You don't want to do a field trip you don't want to let people know about the outer Gates because that's just another venue the bad guys to attack. Not everybody is an outsider they might have different reasons to f*** s*** up

All the important people with truly "f*** s*** up" power already know.  Dracul, the mothers, Mab, Titania, the senior council, Denarians, dragons, odin, etc.  They all know about it.  Heck, they all clearly know more about it than Harry since they all know more about Starborn than he does.  I'm talking about him getting some of the people at his level that can serve as speedbumps to him at a critical time in the know to help clear them out of the way.  None of them are going to be threats to the status quo.  But if Fix had known more about this, and maybe understands that "oppose winter at all times" is a bad mantra, then things like them fighting like they did earlier may be avoided in the future.

Yes, but seeing the world as a spirit didn't alter time, love, or truth. You'd think time would have been altered, but it wasn't really, there was a beginning and an end to his "time" as a spirit. And since he really wasn't dead,dead, that experience was an illusion, don't think that was what Lasciel was getting at.

I think the time travel book will involve going through the spirit realm.  Like, Harry will astrally project back to the past and have to make him self a physical body like when he was a ghost.  We've also seen Lash and Bob slow down and adjust the flow of time.  Mr. Sunshine showed him many things after he almost died at the end of ghost story, and there he may have been truly outside of time.  It is quite possible that in a spirit sense time is an illusion.  Love is considered an illusion by the Fallen, that is them bringing their own bias to the statement.  God would strongly disagree, I suspect.  This might be the fundamental disagreement between them...

I've been thinking about Harry making himself a body from the spirit realm, about necromancy, and about the apparent WoJ that the einjhar are necromancy using soulfire.  Harry made himself an ectoplasmic body when he was "dead."  That sure seems like necromancy, but as I recall he had a heartbeat, etc.  He wasn't a zombie or a ghost at that point.  There was none of the talk of using "dark energy" or anything like that at the time that would have been associated with necromancy.   I assume just like any other spell, his body would have fallen apart at dawn, but would it have fallen if he had used soulfire in the mix?  If he was running around in just his soul and his spells were using his essence, was everything he cast pretty much using soulfire? 

Harry had 4 options as I see it:
1.  Say nothing.  This is what he chose
2.  Say I have to help Thomas, will you help? I can't explain anything about why
3.  Say I have to help Thomas, will you help? I need to do it for Winter Knight reasons.
4.  Say I have to help Thomas, will you help? He's my brother.

Considering they were worried about him being bent up and not being himself, 2 wouldn't have worked.  They don't understand Winter the way Harry does, 3 would have made them trust him even less.  4 is just waaaay too dangerous to share.  Harry made the right choice.

Harry should take him to the outer gates and explain to him what's really in play and Winter's role in it.  That might make Carlos less worried about Harry being mind bent.  There is a really serious reason for Winter to be playing hardball that all reality should be supporting.  As a matter of fact, Harry should take Butters, Fix, and maybe even Goodman or anyone else he plans to need to depend on that he can get on that little "field Trip"  I think that would make a great short story in 12 months or whatever the new book is going to be.  There are some people Harry really needs trusting him just a little more than they are right now and cluing them into the big picture would help with that.

It's my understanding from WoJ's that Harry is summoned to the MM universe by alternate Harry.  Alternate Harry apparently has a tendency of getting into situation where it is helpful if people believe he is dead, and summons our Harry to take the fall for him so he can disappear and be safely "dead" for awhile.  I suspect MM Harry will be in league with Denarians because Jim has also said that Harry selling his names to the librarian demon in earlier books would definitely come back to haunt him, and this seems like a good way to do that.  If our Chandler is going to be there (which I think is highly unlikely unless there is a WoJ indicating it) then probability would indicate he would have to have something to do with our Harry's arrival, like have given MM Harry information about him or at least part of his name to summon him.  That would explain why out of all the infinite multiverses they managed to wind up in the same one (other than divine manipulation).

About a range of topics:

I would love to see an ancient Sumerian around.  That would give us a chance to learn more about ghouls.  I have long felt that every civilization developed protective supernatural beings - ghouls in Sumer, half-red vampires in the Aztecs, white court in Etruscans, etc.  These beings were often created by well meaning wizards, like the half-reds binding a hunter spirit to a human to give him extra powers.  In the case of the reds it was poorly done because if they ever gave in to the temptation they became a threat.  But with the ghouls in Sumer they were essentially their civilization's supernatural warriors to counter other civilizations supernatural warriors, and they self-limited their population to what could be sustained by eating the natural dead... until they didn't.  I had a character concept in the RPG of a ghoul that had psychometry, which is what the religious leader class of the ghouls had until they were destroyed.  When they eat something, they learn from it.  "You are what you eat" applies to ghouls too.  If they eat too much cow, they become docile.  To stay intelligent, they need to eat intelligent people.  And if one with psychometry eats enough wizards... boom Sumerian priest-wizard ghoul.

The blackstaff (the person holding the position, not the item) chooses who gets the blackstaff (the position and item) next.  I assume it is worked out to happen automatically at his death.  I think it is very likely Harry will get the staff.  Anyone who thinks that mother winter doesn't know where her staff is, is kidding themselves.  She's let them have it for some reason, maybe even so it can come down to Harry at the critical point.

I think Harry's time travel will be incorporeal.  He will go back as a spirit, since he did make some comment about how hard it would be to move mass through time at one point.  The question is whether he needs to have the blackstaff at the time to protect him from black magic ramifications?  I think he will generally stay within the actions we've seen happen in the books and fill some holes we've seen.  Who repaired little Chicago - TT Harry.  Who helped defent Arctis Tor - TT Harry.  Mab was willing to wait for Harry, because she literally knew from Harry that she would succeed in getting Harry.  There are little inconsistencies we've seen through the book like where Lindquist lives that I think will supposedly be explained by mess ups Harry makes in the TT.  We'll have to see how that works out.

I think the Mirror Mirror book will revolve more around Harry saving/redeeming the MM Harry, rather than killing him.  The book series is getting much more seriously into redemption arcs.  I doubt MM Harry will live through the redemption though...

I've always thought Eb could have used the blackstaff to blackmagic control a high ranking military office and track Papa Wraith by satellite and then just have dropped a missile on him, but I suspect either Eb didn't think of it, or that he wasn't willing to use that much black magic on a personal vendetta.

True, but if ever a place was in need of a good feng shui team it would be Chicago during the rebuild.  Considering what happened there, Chicago could either become a real epicenter of supernatural activity in the world or totally anathema to it since the mortals there are so sensitized to it now.

I think, as we saw with Harry's discussion with Hades, that Butcher considers a lot of the Greek Pantheon... immature.  I mean look at all the stuff Zeus did.  He might have been powerful at one time, but he sure wasn't full of foresight like Odin.  We might be seeing what happens when a God doesn't play their cards as well as Odin.  On the other hand, they aren't asleep like a lot of the old gods, and seem to be able to be fully active in the physical world without "breaking it" like the dragons and the like need to worry about, so maybe they've accepted the downgrade in power for a reason - to still be able to effect the physical world.  But if they were doing that for much of a good reason you would think they would be signatories of the accords and present to help out in Chicago, so who knows.  Also, we know some members of the Pantheon (Hecate-Mab) wear different mantles, so we might be seeing some interesting plays there as well.  Finally, I want to see Athena.  She should have played her cards right, and she at least started as a divine level spirit of intellect.  Love to see how that worked out, and how Zues and Harry talk about the process....