Actually what Jon said sparked something that made sense -- When Harry's supporters on the WC were saying "WTF you can't seriously expect a young wizard like to be able to get in touch with Mab and ..." Harry: "Actually, yeah, she already contacted me. I got this."

If Mab hadn't already talked to him then Harry wouldn't have had that "She already talked to me about it" option.

But then again, he'd have agreed to do it anyway... but maybe Mab didn't know that.

CBs points also make some sense. The whole episode still seems iffy, but at least now it's not bothering me as if it were a major plot hole.

Thanks.

 

Doing a re-read of Changes. The above is from the scene in St. Mary's before they head out to confront the Reds. Harry is talking to Martin.

Who is the second White Council member he's referring to? At this point he isn't expecting McCoy to show up. Last time he spoke with McCoy was when he was told to show up for a Grey Council meeting that he blew off.

Typo? For my count, it's Harry, Susan, Martin, Mouse, Thomas, Murphy, Lea, Molly, and Sanya going on this escapade.

Edit: Ah, he probably meant Molly. Though as an apprentice I'm pretty sure she doesn't count as a member yet. If that's all it was then sorry for the necro.

On another note, I had completely forgotten that Harry didn't just beat the WC to the punch and take out the Reds before the Merlin's plan could come into action, he saved their asses. The disease that Arianna had laced around the complex at Edinburgh had slipped my mind, a lot of them were down with it.

 

Yeah yeah, I'm bumping an old thread. But seems like a good place to place to discuss minor plot questions/concerns so we don't clutter the place up too much.

One of the Seven Laws of Magic is "Thou shalt not invade the mind of another." The question is, does just looking count?

Dresden says to Molly that...

Later he thinks to himself the following...

Obviously Molly broke the laws multiple times in Proven Guilty b/c she went into their heads and screwed around in there, best of intentions or not. I don't think I need to pull up quotes for that. But it seems to me like the danger in this kind of magic is due to the fact that altering something in someones head screws with your own, which leads down a slippery slope, but if you don't actually affect a change in the other person... then is that still applicable? Especially if they don't object/fight you?

There are some other incidents that seem to muddy the waters on what is or isn't a line to cross.

That implies that it's alright to look, though it isn't outright said that the Master Wizards are looking for the mind magic douchebaggery in the heads of the younger wardens, where else would they be looking? Surely if that had the ability to damage their psyche it'd not be done.

I can't find the quote right now, but I also think that it was implied at one point that the reason they hadn't taught any better psychic defenses before was because of that same reason though -- you'd have to be in someone's head to help them learn more than the basics, and that is not allowed.

This is held up by the scene in Turn Coat where Molly looks at Luccio's head. She doesn't alter anything, and never even implies that she intended to alter anything. She does imply that she might have been seeking something Luccio wouldn't have wanted her to know ("What if she’s just like Morgan—only a lot better at hiding it?"), so perhaps that is enough on it's own to warrant a change in Molly's psyche, but the discussion afterwards centers around the fact that Molly looked into Luccio's head at all. It gives me the impression that simply checking to see if someone had screwed with Luccio's head would be a dangerous violation of the Law because of the effect it'd have on Molly.

It's a long scene, and I wouldn't feel right quoting the entire thing. It's in Chapter 34 of Turn Coat though.

But prior to that, in Small Favor, we had something very similar that no one freaked out about. When Harry is unconscious Michael asks Molly to have a look in his head, b/c they're concerned someone has screwed with him. It's implied that Michael thinks it's the Denarians.

Now here, Harry's concern seems to be more along the lines of "kid in a candy store." I.e. He's worried that letting her poke around in someone's head will tempt her into breaking the law again -- he certainly doesn't seem to think that she broke it here. She also didn't have Harry's permission to peek into his head.

What's more, is that Luccio was present. They even asked for Luccio's opinion on Molly's foray into Harry's head, and she seems perfectly fine with it. More than anything else that implies that it's fine to just have a look as far as the Laws are concerned.

So, to me, this seems like a lot of conflicting information on this Mind Magic crap. The other 6 Laws don't seem to have as much leeway in them for where you cross a line, but perhaps we just haven't run into those aspects of them yet.

Is there some common denominator I'm missing between all of these scenes, or has Butcher actually given us genuinely conflicting information about what is or isn't alright when it comes to Mind Magic?

 

You misunderstand -- there's no doubt that Harry broke the law when he killed his mentor. He got off because of the circumstances, but he definitely broke the law.

Molly had good intentions when she screwed up the minds of her friends.

I kind of see the point you're making, but only kind of.

Edit: Ninja'd by the awesome post that appeared while I had this tab open for coffee making purposes. Thanks for the info from the Rulebook man. I'm gonna find a copy of that and do some more reading, but it looks like that more or less answers the question. The bit where Molly looked at Luccio to see if she'd been tampered with still seems to be a strange case (I think?), but that explains everything else.

 

Yeah I'm liking the House analogy and your proposed theory Aekiel. In your case Aekiel, if Molly's intrusion into Harry's mind did some damage, and if "doing damage" is the main criteria for whether or not you broke the law, I'm still a little surprised it didn't freak Luccio out. But as someone else here said I reckon it could be that it was a minor thing, with consent of Dresden's friends, etc.

Also, "Aekiel" is just a pink name. "Blaise" is more of a light purple. "Taure" is a light aqua. "CheddarTrek" is more of a yellow-orange. I know these things. >.>

 

Here's some excerpts from the scene in Turn Coat where the Merlin does his communication mojo. I cut out the bits that didn't seem to contain info about the mind/communication/whatever magic.

I'd say it's more than just a really kickass veil, unless we are speaking of different things.

This is a lot more in-depth than I recalled, though I'd still say that this isn't really invasive in the sense that it would break the law. Well, I mean, obviously the Merlin isn't breaking the law in the middle of a council meeting, so this is a good example of what you can get away with legally. He doesn't appear to be getting anything back from people -- so he can't see their minds and they can't see his -- he's just projecting somehow to everyone?

 

Bumping again since I finally got around to re-reading Ghost Story. I thought it'd be good to keep our discussion of possible plot holes here, especially as there aren't so many that the thread is going to get out of hand...

...I could swear I had already discussed some of this in a forum thread here, but I couldn't find it. Just read this thread again as well as two of the Ghost Story ones, so here goes.

Bob & Necrobob:

• In Dead Beat Harry tells Bob to lock off all his memories of his time with Kemmler and never access them again
• Cowl steals Bob and uses him in place of the Word of Kemmler to start up the Darkhallow, this implies that Bob was able to access those memories because he was under-new-management and the order from Harry was moot once he was under Cowl's control (this is more or less confirmed in Ghost Story as possible)
• In Ghost Story Bob tells Harry that back in Dead Beat he simply cut out all his memories of Kemmler so that he couldn't be forced to remember them, and those memories are what is running around in spirit form creating havoc

So if Bob cut out his memories so that he couldn't be forced to access them in Dead Beat, then how did Cowl use him to start up the Darkhallow?

Only explanation I can come up with is that Bob cut those memories out afterwards. As in he realized that blocking them wasn't going to be good enough if someone stole him again like Cowl had, so he cut them off after the fact. But that's an unsatisfying explanation, even if it does more or less explain things.

Missing something here?

Another thing that bugged me, that isn't actually a plothole: When Murphy's house got shot up in Ghost Story the only person inside to be hit was... Abby.

The freaking prescient practitioner. The only one to get shot was the one who would have seen it coming a second or three early. Right after we've had evidence of her using this ability to keep her dog from running around and so forth.

You can explain that away by saying she wasn't used to combat situations and even knowing that you'll be shot in two seconds isn't enough time to formulate a reaction that would prevent it... but this isn't a new ability for her, she's obviously used to acting on it, and she's been living in a very dangerous world for a while now.

Just bugged me a little.

If Fitz really is the son of Tera West and MacFinn as fans are theorizing... then, well, Tera really didn't strike me as the sort to have left him to fend for himself. She was downright motherly to the Alphas when they were young, and it's not like she wouldn't have known she had a son (that tends to be harder to hide from the mother than from the father). Curious to see where his character goes -- and it had better go somewhere interesting, because he got a lot of screentime for a character that isn't going to have a role later.