So when the venetors consign shit to oblivion does it end uP outside? Does that mean they get stronger, then? And who or what leads the outsiders and why havE we neither seen nor heard of it in the series. We have seen higher up soldiers in the walkers but that is it

 

I think they loose so much power they pretty much cease to exist.

 

That'd be a real kick in the balls, wouldn't it? Every time the Venatori eliminate something from existence they only add to the forces of the Outsiders.

I doubt it's that simple though; Outsiders seem to be the absolute most alien creatures in the Dresdenverse. Gods, on the other hand, are fundamentally a part of the Dresdenverse, which makes them still part of the universe even after they're forgotten.

 

Was doing a reread and this though popped in my head.

Shiro was a descendent of a king, as was Sanya. Harry even guessed that this had to do with who could wield a Sword of the Cross.

Except I have trouble believing Butters is also a descendent of a king.

 

Why? Something like 15% of Mongoloid humans are descended from Genghis Khan, specifically.

Blood mixes quickly, and people have always been people. A king begets one royal bastard (which, frankly, is probably below average), that guy has three children, each of them have three children, each of those have three children, etc. Repeat that for 10 generations (read: ~400 years), and there's just shy of 60,000 people who can trace their ancestry to that one king. Multiply that by the fact that there was, at one time or another, one king or sultan or pharaoh or leader or figurehead or whatever you want to call it for every independent group of people in human history (a number I'm not even gonna try to estimate, but has to be stupidly huge), and you'll have hundreds of millions of descendants of kings, at absolute minimum.

Hell, if you look back far enough, you can probably find someone in your family tree that was some kind of King or noble or something eventually.

 

Finally got around to reading this. I'd give it a solid 8/9 out of 10 overall, trending a bit down because for all the good moments (the mental image of Michael versus Nicodemus in freaking Hades' vault is a pretty good one) it's yet more setup. Notice This It Will Be Important Later-style stuff gets a little bit less than enthralling after I read enough of it.

Chalk me up for the "I don't mind the religion/focus on Christianity" view; like it or not there's a lot of Christians about these days and it's been outright stated several times that in the Dresdenverse faith and belief are powerful forces.

Not so many, say, Amerind traditionals or Hellenists. They still exist. There's just not that many of them.

Also I thought Nicodemus' whole plan was more defined by its sheer desperation than anything else.

edit: Can I just say that some plot payoff regarding the Fomor would be...at least vaguely nice? Right now they're kinda just there for a scene or three to get fucked up in every book. And they're bad, and they have a plan, or something. K.

Who or what force or idea leads the Outsiders is a question that would determine an awful lot of the plot so I suppose we'll see.

The Outsiders are...well, not native to "our" universe. That's what makes them Outsiders. Seems to me that if a being were native to our universe, no one in our universe having knowledge of that being's existence wouldn't fundamentally change their origin. It'd just mean no one currently living knew they existed.

 

The other thing about Christianity in the Dresden Files is... We already know the past is mutable (Law of Conservation of History from Cold Days), and that faith and belief are incredibly powerful forces. Why couldn't the White God's power in DF stem from that? Personally, I think he's not the creator because he created the Dresden universe, he's the creator because of the sheer number of people who put their faith in him, which made it the truth.

 

As a person who's not prone to religion, I have to say that it's not one of my biggest issues; it's that it lacks consistency.Part of it is the fridge logic that makes me dislike having religion play a part.

Christianity is the biggest at say (wiki) 2.1 billion, followed by Islam at 1.6, Nonbelievers 1.1, Hindu 1, etc. So, you could say that Christianity has the plurality, but then you still have to take into account the different 'versions' of the archangels, the prophets, holy relics, etc. Are archangels weaker because of Calvinists? Does Jesus get a boost from Muslims who believe he's a prophet, but not the son of God? Does God get the same power boost from Unitarians as Catholics? Silly questions, I know, and I don't like trying to answer them when I'm reading for pleasure.

Are there 'true versions,' duplicates, or are the beings schizoid (like Percy Jackson with Greek vs Roman)?

Is this a matter of perspective: these other religions are out there, but we don't see them (like in American Gods, where Jesus is powerful in America but has to hitchhike in Afghanistan)?

What's the effect of ignorance vs disbelief (i.e. Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, conscious disbelief=belief, etc.)?

Then, even if Christianity's the biggest, since Hades and Odin are still around, Shiva and the rest should have serious metaphysical muscle, and the White Council would seemingly have some discussion about these beings who choose to interfere in the world.

Granted, these are huge and too 'political' to be the kind of thing I want in a book, but it could be shoehorned in gently enough to get over the fridge logic.

 

It's said in Changes that most of the Old Gods are inactive, as I recall. And yeah, given how things went down I'd say at the least the Olympians still have major metaphysical muscle even though they aren't "active" in the present day.

Odin is a notable exception of course. It helps he has multiple identities.

As far as I can tell, the general policy seems to be "don't piss these guys off". Which makes a lot of sense for immediately apparent reasons when considering the power levels involved.

Also, absolutely worth pointing out that the Abrahamic branches (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc) are all worshiping essentially the same being. So it's a bit larger a mass than saying "X amount of Christians in the world" implies.

The title "Sword of the Cross" implies Jesus of course, but Fidelacchius seems to react to faith of several stripes. Which makes sense, seeing as it's titled the Sword of Faith. Shiro mentioned he became a Baptist because he misunderstood the phrase "meet the King" at an Elvis concert. And Sanya (hilariously) claims to be agnostic; granted he uses a different Sword. Murphy is a casual Catholic, and Butters is Jewish. The key with the Swords seems more tied to character traits than overly specific religious affiliation.

It'd be the most Christian thing ever to attempt to co-opt something that isn't really all that much do do with the religion into a Christian-specific thing, so...hngh. Who knows.

The Red Court impersonated a pantheon of gods in the Yucatan, of course...but it doesn't go into detail about how this actually worked mechanically beyond "The Lords of Outer Night are really freaking powerful" or if it conferred any benefits to them outside of that specific zone of the world. I default to "ask the author" about how it'd work in other parts of the world.

e: Or, alternately, everyone is just overthinking the whole thing and should get their MST3K on. But I suppose there's no fun in that conclusion.

 

It seems to me that the White God transcends faith in the Dresden Files, and it doesn't seem to empower him.

Odin, Hades, the Lords of Outer Night, they've all waxed and waned according to the amount faith they've received from humanity. But Uriel seems to be so much more powerful than any of them, but is far more interested in protecting free will then generating faith in God.

Moreover the Swords of the Cross are now in the hands of Sanya, who is agnostic, and Butters, who is Jewish, so I'm assuming that there's not really a reward system for faith in terms of the White God, and in fact faith seems to be its own reward.

And on the topic of Hinduism. I'm actually really hesitant to see Butcher implement it. In the past books Harry has said that there's a zillion Hindu gods running around somewhere, but I really hope that was Harry's lack of knowledge as to how Hinduism works.

On the surface Hinduism may seem to have a polytheistic pantheon, like Ancient Roman beliefs and Norse mythology, but the underlying belief in Hinduism is that while they do worship different gods, like Vishnu and Shiva and Ganesha, the gods aren't in fact as individual as they appear. Instead the gods are all just different incarnations of the one creator.

It would be much more true to the beliefs of Hinduism to find a way to fold the Hindu "pantheon" into the existing White God mythos, than to individualize each Hindu god, like Odin and Hades.

 

Jim has said he is hesitant for similar reasons, not sure if he can represent things properly and by this point I think it is clear Dresden speaks a lot and later learns it is way off.

As for how Hinduism might be done, though I only claim a general and superficial understanding of it, I think you are simplifying it too much.

Hinduism is the most complex system of beliefs to receive a single word I ever tried to study on a bit. Talking with people from there helped a bit but it is still something akin to adding christianity, islam and judaism under a single name only even worse. I am still not sure I follow 'atheism' as being a valid path in it though that might be due to the endless arguments on which parts of Indian physolophy actually count as Hinduism. Carvaka for example is basically materialism since it denies reincarnation, afterlife, karma, supernatural cause of natural phenomena and such but more reliable sources(as in not wikipedia) either contradict each other or just say it is in question.

And that is not even going into the discussion of people claiming Modern Hinduism is the majority today and basically composed of people who don't really know what they are following. Which my personal experience in Brazil with christians says is totally true but I don't know if it is translated over there.

To be honest the more I look at the whole thing the less I want to see Jim dealing with it as the more I read the more confused I get.

 

Ive been thinking about Nicodemus line "love will be the downfall of god himself." Jesus is supposedly the ultimate example of god's
Love. Jesus died by that spear, which nic wanted
To get his hands on. Is he literally gunning for God?

 

Longinus is known as the Spear that pierces god. Although physically stabbing the White God would be somewhat absurd considering the shit we've seen Angels do.

 

Or, if Jesus behaves anything like any other metaphysical entity in the Dresden Universe, the spear could be used to summon and/or cage him or his father. Especially combined with the other four, 4+1 =5 which is oddly enough the exact number needed for most rituals, artefacts.

 

Can we attribute each to an element?

 

There are two ways to look at it: one the White God/Jebus falls into the same category as Mab or an Archangel, and is bound by the same rules of summoning and vulnerability. Apocryphal reference: Moses potentially using the hidden name of God to part the Red Sea.

Two: it's a prophetic element a la 'Constantine,' where the son of the Devil can be released only with the help of God, i.e. the blood on the spear of Longinus, or 'Dogma' where a contradiction of the Church's dogma and God's word makes it possible to destroy some McGuffin. Given it's Nicodemus, I'd bet that it's fulfilling a prophecy rather than magic as we've seen it; it gives interesting weight to God being destroyed by love, and uses God to destroy God, which sounds right up his alley.

A semantic difference between magic and prophecy, but it'd be tapping into the White God's Word rather than imposing mortal will on immortals.

 

Only gotten through the first ten pages or so of the thread so I don't know if anyone's brought this up, but one of Butters' getaway gadgets was the memory loss fog... isn't that pretty unequivocally mind magic? Thus breaking one of the Law of Magic pretty clearly? All I'm saying is, if a real Warden saw that, Butters would probably be less a head. If only we still had Morgan.

YES. Them going there, tied in with their general attitudes and the one sarcastic line of "and she probably looked about as remorseful as I did" made me want to see them doing this all the time.

 

My theory is that Molly will have enough insider info to know how to get Harry off from being Winter Knight without losing his ability to walk or any consequences against him.
She obviously can't tell him what to do, but she'll probably spend some time leaving the clues for him. I'm thinking that cellphone thing towards the end was part of it.

It kinda depresses me but I think Molly might decide to purposefully act like she's becoming a monster/fae in order to get Harry to be ok with the idea of leaving his mantle and Winter without taking her. I wonder.

I've heard it said that Harry's relationship with Maggie is being glossed over, and I couldn't disagree more - I absolutely understand why things have progressed how they have, given Harry's status as a incredibly flawed regressive man that flees from this sort of thing.
It's frustrating, but I can follow it. And the few scenes they've had together have been potent and well-written in my opinion.
I'm also relatively certain that after the end we got, Maggie has to become a more often-seen character. Butcher didn't exactly leave himself any openings there: He's basically stated that now that he's seen her, Harry's going to step up as a dad.

When it comes to Butters, he really annoys me over the sword, and the mess he made of things, but why are people saying he should have trusted Harry?
I thought his arguments made absolute sense from his POV, and with everything he's been dealing with. I can understand the broken trust, and it's honestly the smart move. If my friend had beaten up my girlfriend (nevermind everything else that happened), I'd murder him in cold blood - the fact that he treats his wounds and is willing to help at all, no matter how unwillingly or suspiciously, is amazing to me.
It's everything else he did that makes me want to slap him.

 

So I know its no way connected Skin Game Spoilers, but I just met Jim Butcher for the first time this weekend. He was here in Arizona for the Phoenix Comic Con did signings and bunch of panels.

Didn't get a chance to go to the panels, but I did get his autographs on my three hardcover books, as well as the 'Paper' App on my ipad since I have all of his books on e-format...

He is pretty chill guy, and the few seconds I got to talk to him, I told him about all the Dresden fanfic, he was surprised he didn't actually know about it.

He had a good laugh when I told that x-over with HP fandom is pretty popular, about DarkLordPotter.net and all the fics here (he said he might pop in) and how we all are claiming in Skin Game the demon locked away in Demonreach with British accent is actually Harry Potter.

So if any of you get a chance to meet him, don't be hesitant he is VERY cool person and VERY personable and VERY popular with the way I had to waiting in line for 3 hours just to get my books signed.