The YLC (Why Little Chicago) thread

[Agravaine]

Basically, it could be any of the Fae with a "benevolent" intent in entering his house.  Lea, Mab, Odin each could have the knowledge and the benevolent intent to fix LC.  All and all, I think Mab is the most likely person.

[Quaras]

Pure rambling theory based on the thread:

Book 17:  Rabbit Hole

Stranded and imprisoned in time by the betrayal of his closest allies, Harry Dresden, has been searching for an escape route for over a year.  His only hope for salvation rests with the most unlikely of solutions.  Now he is trapped at 1/22nd of his natural size and stranded back in time inside of Little Chicago -- the experiment he had cast off and though abandoned years ago.  But he is not alone -- something stalks the streets of Little Chicago -- and Harry will have to delve deeper into its mysteries before escaping the Rabbit Hole.

[Haru]

No real theory on the why, but as far as I see it, LC could easily be undamaged. It was in the subbasement, which might be a bit sturdier and the whole lab might have survived. But that isn't the biggest clue to it. The biggest clue is, that Marcone built a friggin' castle on top of it. If Gard has figured out how to use LC, or if he has found other gifted individuals, he might use it to track down the Fomor's movements, or any other supernatural actions in Chicago. Or whatever the hell he can figure out to do with it. He is pretty intelligent in that regard, I think.

[wildfire393]

Pure rambling theory based on the thread:

Book 17:  Rabbit Hole

Stranded and imprisoned in time by the betrayal of his closest allies, Harry Dresden, has been searching for an escape route for over a year.  His only hope for salvation rests with the most unlikely of solutions.  Now he is trapped at 1/22nd of his natural size and stranded back in time inside of Little Chicago -- the experiment he had cast off and though abandoned years ago.  But he is not alone -- something stalks the streets of Little Chicago -- and Harry will have to delve deeper into its mysteries before escaping the Rabbit Hole.

Book titles have to have matching letter counts in the two words. This would have to be Mouse Holes or something.

[Aakaakaak]

My thoughts on LC....

Have you ever poured your heart and soul into something for an extended period of time and when you finally got to the endgame result you realized it wasn't as practical as you'd hoped or not what you really wanted? IMO LC was Harry's impractical obsession. He learned a bunch of stuff and now he's past it.

[Serack]

Pure rambling theory based on the thread:

Book 17:  Rabbit Hole

Stranded and imprisoned in time by the betrayal of his closest allies, Harry Dresden, has been searching for an escape route for over a year.  His only hope for salvation rests with the most unlikely of solutions.  Now he is trapped at 1/22nd of his natural size and stranded back in time inside of Little Chicago -- the experiment he had cast off and though abandoned years ago.  But he is not alone -- something stalks the streets of Little Chicago -- and Harry will have to delve deeper into its mysteries before escaping the Rabbit Hole.

Like number of letters aside, this idea is pretty dang cool.

[Quaras]

Sorry for breaking the naming convention.  Rabbits Warrens just didn't have the same ring to it.  I do think that there is a chance that Harry has to get transported back in time into LC.  I tried to emulate the writing style of the Penguin blurb summarizers...

[knnn]

Sorry for breaking the naming convention.  Rabbits Warrens just didn't have the same ring to it.  I do think that there is a chance that Harry has to get transported back in time into LC.  I tried to emulate the writing style of the Penguin blurb summarizers...

Maybe "Mouse Traps" or "Maze Rats"?

[Serack]

Sorry for breaking the naming convention.  Rabbits Warrens just didn't have the same ring to it.  I do think that there is a chance that Harry has to get transported back in time into LC.  I tried to emulate the writing style of the Penguin blurb summarizers...

I agree, Rabbit Hole worked better as a name in every sense other than the artificial constraint of the number of letters.  I couldn't do better myself.

Lets focus on the awesomness of the idea rather than the silly # of letters   Harry falls down a fae rabbit hole and finds himself looking up at a sky that looks suspiciously like the roof of the sub-basement of his old appartment...

Even if Jim never writes it I'd love to see a fanfic based on this premise.

[lovejoy69]

Title-wise, hare matches the number of letters but Jim is far too savvy to be persuaded into naming it Hare Hole. That would be waaaaayyyy too easy to make rude remarks about and besides, "rabbit hole" immediately taps into Lewis Carroll whimsy whereas hare does not.
         Although actually, the character is the March Hare. He's not a rabbit.

And yes, Serack is right, we can enjoy teasing the wording of a possible title, but that ought not to distract us from Quaras' interesting concept itself. 

[Quaras]

You could bring in every small creature that Harry has ever annoyed/ignored.  There are quite a few out there that would be thrilled to have a teeny Harry to chase after.  Serack -- very glad you like the idea.  I am not sure it fits into the great sequence that is being written, but you never know!

15:  Heist
16:  Time Travel
17:  Lewis Carroll riff
18:  Asgard/Interplanetary Travel

Ok now, I am getting a little off topic, but still the fact that book #15 is a heist really opens up the possibilities.  And the great thing is Harry fixes LC but in a completely unexpected (and urgent) way.  The ticking time bomb of old Harry getting ready to cast the spell while little Harry tries to scale small buildings and fix the city is pretty fun as a premise.

[finnmckool]

No real theory on the why, but as far as I see it, LC could easily be undamaged. It was in the subbasement, which might be a bit sturdier and the whole lab might have survived. But that isn't the biggest clue to it. The biggest clue is, that Marcone built a friggin' castle on top of it. If Gard has figured out how to use LC, or if he has found other gifted individuals, he might use it to track down the Fomor's movements, or any other supernatural actions in Chicago. Or whatever the hell he can figure out to do with it. He is pretty intelligent in that regard, I think.

Eh...there's a WoJ somewhere stating that LC is probably toast, since Changes is all about taking all of Harry's stuff away from him. His lab is pretty well gone, and, well, if you're building a castle on a piece of land, you're probably having to lay a new foundation, which would include a sub-basement. That's all speculation mind you, but, unless Jim decides to resurrect it, and, like you say, there's some wiggle room there if he wants it, all signs indicate it's gone.

[taishojojo]

You know... I dislike time travel in fiction because its rarely done interestingly enough. Star Trek abused and misused that well way too often.
If Harry had to go back and use LC only to be trapped and that was the ticking clock (fix it before blowing both his selves up....) That could be done right.

@knnn
Those are copyrighted. Mouse Traps was short story whose author escapes me. The Maze Rats were a faction in AEG's Doomtown game.

[svb1972]

I firmly believe that the person who fixed Little Chicago is Harry.
So, this is one of my more outrageous theories.

Harry is Merlin.
Merlin is Harry.

Harry is going to need to greatly improve his time travel skills in order to pull of creating DemonReach.
One of his first Steps into time travel is going to be going back to repair LC in order to use it to find something so much more important than what's going on with Past Harry.  We have been told time and time again that Harry is /spectacularly good/ at Thaumaturgy.  He's better at Thaumaturgy than Molly is at Illussions.

[knnn]

@knnn
Those are copyrighted. Mouse Traps was short story whose author escapes me. The Maze Rats were a faction in AEG's Doomtown game.

How about Pizza Court and Back Lash?