Kincaid microfiction "Goodbye"

[Mira]

Of course those circumstances were not foreseeable, but don't forget the rampire venom. It could be a plausible scenario for her to loose control, have sex with someone and then kill him or turn him. One thing does not imply that she cannot do the other first. And if she plans to stay chaste...even more reason to use birth control, as denying her biological urges would make her more vulnerable to a sudden snap (I mean, if she looses control, it is more difficult to stop herself if she has not relieved her urges in months)

Or realizing how dangerous it was for her to be with Harry, suggest that Martin walk him to his place instead.   Harry was wounded, bleeding, that had an effect on Susan, she wanted that blood, venom from her tongue went into his wounds intoxicating him,and he wanted her, they both retained enough sense for him to tie her up and her to allow him to tie her up... Remember she could have stopped Harry at any time if she didn't want it..  There was nothing morally wrong or right about this, neither were in good enough shape to even judge whether they were being responsible, apart from not getting the blood sucked out of you and ripped apart by your lover, and her not wishing to be turned into a full vamp as a result, birth control never entered into it, it was all biology according to species, not a morality play.  Or in more crude terms, the classic one night stand...  No one ever gets pregnant from those, right?

As to Kim, Harry didn't give her the greater circle. She copied it from MacFinn's. I'm pretty sure she would have tried it no matter what Harry did. If Harry has any responsibility for that one, I'd say it was instructing her at all, though we don't know enough about her talents to know what the risks of giving her no instruction at all were.

I am not even sure it can be called "instructing.."  Kim was asking about it as an "academic interest."
She was charming when she asked, keeping it light...  Then she handed Harry the paper with the drawing of the circle on it and asked him to explain it since he was a real wizard and all..  Harry was half way through it when he realized, "holy crap.." 

[morriswalters]

Chapter One

I never used to keep close track of the phases of the moon. So I didn’t know that it was one night shy of being full when a young woman sat down across from me in McAnally’s pub and asked me to tell her all about something that could get her killed.

I call that foreseeable, since, well, he foresaw it.

“You don’t need to know that, either. Not for an academic interest. I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, Kim, but leave it alone. Forget it. Walk away, before you get hurt.”

He saw it again.

“Save it,” I told her. “You’re sitting on a tiger cage, Kim.” I thumped a finger on the paper for emphasis. “And you wouldn’t need it if you weren’t planning on trying to stick a tiger in there.”

And, surprise, he thinks she is lying.

“No,” I told her. “I’ve got the responsibility to help you make the right choice.”

Ta Da!!!!   He knew what his responsibility was.

It made me feel like crap to withhold information from her, but she had been playing with fire. I couldn’t let her do that. It was my responsibility to help protect her from such things, until she knew enough to realize how dangerous they were.

He knew she was going to try something that could get her killed.  He knew what his responsibility was, the one that he had taken up as a mentor. And despite his misgivings he let her walk away.  Kim chose to do something that killed her.  That doesn't relieve Harry of his responsibility as a mentor.

[forumghost]

What exactly could he do in that situation though? Kim refused to listen to him when he explained that it was beyond her ability. She refused to explain the situation and ask for help despite knowing that Harry was probably the only guy both powerful and skilled enough to actually fix the thing.

Harry's options at that point were "tell her how to do a thing that will get her killed" "Warn her and hope she is smart enough to not touch hot things" and "Physically restrain her so that she can't do the thing"

Since assisted suicide and Kidnapping are not really reasonable choices, trying to warn her off was the most reasonable action.

Kim was frankly just an arrogant fool.

[Mira]

What exactly could he do in that situation though? Kim refused to listen to him when he explained that it was beyond her ability. She refused to explain the situation and ask for help despite knowing that Harry was probably the only guy both powerful and skilled enough to actually fix the thing.

Harry's options at that point were "tell her how to do a thing that will get her killed" "Warn her and hope she is smart enough to not touch hot things" and "Physically restrain her so that she can't do the thing"

Since assisted suicide and Kidnapping are not really reasonable choices, trying to warn her off was the most reasonable action.

Kim was frankly just an arrogant fool.

  Yeah, you can warn a child not to touch a hot stove, you can say, "HOT!"  You can say, "you will get burned!"  Trying to explain about the fire in the stove is hot means nothing to the child.  Unless the child has had experience with either it doesn't mean a whole lot to it.  You can remove the child, put a fence around the stove, but sometimes the child will still insist and find a way of putting it's hand on the stove, and learns that yeah, if you put your hand on a hot stove you will burn it.. The hope is that it will only be a superficial burn, lesson learned, the fear is it will be third degree, or worse yet it will manage to burn the whole house down in the process.   In this case because she has an electric blanket Kim thought she understood hot and getting burned, went off to another house and proceeded to burn the whole house down including herself.

[morriswalters]

What exactly could he do in that situation though? Kim refused to listen to him when he explained that it was beyond her ability. She refused to explain the situation and ask for help despite knowing that Harry was probably the only guy both powerful and skilled enough to actually fix the thing.

Harry's options at that point were "tell her how to do a thing that will get her killed" "Warn her and hope she is smart enough to not touch hot things" and "Physically restrain her so that she can't do the thing"

Since assisted suicide and Kidnapping are not really reasonable choices, trying to warn her off was the most reasonable action.

Kim was frankly just an arrogant fool.

I have no idea what Harry could do.  But Harry creates the dilemma when he chooses to help her before the events of the books.  If he didn't want the difficulty of dealing with an arrogant fool then he never should have put himself in the position where he had to.  Nobody held a gun on him.  He made a choice.  That it didn't work out or is hard doesn't change the fact that he took the responsibility.  This is precisely the point of The Doom Of Damocles.


@Mira
What's your point? If the child gets burned it's the parents responsibility.  Minor or third degree doesn't change a thing.  The law may not knock at their door, but if a parent doesn't accept that premise then they might want to reconsider parenthood.  Wouldn't you think?

On vampire venom.  Early in Death Masks Harry cooks up a potion to counteract vampire venom.  Unless contradicted by someone, that would  be before Bondage playtime at Harry's place.  Add to that a convenient rope to hold and ogre, and romance advice from a 14 year old on bondage games early on. In a tree house of all places.  So to the question, was it foreseeable, I would have to put down money on the yes line.

Appreciate the humor.  Jim essentially tells you what will happen when Harry ends up locked in with Susan.  Molly tells you how, Harry tells you why when he mentions the potion.  It's priceless.  It's why I love the Dresden Files.

[noblehunter]

It's easy to say Harry should have done more given how badly Kim's attempt at building a circle went. Harry himself seems to come to that conclusion. How he could have known or what exactly he should have done is a more difficult question.

I don't remember Fool Moon very well but I assume a dead body shows up shortly after his meeting with Kim. The corpse in the hand is more pressing than a dozen in the bushes, as it were.

[Mira]

   My point Morris is a child doesn't understand that a hot stove can burn them.  You can tell them, HOT! DON'T TOUCH! However they still won't understand the concept or get the connection between touching the hot stove and getting a burnt hand or finger.  You can explain about the flames inside, and they won't understand..  You cannot put their finger on the stove so they experience the burn, that hurts the kid and can get you arrested..   All of the above Harry was trying to do with Kim, who like the child had no experience either with such summoning circles, the type of monsters they are meant to contain, or that it was forbidden to talk about them.. 

Now one can put a barrier around the hot stove or take the child out of the room to prevent them getting hurt.. But kids have a mind of their own, they may throw a tantrum and stomp away because in their mind you are being unreasonable.  Then when your back is turned sneak in and touch that stove and burn themselves..

When Harry wouldn't go any further in his explanation trying to warn Kim at the same time how dangerous it was, and since she didn't have the training or the experience to pull it off a lot of people could get hurt.  She threw a tantrum and stomped off, went back to MacFinn and tried to make the circle anyway, and she died for it..  My point is sometimes in spite of your best efforts your child is going to burn it's finger anyway...  In spite of Harry's best efforts at warning, Kim went back to do the circle..  See, she had no clue about Loops and what danger she put herself in..   

On vampire venom.  Early in Death Masks Harry cooks up a potion to counteract vampire venom.  Unless contradicted by someone, that would  be before Bondage playtime at Harry's place.  Add to that a convenient rope to hold and ogre, and romance advice from a 14 year old on bondage games early on. In a tree house of all places.  So to the question, was it foreseeable, I would have to put down money on the yes line.

However he was also exhausted and injured at the time, doubt he could have gone down to the attic to get it.  As Dina points out,  since Harry isn't a real lover boy, it is doubtful that he keeps a drawer of condoms at his bedside...  Susan the other consenting adult is this scene would know if she was on the pill or using some other form of birth control..  If she wasn't, her option was, no condom, no sex...  As simple as that...  So either she really believed that she could get away with a one night stand without getting pregnant, or she really didn't care.   So either neither of them can be held fully responsible because of their, mental, emotional, and physical conditions or both were down right careless and irresponsible,  BOTH not just Harry or just Susan, BOTH.

[Bad Alias]

I am not even sure it can be called "instructing.."

I was talking about his previous interactions with her.

@Morris: "Hey I found this thing I'm going to play with. I have no idea what it is." [Hands over picture of a loaded gun]. "That's a gun. It's used for killing. Don't play with it, ever. You can use it once you've been trained." "F*** you!" That's basically the conversation Harry and Kim had.

Kim was one of several people Harry "coached through the difficult period surrounding the discovery of their innate magical talents." Harry had previously taught her "to contain and control her modest magical talents." As we learn in Proven Guilty, not doing that can be very dangerous.

Was it foreseeable when Harry met Kim that she would come across a loup garou, a ruined greater magical circle, refuse to explain the situation to Harry, ignore his warnings, and get herself killed? No. It was not.

Harry didn't tell her anything she couldn't have figured out from Macfinn. She already knew what the circle was for. To contain Macfinn.

It was foreseeable once she showed him the greater circle that she was messing with something she shouldn't be messing with. At that point, Harry's responsibility is to dissuade her from messing with it anymore. That she lies to him and ignores him isn't his fault. It's hers. If she had told him the truth, he would have helped. Even if Macfinn swore her to secrecy, she could have told Harry enough to let him know what was going on, if not precisely who, without betraying any confidences. Because she lied, it was not foreseeable that she was trying to contain a dangerous entity that was already present. What Harry foresaw was that she was going to try some dangerous summoning. He foresaw that if he didn't tell her how to activate the circle, she wouldn't try. He foresaw that if he did tell her how, and she tried, she would fail and death would likely result.

Maybe Macfinn lied to Kim. But if that's the case, after talking to Harry, she should have run for the hills instead of helping him.

Jim essentially tells you what will happen when Harry ends up locked in with Susan.  Molly tells you how, Harry tells you why when he mentions the potion.  It's priceless.  It's why I love the Dresden Files.

But was it foreseeable that Susan would be pushed to her limits and locked up with Harry after he had been thoroughly tortured in a situation in which he could stop her from just killing him?

Jim's always telegraphing what's going to happen and it's often entirely predictable for the genre savvy reader. That's different from foreseeable from the character's point of view. We're basically told Harry's not dead in the first chapter of Ghost Story, we know more books are coming, and that the books are most likely Harry's journals. It was easy for us to predict he's going to make it back to the land of the living somehow.

So far, it seems to me that the "Harry is responsible camp" position is that what he's responsible for is not being a hermit who hides himself away from everyone because there isn't a situation in which he can participate in the world and not have negative consequences. "Harry shouldn't have ever helped Kim." "Harry shouldn't have been in a relationship with Susan." I haven't seen any realistic suggestions of what Harry should have done once the dangerous situation became apparent. You can't always talk someone out of doing something dangerous and stupid, and that's not your fault.

[Mira]

So far, it seems to me that the "Harry is responsible camp" position is that what he's responsible for is not being a hermit who hides himself away from everyone because there isn't a situation in which he can participate in the world and not have negative consequences. "Harry shouldn't have ever helped Kim." "Harry shouldn't have been in a relationship with Susan." I haven't seen any realistic suggestions of what Harry should have done once the dangerous situation became apparent. You can't always talk someone out of doing something dangerous and stupid, and that's not your fault.

Very true, there are three camps,  those of us that screw up once in a while and take the blame for it.  Then there are those of us who screw up and never take responsibility and are quick to blame others and make excuses...  Then there are those of up who are always beating ourselves up when things go wrong, even when it isn't our fault or worse yet, nobody's fault... Harry falls into that last group most of the time.

[Dina]

I've been reading the last posts (since my previous one) and I will do a summary
@Mira, I still don´t like the children metaphores.

I call that foreseeable, since, well, he foresaw it.

That one is cheating, because that quote is from the files, written long after, with hindsight. The rest, yes, he predicted Kim wanted to do something dangerous and took the measures he thought would prevent that. Not telling how to do the dangerous thing. For taking one instant the oven comparison, Harry refused to tell her how to turn on the oven. It was a logical choice from his POV.
I won't say more about this because the others said it quite well 

My last comment about rampire venom was not about the scene with Harry but about how Susan (if she knew she was able to bear a child) could have foreseen a moment when she loose control and have unprotected sex (and yes, there was a risk to kill the man. But she has been taking all the precautions she could, meditating and all that). Taking anticonception measures would have been logical.

[Mira]

I've been reading the last posts (since my previous one) and I will do a summary
@Mira, I still don´t like the children metaphores.
That one is cheating, because that quote is from the files, written long after, with hindsight. The rest, yes, he predicted Kim wanted to do something dangerous and took the measures he thought would prevent that. Not telling how to do the dangerous thing. For taking one instant the oven comparison, Harry refused to tell her how to turn on the oven. It was a logical choice from his POV.
I won't say more about this because the others said it quite well 

My last comment about rampire venom was not about the scene with Harry but about how Susan (if she knew she was able to bear a child) could have foreseen a moment when she loose control and have unprotected sex (and yes, there was a risk to kill the man. But she has been taking all the precautions she could, meditating and all that). Taking anticonception measures would have been logical.

 You're right about the children metaphors.  However Kim's behavior was very childish, so it applies.  In the first place she seemed to be aware that what she was asking Harry was wrong.  Otherwise why pile on the light charm, the flattery, then the out right bribery, because she was asking him about such a "little thing,"  for information only? All of it was a lie, then he realized and stopped giving her what she wanted, she threw a tantrum and stomped off.  I call that pubescent behavior of the worse kind, and she wasn't a teenager.

My last comment about rampire venom was not about the scene with Harry but about how Susan (if she knew she was able to bear a child) could have foreseen a moment when she loose control and have unprotected sex (and yes, there was a risk to kill the man. But she has been taking all the precautions she could, meditating and all that). Taking anticonception measures would have been logical.

Since no doubt when she got her tattoos and joined the society to fight the vamps she would have been schooled in triggers that could cause her to lose control and turn.  Martin absolutely would have known, yet he let her go with him instead of changing places with her. 

[morriswalters]

Kim is dead, so whatever her sins in Harry's world she paid the price.  Ditto for Susan.  And Harry bears no responsibility for either of those deaths. There is nothing about his behavior in either case to improve. Would this be a cogent summation?

[Bad Alias]

Close enough. For Susan, it's more he has no responsibility for her turning. My argument is more "what more could he have done?" You've convinced me that Harry should have broken up with Susan after the events of Fool Moon, so I'll admit he is somewhere between 1 and 5 percent responsible for her turning. The only thing I've seen suggested that is the least bit convincing as a means of preventing Kim's death is that Harry could have retreated from society, but I think that would have been much worse.

For Harry to be responsible for Kim's death he would have to have either withheld information from her that would allow her to succeed, given her information that caused her to go forward, or didn't do something that would convince her to stop. I leave the last one vague because I have no idea what should go there. I don't think he did the other two either.

[Mira]

Close enough. For Susan, it's more he has no responsibility for her turning. My argument is more "what more could he have done?" You've convinced me that Harry should have broken up with Susan after the events of Fool Moon, so I'll admit he is somewhere between 1 and 5 percent responsible for her turning. The only thing I've seen suggested that is the least bit convincing as a means of preventing Kim's death is that Harry could have retreated from society, but I think that would have been much worse.

He should have if and most likely would have if he didn't have such a difficult relationship with women to begin with.   Before Susan the only serious relationship he ever had was with Elaine and that was kind of a pseudo incestuous  affair because the sort of brother/ sister turned lover but okay because they weren't really related thing, that ended badly and I am not sure he ever completely recovered from it even now, knowing that she did survive and all...  From the time he was sixteen until he met Susan at around age 26, Harry had no serious girlfriend, rarely had dates, and almost never had sex..  So when Susan first came on to him in Storm Front he couldn't believe it, and he fell for her like a ton of bricks, so let's face it, he blinded himself to the fact that though she came to love him in her own fashion, she was also using him.  So for him to break up with her, in my opinion was out of the question simply because of his own emotional make up.  One could argue that she should have broken up with him, being Harry's girlfriend wasn't exactly healthy, could get a girl killed or turned if she wasn't careful, but then there was all the great scoops that furthered her career..  She was like a moth to a flame, so breaking up was out of the question for her as well.. However it does explain some of the bitterness she seemed to feel towards Harry at the beginning of Changes.

For Harry to be responsible for Kim's death he would have to have either withheld information from her that would allow her to succeed, given her information that caused her to go forward, or didn't do something that would convince her to stop. I leave the last one vague because I have no idea what should go there. I don't think he did the other two either.

The problem Harry ran into there once he realized what Kim was asking for, was it was illegal in the eyes of the Council.. He had just gotten the Doom lifted from his head, but there are those who'd still like it if given any excuse.  Kim could lose her head over it for a number of reasons had the Council found out.  Even if he had given her all the information it is doubtful that she would have succeeded because she simply didn't have the knowledge, experience, or training to pull off that level of a circle.   In any case she was determined to go forward, so he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't..  The only thing that might have saved her is if she had told him the whole truth about MacFinn and his plight.  Harry would have insisted on going with her to fix the circle, then perhaps the circle would have been made correctly and the two of them could have fought off those who wanted it to fail and sabotaged the original circle..  But other than that, she was doomed by her own attitude.

[morriswalters]

Well we obviously see this through an entirely different lens.  I see Harry as learning from the mistakes or the successes of how he deals with those in his life.  If he can't say I did this better, or I could have done this differently, then whats the point?

In Kim's case his takeaway might be something like, you can't be a little bit pregnant.  Either go all in or don't involve yourself at all.  The whole metaphor of The Doom Of Damocles is saying that if you are going to do something like take someone under your wing, then do it like your success is defined by theirs.  That you share their fate.