and for that to be okay. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is I wanted there to always be the threat of...

Adam (1:16:32)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:16:38)
Well, what if she turns this pleasant evening we're having into an opportunity to eat me? And what if I kind of want her to? And how am I going to handle needing to rely on her restraint? Her not keeping me in her power? It's a very strange situation for a male protagonist, right? This is literally, how do I know that she's not going to rape me?

Adam (1:17:04)
Yeah, but I would posit, I believe Dresden intuits and suggests that Mab wanted her to also like, addict him to her magic, right? Codependency. I would argue that that's still technically possible, right? Even though she's now dependent on him, she could, like if she gets him in a moment of vulnerability or something, just like,

Brian (1:17:18)
Yes. Codependency, literally, yeah.

Adam (1:17:32)
grab him and kiss him like she did at the party. And if his mental defenses aren't ready for it, for whatever reason, maybe he's exhausted or whatever, then she could potentially get that sort of enslavement whammy on him. And I don't know for a fact that just feeding off of him isn't enough for the hunger. Is it the fact that-

the hunger is getting like a direct magical feeding source, is that what made it so great? Or was it the fact that it came from a star born that made it, that it became addicted, right? If it's the second, if it's the latter, then she doesn't need him to do the whole ritual thing necessarily. She could just feed on him and it would give her maybe not the full thing, but maybe close enough so that she's not addicted. ⁓

Brian (1:18:24)
I think it is the first thing because of how they describe it. It's cutting out the middle man of changing it into lust. But I agree that that's an open possibility. And more importantly, yes, the original thing you said, which is that she could just still do that to him, that's totally true.

Adam (1:18:28)
I tend to agree.

And she could enslave

him, like, you're gonna do the ritual now. And he's like, okay. You know, that kind of thing could, it's the threat still on the horizon. So I think that keeps the tension there a little bit still.

Brian (1:18:51)
The thing is though, was a situa- and you know, as she says, Dresden could have used, you know, mental magic to try to take control of her overtly. So, but I think it changes the situation from Dresden has a gun his holster, but every time they hang out, Lara's got a loaded gun on the table in front of her, and he just has to trust her not to grab it and shoot him. To where now,

Adam (1:19:07)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:19:17)
Dresden's the one with the loaded gun on the table. And Lara is sort of in the second move position, where she could still do stuff, but she's been disempowered as a threat to Harry. Harry is now a bigger threat to her. That relationship dynamic has been altered. And that bugged me for a little while, but you know what actually made me come around and say, ⁓ you know what? I'm really fine with this. I thought about Mab.

Adam (1:19:20)
Mm-hmm.

Right, right.

Brian (1:19:46)
because Mab is basically what I wanted Lara to be in the story and think that it would actually perhaps not be a very good use of character arcs to put Lara in that similar a position especially if the plan is to at some point bring her into the winter hierarchy because then you're really

repeating the performance. So I think that it makes sense that Jim wanted Lara and Harry to have a relationship that wasn't. Lara's got a loaded gun on the table every time they hang out. And I think that this is an interesting reversal and I'm really curious to see where they go with the pact they've made to get her out of it. Could be very very interesting.

So ultimately, I think it is good. It's not unearned. It doesn't feel like it came out of nowhere. It did until I realized the Erwin Cotty thing and I was like, my God, I should have been smacking myself in the face the first time it happened on page realizing this is a direct callback to those short stories. ⁓ And I think that it does feel right, but it is actually the part of it I have more trouble with.

Adam (1:21:03)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:21:12)
The Lara's ethical redemption thing, I think, has been handled with a very long-term lens. This literally happened in the span of like half a book. It just completely turned around. So that was way more whiplash.

Adam (1:21:19)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:21:26)
before we get out of the Harry, Lara, Harry, White Court discussion, Adam, is there anything else from that arc that stood out to you that you want to talk?

Adam (1:21:37)
Yeah, one thing I do wanna say regarding like, Lara the master manipulator, she's been manipulating Harry and such all this time. I think there's room for a head fake in the future where Jim has Lara appear to betray Harry and you, but it's all part of the plan.

know, Jim doesn't reveal that to the reader until later when it's clear that she and Harry are working together. But like that for the moment, for the people that are like, I bet she's still a monster. And then they go like, yes, I knew it. And then she's like, no, she's actually fully redeemed. So I think he could play around with something like that. So Brian, what about you? Did you have any final thoughts about the Larry situation?

Brian (1:22:20)
I think...

So there's just one more, Adam is that, that's the benefit of this relationship.

Adam (1:22:29)
Yes, exactly.

That's the ship. So would you prefer like ⁓ a ⁓ Hera? Because that sounds a little bit too much like the Greek god.

Brian (1:22:33)
The shipping name is Larry.

I do prefer Hara,

actually. do. Larry is like your uncle. Anyway, so on to the one more thing about the Hara situation, which is that I think that the soul gaze is really important.

First, because, and I can't reiterate this enough, Lara is not overwhelmed by what she sees.

Adam (1:23:03)
Right, her reaction is not crazed, it's not scared, it's not Bradley falling backwards and being stunned for minutes.

Brian (1:23:13)
And I think that tells us two very important things. One is that Lara is a villain in the true sense anymore. I think that's the big tell we have.

Adam (1:23:25)
Right, because we kind of came to

the conclusion that people see sort of somewhat different aspects of Harry depending upon who they are to him, and that villains will see the scary guy as this big dangerous thing because he is dangerous to them, but good people will see a protector or something of that nature.

Brian (1:23:50)
what does Lara's reaction remind me the most of? John Marcon. Lara and Marcon are both sort of unfazed by what they see. And I think that that doesn't say that Lara is as bad of a person or as good of a person as Marcon is. Your mileage may vary on what side of that you think she's on,

Adam (1:23:54)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:24:11)
But I think that it says that Lara is very formidable. She understands the world she's in. She knows what the stakes are. She knows what the threats are. And she's neither an agent of pure selfless good, nor of pure selfish evil. She is somebody who, like Harry, is united with her dark side and therefore conflicted. And I think that's something we need to start

treating Lara as is as a character who like Harry has internal conflicts about what the right thing to do is.

She might have a different set of parameters she uses to evaluate that than Harry does, but I think that's actually the key takeaway from 12 months. She's more complicated than she seems when we first meet her in the sense that her decision-making process is more complicated than it seems when we first meet her.

Adam (1:25:13)
Yeah,

that is definitely true. But she's always seemed like more than a one dimensional character, even when we meet her as like the antagonist slash frenemy in Blood Rites. But we've got so much more of a three dimensional picture of her.

over the years, but I feel like we've learned more about her and developed her more in this book, like as much if not more than all the previous books where she's been in. So she's definitely now a big part of this universe. And I'm really excited to see where that goes, especially since it seems she's tied so close to our protagonist. But Brian, we've got to move on. Back in December, we made a bunch of predictions about 12 months and many of them really didn't come to pass because

the things we were talking about weren't even involved in this book. The librarians never showed up. So our predictions about how they interact with Dresden didn't happen. We'll have to save that for the next book. But a bunch of these things did show up and our predictions were right and wrong and we're gonna go ahead and grade them now for fun. So the first one we had was we discussed ideas about how the Paranet or the Better Future Society would play a role in this book.

didn't really happen. So neither of us are gaining or losing points from that. We had some predictions by the librarians, didn't happen, no points there. However, we both had some predictions about how the Black Court could fit into this book. I said that I don't think we'll see much about Black Court repercussions. I said, I don't think we're gonna get the Harry and Carlos go on a rampage against them and revenge. I said, we might get some other Black Court coming in and getting stomped because they don't know what they're getting into with Harry.

And specifically I was thinking it's like some low level brand new black court vamp that just is arrogant and thinks they can take on the big bad Dresden. Turns out it was elders of the black court, so I don't wanna give myself full marks there, but Brian, you convinced me to take partial credit, because that was pretty close.

Brian (1:27:10)
Yeah, fundamentally, you thought it was going to be an idiot because they're young, but it really was an idiot because Dracul duped them. So in that sense, think you absolutely get the credit that there was Black Ward vampires in this story and the Black Ward vampires were behaving in a manner that was very stupid, just for very different plot reasons than we maybe thought.

Adam (1:27:16)
Ha ha.

Yes.

Brian (1:27:38)
My prediction was that we would get some backstory on Dracul and it appears that Jim only gave us the bare minimum he needed to have the Dracul scenes in the book. So I'm not even taking partial credit on that one. I don't think finding out that he is a reason for the existence of the laws of hospitality counts as backstory because I hear that and I say, why, what did he do?

Adam (1:27:49)
Hmm.

Right, I agree. Yeah,

exactly, we need to know more. All right, the next category we had was the Battle of Chicago Aftermath. Now, that's all in the periphery of this. This was more, were making predictions about how it was going to take a forefront. Now, you could argue that like the ghoul thing is the Battle of Chicago Aftermath, but what we talked about...

know, bean quests. We were thinking people were gonna turn in their beans to Dresden to ask him to do favors for them. We didn't get that at all. Instead, we got Knights of the Bean as Harry's personal guard slash army. I certainly didn't see that coming. I did enjoy, the only other piece that we had from the Knights of the Bean is in the law when Harry's about to get found out by the cop.

the cop reveals that he has a bean pinned under his shoulder, under his jacket lapel, and then he just goes along his way and ignores Harry instead of turning him in. That I thought was a really nice touch. And I hope we see more scenes like that where Harry gets validation that what he did was the right thing from the people that worked with him.

Brian (1:29:06)
Yeah, I think we could both arguably just take negative points on this because the Battle of Chicago aftermath does kind of come up just not at all in the way that we thought with regards to the Knights of the Bean. But I think it's more fair to say that we were expecting that the people who were a part of Dresden's banner during the battle would have an arc. And they don't in this book.

Adam (1:29:11)
Debbie Wash.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:29:36)
Harry has an arc related to them, but there is no arc of those people. So I don't know if that's ever going to happen. I think it's more fair to just say that that question, how were the people under Dresden's banner affected, was not really answered in 12 months, except, as you noted, that at least a good amount of them.

still are willing to associate with Harry and still wish to combat the supernatural at his side.

Adam (1:30:09)
Yeah, and I think those are the ones that are basically living there, so part of their payment, quote unquote, is they're helping to guard the place, and that is a nice touch. Now, we did have some ideas of what might happen with regards to magical tools that Harry is wielding. I gave myself a really easy layup by saying, you know, I think we'll definitely see him wind up with his core tools back, his blasting rod, his staff, his shield bracelet by the end of this.

Brian (1:30:15)
Right.

Adam (1:30:36)
and his coat, obviously. And we did see him re-putting the coat, the coat got put back together, because it needed the spells reapplied, and that's how Fitz got his biker leathers to have their thing. So I gave myself one point for that. That was kind of an easy layup. It was a good guess. You went out on a limb, though, Brian. And I'm sorry, you weren't right, but it was a really, was a you're Babe Ruth pointing at the stands here.

Brian (1:31:00)
Yeah, yeah, I took a big swing and said that Amorachius would be wielded or that someone will discuss taking it up permanently. And I actually pointed the finger at Fitz there. Now, I was sort of...

totally faked out with what was doing in the story because I didn't realize that you could get a power-up from taking part in the Battle of Chicago. So that was information that I just didn't have and made me like, well, he's going to use Fitz. So how's he going to use him? And this is what I thought was happening. But I think that another thing that I was just wrong about

Adam (1:31:21)
Right.

Brian (1:31:35)
is I just assumed that there would be some threat in the book that the knights needed to combat. And there really wasn't. We get two scenes where the knights feature. One is a curb-stomp battle in favor of Dresden. And the other is them sitting around and getting beers with them. So that level of threat, that kind of threat, never presented itself. And...

Therefore, there was no need to really discuss Amorakius.

Adam (1:32:06)
Yeah, we both then were trying to figure out, how is this book gonna end? And I said there would be a cliffhanger ending. this is an unusual book where something's gonna happen at the end similar to changes, which just makes the audience go, what? You know, that would have been a great way to have, like we

Brian (1:32:11)
Ha ha!

Adam (1:32:25)
the Mirror Universe Harry comes in, like grabs our Harry and pulls him away. And then you're like, wait, what's gonna happen next? That was my call. Didn't happen. You said, we're not gonna get a cliffhanger. We're gonna get a like sudden like realization between Harry and Lara. Like, shit, we're really married now. Wow, this is a real thing we have to grapple with. ⁓ That didn't happen either, because the wedding got pushed down. So we both lost two points on those.

Brian (1:32:48)
And I'm gonna give us some credit if in Mirror Mirror either of those things happen, because the thing we didn't expect was that Jim was gonna just take the wedding thing and just push it off past 12 months when we were explicitly told they had to be married in a year.

Adam (1:32:53)
Right.

Right?

Exactly,

exactly. Now then we talked about some individuals and relationships and we tried to make some predictions about Mab. Now I was totally wrong. I said Mab will reveal that she has knowledge that she will die soon. Not that she's worried about it because big things are happening, but that she has some foreknowledge about her actual death. That did not happen. Negative two points for me. had a decent call chat. We're gonna give you partial credit on it.

Brian (1:33:27)
So I thought that Mab would reveal the reason for the Winter White Court alliance because it doesn't make a lot of sense on paper. They're already a part of the Unseelie Accords. They just defended the Winter Court in this war that was going on. Why do you need to forge a stronger alliance? And Mab didn't tell us that really. She didn't say because.

Adam (1:33:45)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:33:56)
they're going to do X for me not how what

Adam (1:33:59)
Right, she didn't reveal the

threat that required the closer alliance. What she did reveal was, hey, we can basically turn them into vassals because of this specific situation between Lara and my star-born knight, right? That is why it was feasible to bring them in and bind them so tightly to Winter.

Brian (1:34:22)
Right, and.

We know that the reason that she wanted this marriage alliance was to cause that specifically. So partial credit, we figured out why Mab wanted to do this beyond just politics in air quotes. It actually has a sensible reason, but we still don't know is it because she wants Lara in the winter line of succession? Is it because she needs the succubi to defend the outer gates from whatever thing? That we still have no idea. So partial credit on that.

Adam (1:34:30)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:34:53)
We also talked about the Murphy aftermath, Adam, and we had predictions from a lot of people on what was going to happen with Murphy, but I think we should give you partial credit on yours. I think that what you said was kind of true.

Adam (1:35:10)
Yeah,

I said basically that Harry's gonna continue to mope around for like the first third of the book before somebody slaps some sense into him and reminds him that a lot of people need his help and he needs to get his shit together. That didn't really happen. Everybody, for the most part, treats him with kindness and gentleness and, you know, the only exception is Mab who is like, I know you're hurting, but you need to go like.

do this thing with this Occupus. Like she kept jumping in and saying, make it happen my knight, it must happen. That is the only option. And so she kept being more intense about getting him to get up and take care of her specific priorities. But the one that I think is a little bit closer to what I was thinking was Bear, who was very kind to him throughout most of it. But then at one point just tells him to man the hell up. Like you need to get over this. You've spent, you've taken the time, you've done the grief. It's time to get up off the mat.

And that's kind of what I was thinking about.

Brian (1:36:03)
And I think that an important part of that prediction was that it was going to serve as some kind of a turning point. And I think what Bayer says arguably does...

Adam (1:36:12)
Yeah, I think he gets

a good night's sleep after that, if I'm not mistaken.

Brian (1:36:16)
Right.

I think that both of us were wrong in how little credit we gave Jim in terms of his ability to be really patient with Harry becoming his old self again.

Adam (1:36:25)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, cause you said Molly's

gonna ask him specifically, what would Murphy want you to do? it wasn't really Molly asking that necessarily, but like Murphy was there kind of like giving him therapy.

Brian (1:36:45)
Well, I think Murphy, Murphy Shade says effectively that she wouldn't want you to do what you're doing to yourself. And Molly essentially has the kind of conversation I was predicting at Thanksgiving. So I just sort of got my wires crossed about exactly, know, somebody said what I wanted and Molly sort of did what I expected, but not exactly that way. I, and I think the, but I think the important thing is,

Adam (1:36:47)
Murphy's Shade, yep, technically. Yeah.

Exactly, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so we've both given ourselves partial credit for that one.

Brian (1:37:14)
that what we were right about is that a lot of Harry's recovery was going to be about other people saying things to him that he trusts and uses that as fuel to sort of turn himself around. But we were both sort of wrong about there being a crystalline moment we can point to and say, that's where he got off the mat.

Adam (1:37:37)
Agreed, agreed. It was so subtle and so slow. I think there's like three or maybe four specific turning points you can point to in various chapters where he clearly makes some progress. Like the most obvious one is the one where the gargoyles are coming down or whatever and he had just had this light shining in him from interacting with his daughter and he was thinking about like

Brian (1:37:46)
Yeah.

Adam (1:38:05)
Do I really trust these guys? But the light was shining too bright and he decided to trust them because of that more or less. Like that's one obvious turning point. But there's several other very small ones where he makes steps. You know, the moment when he just tells Murphy's shade goodbye is another big one. Yes, the conversation with the knights where he forgives, where he asks basically for their forgiveness and says he's sorry for hurting them when they try to stop him doing, attacking Rudolph. Like that's, yeah.

Brian (1:38:21)
The conversation with the Knights, which is right before that, yeah.

Adam (1:38:34)
you could keep going. There's like another four or five probably smaller moments that show him making progress. And I really, really liked how patient he was. That was a good way of describing it. All right, the next one that we were talking about is we were talking about what's next for the Zalord, the Zalord's guard specifically, like to Major General, what's gonna go on him? I predicted that he would incorporate the Zalord's guard into his banner ability so he can have a form of intellectus over where his guard is and what's going on with him.

and you suggested that maybe Toot will gain more obvious she features. We didn't really see the Zalord's guard upgrade in any significant way, but I still think it's coming. And I think both of our predictions are still entirely possible for a future book.

Brian (1:39:18)
Yeah, I actually think we might be right. We just didn't see it. But I we won't know. So, you know, we can't give ourselves any points for that.

Adam (1:39:22)
Maybe.

You know, one of the she features is being

pretty tall and Toot is taller, technically. ⁓

Brian (1:39:28)
Well, yeah, that is part of it, honestly, yeah. But

we didn't really get enough about them for that to be, it's not a part of the book that Toot is taller. It's a throwaway line, you know? So no points on that one, but I do think that we're effectively correct about what's going on in the background. We didn't see anything to suggest that these predictions are wrong. We just didn't really see enough to have a ⁓ true opinion on them. We did, however, see Harry's new apprentice.

Adam (1:39:38)
Right, exactly, exactly.

Brian (1:39:57)
Adam, you, I think like most people, made pretty reasonable prediction.

Adam (1:40:02)
Yeah, the Zoo Day Warlock, if you have not read Zoo Day in a while, remember that it's split into sort of three stories, one from Harry's perspective, one from Maggie's perspective, and one from Mouse's perspective. And Harry's story is he's taking his daughter to the zoo and senses black magic nearby and has to go deal with that. And it's this kid who tells him to go away. Like, listen, you gotta go away. Something bad's gonna happen. Like he can't stop it from happening. He's accidentally about to summon something.

And Harry gently and carefully talks him down and like neutralizes the black magic that the kid is doing and explains to him what's going on. And that seemed like a perfect sort of introduction for a potential apprentice, but it didn't happen, obviously. You took a bigger swing. Fitz, we only knew as being able to have that connection to ghosts.

and upgrade in Battlegrounds was something that we didn't really see coming, but you were right about it. And so we're gonna give you three points for that. I'll get negative two points for my wrong decision there.

Brian (1:41:09)
Yeah, and if that wasn't your guess, the Zude Warlock, that was going to be mine. I picked Fitz just to give us a sort of difference here because I, the one thing I knew was that Fitz was coming back into the story. I think that was a popular belief too. It's just that for a lot of reasons, most people didn't, mainly that we didn't see him having very much talent. Most people didn't think that he could be a wizard level apprentice.

Adam (1:41:14)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:41:37)
So I'll take the points and you know say that I'm really intelligent, but really I got lucky on that one and Jim kind of bailed me out

Adam (1:41:43)
Yeah,

Next up is our predictions on what would happen with regards to Molly, if she played a big part in the book, which she certainly did. I suggested that Lara, having seen that Molly is still carrying a torch for Harry, would offer Molly to be with him, because she's like, listen, I'm not picky, we don't need to be super monogamous here.

You can be with him if you want. Not knowing, of course, that the maiden isn't allowed to be with the knight in that sense, So I thought that was gonna be a scene that would cause some tension or problems, but we didn't get anything like that. Molly was very much his peer and his mentor throughout this process.

You didn't see any of that poking through other than a genuine caring about Harry and his wellbeing. So I definitely took negative two points for that.

Brian (1:42:36)
Yeah, I thought that was a really good prediction, but Jim went another direction. And I think I can take credit to say that this is the book where the Molly Harry ship became more acceptable in the sense of...

Molly demonstrating that she's matured as a person and that she's someone that Harry should see as a peer, even though she's technically his boss. He should at the very least see her as a peer, as a friend, somebody who is on his level rather than his ex-apprentice who he's known since she was a little kid. And wait, isn't she still a little kid? No, she is the winter lady and she's damn good at her job. And I think Harry does see that.

Adam (1:43:12)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:43:21)
we don't see Molly help mouse on any doggy dating websites. So that prediction from the audience, that did not happen.

Adam (1:43:25)
No, no, that was thanks to GDex86 who gave us that thought, that mouse

would have a significant other revealed in this. Moving on, interactions with Lara. We actually got both of these right. Mine was a little more specific, so I got a few more points. Go ahead.

Brian (1:43:38)
Let me do mine first, Adam, because yours

is really impressive. So I got two points for saying, Lara has actually changed since we met her. And we'll see evidence of that during the dates with Harry. And we got that immediately in the first date, and it was continuing to happen throughout the book. So I took a nice, safe swing and boom, got on base with a single. You walked up, bases loaded, two outs, and we're like, I'm bringing everybody home, because your prediction was...

Adam (1:44:01)
Yeah.

Yeah, I said Laura's wedding to Winter is going to make her much more powerful and protected. Therefore, if any of her enemies want to take her down, they'd have to do it before the wedding.

Thus, I think we'll see the White Court assassins try to take her out, being much more bold than the White Court usually is due to the time pressure. Harry definitely saves her life during one of these attempts, and together they investigate and confront whoever's actually behind it. Now, I was suggesting I should get some partial credit here, because Lara isn't actually the one that's under attack, it's actually Harry, but it is being done by members of the White Court to undermine Lara as part of it. So, yeah. Yeah.

Brian (1:44:41)
Openly, which I thought was key openly not through cat's paws the Malvora

show up and jump over the ramparts and the thing that I thought was sort of Like this was a very specific prediction and I think you got every piece of it, right? Just some things happened in a different order, right? Like it's not that Harry saved her life During an attempt on her life. She more saved Harry life during the attempt on his life all for the same reason right because

Adam (1:44:47)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Right. Yes, they were all

to prevent this wedding from happening so that she doesn't become more powerful in their eyes.

Brian (1:45:15)
organized

literally by her father, right? And they investigated it sort of before it happened together as opposed to after it happened because they are both saying, well, something weird is going on. We need to figure this out. And they actually apparently have set up countermeasures to handle it in advanced. It's just that they did that before it happened as opposed to afterwards.

Adam (1:45:17)
Mm-hmm. Yep, internal.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, exactly.

All right, so let's talk about Thomas. You nailed this one because I believe you suggested that Lara and Harry would travel to the island for one of their dates.

Brian (1:45:51)
Yeah, I said, date two, they're gonna go see Thomas in the hospital, AKA Demonreach, and that's exactly what they did. The one thing I was wrong about is I didn't know Thomas would be able to talk back to them. And frankly, I think that we didn't know that that was possible. I mean, we can talk to the people who are inmates at Demonreach, so to speak, but I thought Thomas was in too bad a shape for that to happen. That, had I known, I would have put in the prediction.

Adam (1:46:02)
Hmm.

Brian (1:46:19)
I think yours gets partial credit though because you went out on a limb there, but I think you were mostly right.

Adam (1:46:24)
Yeah, I predicted basically that Thomas's situation would be resolved, which is true. And I said it would be costly, which is true. And Harry specifically, I said that Harry's basically gonna need to get Leah's help. Now we did get Mab's help, that's kind of similar. And my thought was that the Fae would help put the hunger to sleep. then that like Leah did with Martin and Susan in death masks. And then that would let them treat Thomas's injuries with like mortal medicine, like bring him to a hospital.

while that thing sleeps and then when the hunger wakes up, Thomas is all healed and that would solve it. Obviously, that those specific details were wrong, but I think enough of it was kind of in the ballpark. I'll take partial credit on that.

Brian (1:47:07)
Yeah, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, you can even take two points for that one because the only difference is that effectively Harry wrestled the hunger into a pin with Mab's help as opposed to Leah just putting it to sleep. And that second part is where I think we were all kind of off base, assuming that there would be this conflict between healing Thomas and his hunger reawakening.

Adam (1:47:17)
Yeah.

Brian (1:47:36)
And we needed to get new lore information about how magic works to actually solve that. So very plausible, but we learned that actually a wizard can just, or at least a starborn, can just take the hunger aside and force it to not feed on its host. We were both wrong about Justine. I said that Justine's baby was going to be effectively Rosemary's baby, the Antichrist.

Adam (1:47:55)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:48:03)
and no he's going be Etris Valet.

Adam (1:48:06)
Yeah, more or less.

And I said that Harry's gonna track down Justine, maybe after getting Thomas out of demon reach, and they'll perform a sort of outsider exorcism on Justine. I thought it was pretty plausible because we know that Harry, Harry's Starboard Nature makes that he can deal with outsiders, but instead Mab is the one that's gonna be performing that exorcism, and Harry wasn't the one that tracked her down. So.

Brian (1:48:27)
You know, you

should get partial credit though because the only reason why Mab does either of those things is because Harry made a deal to make that happen. And if it wasn't Mab, we would totally give you credit for Harry doing it. So definitely partial credit.

Adam (1:48:37)
I guess that's true. I guess that's true.

So next we got Ebenezer. How is his situation gonna be resolved? I, I'm sorry, I jumped.

Brian (1:48:47)
No, next we got Marcon.

Don't skip this one because man, do I have egg on my face. I thought building off the law, we were going to see Marcon as a major player in this book and as a bridge between the mortal authorities and the supernatural community and Mab specifically. No, he was Sir not appearing in this film.

Adam (1:48:53)
Yeah.

Yeah, to be fair, I think that that is a possibility that is revealed in a future book, right? The next time Marcon re-enters the picture, he might already have made that link. And then we can give you retroactive points because that happened in the background of this book. ⁓ Yeah, but if like, turns out like, yeah, while he was rebuilding the city, he became this.

Brian (1:49:22)
Right, maybe in- if it happens in Outlaw, I get a point, yes.

Adam (1:49:32)
essential source of liaison slash information for the librarians and they go to him for all their stuff now. And so he's able to manipulate things that, and then they're gonna be like, wait a minute, when did that happen? While he was rebuilding stuff? During 12 months? Brian was right the whole time, Harry just didn't know it. my thought was, I don't think we'll see him. But if we do, it will be peripheral. And the only piece that we did see is Sigurd showed up about 10 seconds to help in the battle.

Brian (1:49:50)
Hahahaha!

Adam (1:50:01)
you don't want a hanging around who hasn't had the opportunity to bring out her battle axe recently. She needs to use that every once in a while.

Brian (1:50:10)
talked about Ebenezer also. Now, I smartly avoided the wedding, so I ended up with partial credit for saying that Ebenezer is going to be too ashamed to talk to Harry for the first six months. It wasn't quite six months, and we don't hear from the horse's mouth, I was too ashamed to talk to you. But we get the sense that definitely part of the reason why he was on the down-low for so long was because he was ashamed of what he did.

Adam (1:50:21)
Hmm.

Right,

extra giving you partial credit because it is the first half of the book, ⁓ But the book has, some of the months take up more chapters than others, and that's why it's not quite six mine was just completely wrong. I thought that literally Ebenezer was gonna continue his antagonistic streak against Harry and like kidnap him or Maggie in order to try to like stop the wedding or talk some sense into him.

Brian (1:50:40)
Yes. Yes.

Adam (1:51:00)
but he had his own little revelation, his own come to Jesus moment and realized that, you know, he cannot dictate and force Dresden to do these things. It will be too damaging both to their relationship and to Maggie. And so he's trusting Dresden's judgment here and just hoping that if he backs that play, that it'll work out. So mine was kind of polar opposite of what he actually did. Next.

Brian (1:51:27)
And I think the

important thing was that what we were maybe both suspecting, because I thought it might happen at the wedding, is that Ebenezer was going to continue to have suspicions about whether Harry's motives were truly his, whether they were the same as they had always been, and whether why he was doing what he was doing was his own free choice. And it seems like that he came around on. He believes that Harry is doing what he's doing.

least like on some level of his own volition.

Adam (1:51:59)
Yeah, and I think it's

like he had some time to process the Thomas is my grandson information because that is a huge turning point. When you enter that piece of data that into all, if you think back to all the other things that Ebenezer has seen Harry do vis-a-vis Thomas, it makes way more sense that he trusts him more implicitly now because

Brian (1:52:06)
Yes.

Yeah.

Adam (1:52:26)
It's more than just, have this ally who's a white court vampire. ⁓ the ones that manipulate people and pretend to be your friend until they stab the knife in. How convenient you're being an idiot, right? But no, they have a much, much more intimate and direct connection that can explain that level of trust not being a stupid thing. So I, for one, bought his sort of redempt, his sort of contrition arc here.

Brian (1:52:55)
Yeah, I think that's a good point. Ebenezer has time to go and run the math with that variable kind of pinned down to a number and go, ⁓ yeah, I guess the calculations do spit out that answer. Yes, absolutely.

Adam (1:53:03)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I might

still not trust him, but he's now more trustworthy than I had considered possible of a white court vampire, given this new piece of data, that kind of a thing. All right, let's jump on to Rudolph. My thought was he vanishes, he disappears on the run from human cops as well as from his previous benefactor, and he's no longer useful and instead he's only a loose end.

and I said, maybe Dresden finds him and he begs for help. ⁓ You offered to give me full credit on this. I thought it was only partial credit because he didn't come to find Dresden, but.

Brian (1:53:43)
I think you get full credit because you said maybe. You were totally like, he's not gonna be a part of the book and if he is, the only way in which he's gonna be a part is that Dresden will find him and then Rudolph will be like, please help me. Like that could still happen frankly and I think that's why that maybe was important. The key is your belief was that Rudolph was going to disappear and the story was not going to be about him getting his just desserts.

Adam (1:53:46)
Yeah, that's fair.

And

more importantly, he was specifically mentioned in 12 months as having disappeared. Harry sort of talks about him, I believe, with Mab and again with someone else. think he's, know, Mab wants me to go and kill him. then I think, is it Michael or Molly? Is that what you want? And he's like, no. So ⁓ that I think is important, right? If he had just been not mentioned at all, I don't think.

Brian (1:54:20)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:54:40)
either of us get any credit or anything, but because he was mentioned as having disappeared, your suggestion was that he was gonna get a promotion. Obviously, if he's disappeared, he couldn't have got a promotion, so that's negative points there.

Brian (1:54:51)
Yes, and I was glad that Jim is not writing that story as much as at the time I thought Jim might be writing that story. That was a little bit dark and we neatly avoided that.

Adam (1:55:01)
Yeah,

so the last one, I'm very disappointed, Brian, that neither of ours here were correct, because I wanted to learn more about Will and the Alphas. Specifically, I loved my prediction that Will or Georgia is going to run for some kind of an office in mortal society and mortal government to act as a representative that would be able to talk on behalf of the Supernatural community inside of Chicago, but that did not happen.

Brian (1:55:07)
You know, me too. Me too.

No, and I thought that Will might be essentially running the paranet on a day-to-day basis. And it does seem like to a certain extent he is the second in command at the castle and there is some overlap between those two things. But frankly, the organization of the paranet, which is what I was really predicating that theory on, just isn't something we see. I thought that was gonna be a response to Ethniu and it doesn't really happen, so Will doesn't have the opportunity to step

Adam (1:55:51)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brian (1:56:00)
into a larger role in a more organized community the way I thought he might.

Adam (1:56:04)
Now we did have some ideas about 12 month lore that was going to drop. We didn't really get any new Starborn info. We did get new White Court lore, but it was not what we thought. Harry did not ask Lara about his mother and we didn't find out as much and any new information about why Ebenezer hates the White Court so much.

We didn't get any really, any new fairy lore. We got a little bit of White Council lore the coming to deal with the Black Magic and Ileana's reveal, but neither of us were correct about that. I thought that we'd learn more about Christo's death, but maybe he's not actually dead. We didn't learn even that little bit. thought maybe the Merlin engineered the expulsion of Dresden, and we'd learn about that. Didn't learn about that either, so that's minus points for both of us.

it.

Brian (1:56:51)
And

we also discussed that the librarians would be a part of the book and how they would interact with Dresden. And maybe the HBGB inspectors towards the end of the book who look at the castle are exactly what we thought librarians coming to check on Dresden the people around him.

Adam (1:57:09)
secret Yeah, and then in a future book, they were like, how

did they learn so much about the, ⁓ no, those sneaky investigators.

Brian (1:57:16)
Right. But

none of that is revealed on page. neither take credit nor blame for that one because it frankly just isn't in the book.

Adam (1:57:23)
Right. All right, so

I added up all 15 of those, Brian, and I came to a startling discovery. Both of us are negative points, but I have negative two and you have negative three, so I will claim a very small victory on this meaningless prediction thread.

Brian (1:57:40)
You know,

Adam, I'm just glad that I was more wrong than you were. At least I wanted something.

Adam (1:57:48)
Fair enough. All right, we've been running our mouths long enough. Next week, we're finally going to get back to our grave peril episodes. We're looking forward to those. We'll see you then.