Yeah Ryuugi. You threw up a lot of examples of bigger threats to Harry being taken out by one of Harry's allies, and seem to think this doesn't count. But really, in my opinion at least, these instances probably count more than him just waving his staff and setting his enemies on fire himself.

Summer Knight he didn't kill the Summer Lady himself, but his little faery buddies did. His little faery buddies which wouldn't have been there in the first place if he wasn't. His little faery buddies which prevented the Summer Lady from fucking the whole world up.

Dead Beat he raised a t-rex from the dead and knocked off a god-to-be in Cowl. It doesn't matter whether or not he did it face to face or if he got his ass beat beforehand. That's what Celestin was talking about in the first place. His ability to get knocked down, bounce back and hit his opponents with twice the force.

Blah blah blah, Lily wouldn't have been there to help out with Scarecrow if he hadn't made those connections, etc. etc. etc.

Small Favor, I don't really know what you're talking about. The only thing I can think of would be the whole noose choke thing, which should totally count. Because c'mon. Noose choke.

Turn Coat, Harry is the one who orchestrated the whole damn thing, getting the senior council and the white courts there while half dead without a lick of sleep on top of some recent Sight-induced trauma. I'd say it counts.

Changes, he once again orchestrated the whole damn thing (with some help from Eb, admittedly). The fact that he didn't get it all done himself come game day is irrelevant.

Finally, Ghost Story he did the whole manifest thing and saved Morty, without whom Corpsetaker wouldn't have been killed in the first place.

So yeah. Like Tomato said, it's all about perspective. You're looking at Dresden's individual capabilities and matching them up against his opponents, when that's not how he operates at all. He's not the guy that wrestles you into the noose. He's the one that kicks the chair away. (Good lord that's a horrible analogy. Just go with it.)

 

Also take into account that by the time he actually finds and fights the big bads, he's usually had the shit beaten out of him at least 3 times, and is running at about 20% of normal capacity.

Just once I'd like to Dresden go into a major battle when he is at 100%.

 

Ryuugi you can't forget the absolute advantage black magic would give to Dresden. Just think of Kemmler.

 

That, um...has nothing to do with what I said. I didn't say his victories weren't impressive, nor did I say other people wouldn't be impressed by them. I was wondering where the notion that Dresden consistently beat people bigger and stronger then him came from, when it has no basis in the actual books.

However, a few things:

You're wrong about PG; Liliy and Maeve manipulated Harry into doing that, remember?

In Small Favor, if you read that scene again, you'll note that the Sword Harry had with him at the time (how ever you spell the Faith one) warded away Nick's shadow and reduced him to a normal human.

In Changes, he really didn't orchestrate much of anything. He went in with a plan, which failed spectacularly and they were all about to die. Luckily. Lea, Odin, Eb, and the others had their own plan, which conveniently had room in it to step in and keep him from dying. This includes the kill the Red Court part, too; if you take a look at the outfit Lea made for Susan before the battle? You know who wore outfits like that back in the days of the Mayans/Aztecs?

Human Sacrifices.

etc.

You'll note, if you look at the post I quoted, that I mentioned Word of God--that is, direct quotes of statements from the author--who covers the possibility of Black Magic and states it wouldn't change a thing to keep Harry from being crushed.

 

For fuck's sake Ryuugi, it's "than," not "then."

And you're completely missing the point. That point being that Dresden is still alive after all these escapades despite being outclassed or being the underdog. These are also fights where Dresden generally has the option of walking away at some point and decides not to, because it's the right thing. Whatever the mechanisms or plot devices, the Point is that Dresden is still alive, while most of those he fights are dead. End of story.

 

Ryuugi, from the perspective of someone that isn't Harry he looks like a badass motherfucker. Harry knows that he gets beaten shitless a ton, and that most of his victories have a high degree of luck involved, but the rest of the world doesn't. They see a barely out of his teens Wizard (and a younger one besides) taking on the apprentices of Kemmler, after the Commander of the Wardens and her deputy have already been taken out, and win.

They see a 'thug' of a Wizard orchestrating the exposure of the traitor within the White Council through deception and guile. They see what amounts to a single Wizard and his friends take down the entire Red Court.

It doesn't matter that a lot of the work was done by his allies (and besides, most of those would be considered 'tools' of Harry's by the supernatural community, so the responsibility and prestige would go to him), it doesn't matter that he only wins by exploiting loopholes and cheating. All that matters to the outside world is that he was the one that was standing over his enemy's corpse at the end of the day. After all, nobody expects you to play fair in supernatural fights.

EDIT: Plus, most people wouldn't know the details of what happened in any of those fights. You know how reputations get blown out of all proportion.

 

Yeah, it's not beat as in had a one versus one fight and won, it's beat as in he walked away and they didn't- most people don't know any details other than that.

 

The point; you missed it. Even after spelt it out in my last point.

I'm not talking about any of that you guys. I'm not talking about how people see Harry. I'm not saying he isn't badass. I'm not how what people would think in the story--I'm not talking anything like that.

All I'm doing, as I have stated twice already, is wondering what you guys mean, outside the story and having read the books, when you repeat again and again that Harry beats people bigger and stronger then him on a regular basis when, no, he really doesn't.

I have, again, said this twice. In the first paragraph of both of my posts:

You guys are arguing with me about something I'm not arguing about.

 

Ryuugi's point is that, regardless of how they are defeated, regardless of how the rest of the world sees it, the opponents that Harry has stood against and walked away from weren't all that much stronger than him.

The point everyone else is making, is that whether or not that is even true, the way these fights are viewed from the outside is all that matters.

And from an outside perspective, the opponents Harry takes on quite often appear to be bigger, badder and eviler than he.

Whether Harry is fighting above his class or not, that's what it looks like to everyone else.

And he keeps winning.

We know he's getting beaten to a pulp just about each and every time, we know he's got a metaphorical horseshoe up his ass, but the in-universe observers do not.

I'm not saying Harry always wins against things bigger than him - as Ryuugi said, that's really only happened a few times. What's important is how it looks to everyone else.

 

Fair enough, though I'd disagree on that as well. Let's go through the list of powerful beings from the various books that Harry's defeated.

Victor Sells - Not as powerful as Harry.
Loup Garou - Way powerful if you don't have inherited silver. Harry had the right dose of luck and ability to get away with killing it.
Leonid Kravos/Nightmare - Easy to defeat once Harry realised what he was up against.
Bianca - Likely not as powerful as Harry, but when he actually fought her? He would have been wiped out in a straight up fight, yellow ducky boxer shorts and all.
Aurora - The first baddie that was legitimately more powerful than him in every way. This is a Big Thing. Aurora was likely hundreds/thousands of years old, plus Harry literally unbalanced the entire Summer Court with his actions.

Denarians - Went up against Nicodemus and lived to tell the tale. The only reason Harry is alive right now is because of Shiro.
Mavra - Set him up and burned his right hand. He lost this one. Badly.
Lord Raith - Nobody knows about it except for those involved (plus Marcone, possibly, as of White Night). Remember that Lord Raith had withstood attacks from the Blackstaff as well. He was regarded as all but invincible, with the White Court following him, personally.
Necromancers - Harry was severely outclassed here, in the same way he was outclassed against Aurora. This is another Big Thing.

Madrigal Raith - Meh.
Arctis Tor - Great for his reputation, not so much for him personally. The Scarecrow was major bad news though, enough that it was way above him without Summer Fire backing him up.
Vittorio Malvora/Madrigal Raith - Meh again, though Vittorio was a fairly powerful adversary once he broke out the Outsider attack.
Uber Ghouls - Good thing he had the foresight to have his little army bring some explosives with them.

Denarians again - This was another fight where he was severely outclassed, magically speaking. Tessa alone would have been a decent opponent, but with Nicodemus backing her up and the distrust of his allies working against him, Harry had a lot of obstacles in this one. I chalk this one as another of his biggest triumphs, even with Michael being shot.
The Gruffs - He won through guile, which is a big improvement over his previous record of achieving victories. Notable for only getting a broken nose in the fights against the Gruffs, unlike usual.
Peabody - This is another one of Harry's Big Wins, even though he didn't actually fight Peabody in the physical sense. This, arguably, makes him look even more dangerous to most people, since it shows that he uses his brain rather than his brawn.

Shagnasty - A physically and magically superior creature with a great deal of intelligence backing it up. Harry did spectacularly well to beat it down as much as he did. It took an actual Senior Council member, with what is arguably the perfect countermeasure to its powers, to drive it off.
The Entire Red Court - Just. Fucking. Wow.

So that's what, 8 major victories (all three necromancers counted separately) for him against either a much more magically powerful being or against a majorly stacked deck? I'd say that counters your point fairly well.

 

Additionally. The Lord of Outer Night and the Red King probably could've killed him if they wanted to. They held him down with their wills and I'm assuming that was because they really didn't want him to blow the whole temple and/or them into orbit with his death curse.

 

Honestly, it looks really badass to the rest of the world that he's survived this shit. This was why the Senior Council didn't want to have to fight him on Demonreach. This was totally reasonable on their part.

But perceptions don't impact their actual ability to stomp him into a grease stain. Would they really want to fight him? No. Would they be afraid of the consequences of doing so? Yes. But those consequences are likely more along the lines of "war with the goddamn Winter Court" than "Harry poses at threat to any of them at all." Eb, in particular, probably has a pretty good handle on Harry's capabilities.

He's 'beaten' everything in this story that was stronger than him largely based on authorial fiat and the fact that he is the main character. Occasionally the God Out of The Machine is a horde of box-cutter wielding fairies. Sometimes it's Listens-To-Wind, but the fact is, you really can't include plot armor in a debate like this and that's exactly what saying "well, he walked out of it and they didn't" is. I mean, yes, realistically, Dresden is going to survive against any enemy - even when he dies. This is because Jim Butcher writes Pulp Fiction for a living, though, and has nothing to do with the universe.

 

Well, I don't know about all that. Harry's death curse has to be a freaking monster at this point. Like, I could see even the Senior Council deciding to either do it before he has time to let it loose (ala Changes) or just stay the hell away.

 

I'm not so sure on that Fiat. I agree with you about McCoy, but I'd honestly give him even odds against most of the Senior Council, assuming they don't just snipe him with absolutely no warning.

In a straight up fight, he would probably lose, but Dresden's good at being a tricky bastard and coming up with... alternative solutions. It certainly wouldn't be easy, but I can definitely see him coming out ahead if one of the SC came after him solo.

 

What we can be absolutely sure of for now regardless of whether or not you consider Harry to be an underdog, or an unstoppable force is that to any of the major powers out there aside from Cowl, Dresden clearly means business and isn't afraid to throw down.

This is the guy who to date has taken out the Summer Lady, foiled the Denarians multiple times, brought a T-Rex back from beyond the grave to screw Cowl and the other Necro's over, saved the White Court hierarchy as well as wiped out the Red Court. Yes, he had help and a metric ton of luck or bad decisions by his opponents, but you cannot deny that Dresden looks like someone you do not want to fuck with in the supernatural world.

Then he was killed, and suddenly Chicago went to hell. Now he's back with his entire reputation intact, but he's from from beyond the fucking grave as well as being the god damned Winter Knight. That's something a lot of us have been waiting for and honestly if it came down to it, Dresden would walk all over Fix, whose already been warned to stay well away from Dresden with any sort of weapon unless he wants to die so...

All in all, Dresden has a reputation and now he has, at least in part, the Winter Court at his back. Short of Cowl and Nicodemus, I cannot see who would want to fuck with him at this point in time (maybe the Summer Court because hell, Titiana clearly has a grudge), but I daresay Butcher has his plans because we're still a ways off the end of it all.

As for does the White Council have any kind of power over Dresden... difficult to say. I can't help but think that his being on the council and a warden cancels out the fact he's now Winter's mortal emissary basically making him neutral, or certainly giving him immunity unless he messes up as Dresden often does with the Council. Having said all that, I still believe that if it came to it, any member of the Senior Council would squash Dresden. Yes he has guile, Winter and a reputation behind him, but they flat out have him beat in terms of power, age and experience, not to mention McCoy's the Council's version of an assassin. We don't even know if the effect of the staff just killing you outright can be shielded against (I imagine it can, but I'm just trying to make a point... stupidly).

Apologies for any spelling/grammar errors and so on, it's stupidly late and I'm headed to bed, figured I'd put my thoughts on the matter out there whilst I have some vague idea of what I wanted to say.

 

I definitely have to agree with this statement. Any author worth his salt should be able to write plot-armor and the like to where the reader does not see it that way. Convince us that the events unfolding are happening in a logical way regardless of this is a fictional tale where Harry Dresden can't die(permanently, anyway.)

The fanboy in me is ready for a knee-jerk reaction saying that Butcher has done this! But, a more reasonable voice tells me he hasn't quite. There have been several moments where Harry surviving one way or another just stretched my suspension of disbelief too much. Injun Joe showing up to throw down with Shagnasty being the one that comes to mind.

He is just 'happens' to bust through the bad-guys and go looking for Harry. Not, try and flank them, or some other attempt? If he could, why couldn't they? Etc.

 

I couldn't give you a WoJ on it, but I thought it was mentioned at least once in the latter books that the older a wizard got, and the more their powers developed, that a sense of what was to come eventually followed that up? Some form of foresight, IIRC. Rashid certainly seems to have shown it.

 

Likelier than that is that Injun Joe sensed the Naagloshi throwing power around and decided that giving it a beat down would be in its best interests. It wasn't exactly hiding itself, after all.

 

That's a possible explanation, but it still felt forced to me.