Believe it or not, I just read all 26 pages of this thread.  You guys are amazing!

I also looked for a version III because all kinds of issues from GS were not addressed, but couldn't find one.  So if there is one, someone please redirect me...

I noted a few things down as I went through the thread:

Maybe the demon in the Sight is his old employer Drakul, metaphorically holding Kincaid, much like viewing Harry with the Sight shows HWWB.

Do we know this - that viewing Harry with the sight reveals HWWB?  I'm doing a another re-read, so perhaps I'm missing something from the later books, but it seems to me Harry has always been really clear about not knowing, and not asking, what people see in him during a soul gaze.

So far, the general consensus has been that the Erlking is the most likely culprit for the hexenwulfen belts, but we're not sure.

Is it just me, or does this just seem like a really odd thing to happen?

It seems to me also that this doesn't ring true.  I just can't see the Erlking taking that kind of interest in FBI nobodies.  And I don't see anything in the text to support the theory - especially as the books go on.  At the end of Proven Guilty, Eb & Harry agree that something is behind all these things...  the hexenbelts being one of 'these things'.  I just can't see the Erlking fitting into the rest of it, and if he doesn't, he can't be the one to supply the hexenbelts. 

Was Rudolph being influenced by anyone other than the eebs/before the eebs?
I recently re-read GP in which he's explicitly and vocally supportive & protective of Murphy.

I also just re-read GP, and Rudolph, scared as he was, was clearly protective of Murphy.  He even, through his terror, threatened Dresden if anything happened to her.  He seems to have gone through a major character shift, and I can't see embarrassment being the entire cause of it.

So I agree with you here, totally.  It's an unexplained character shift.

which reminds me, there are some notions that Harry is meant for a mantle like the Warden (singular), which we don't know much about, or Blackstaff (for which I personally consider Harry to be supremely unsuited), but what about Harry as Gatekeeper?

When I first read that entry in McCoy's journals, that was exactly what I thought.  Later on in the series, there were a whole lot of other choices - but first impressions are important.  And that was definitely my first thought, the Gatekeeper's mantle.

As to why Mouse didn't bark at the fire...  I have to say I had the same idea as

Because then Jim would have had to come up with some other way to break Harry's back...

    I mean an author is just an author, he has to get things in their places one way or the other.  (Sorry, sorry, flees flying tomatoes).

It's gotta be an enchantment in some sense, because Harry believed he could have cured Susan by using the unravelling cloth.

This is what Harry thinks.  What he hopes to do with it.  It's entirely clear that Mother had other plans.  So I don't think Harry's fantasy solution here bears much weight.  We, the readers, knew, from the moment Mother gave that to him, that he would have to use it in the current situation.  And so he did.

Whoever Victor was working for, they knew about the heart-ripping curse used by the Red Court as well.

This is one that keeps coming up and keeps bothering me.  Yes, I know it's been mentioned that someone tells Harry the Red Vampires blood curse tears the heart out, but I don't remember seeing that happen at CI.  And Victor Sells was using simple thaurmatogy - super powered by the storm and the sex ritual - but there was a live rabbit with Harry's hair and a sharpened spoon.  Presumably, had he had time, he would have dug the rabbit's heart out with the spoon, and just like the Snoopy and the Loup-garou, it would have worked on Harry.  It just seems totally different than the blood line curse.  (To me, naturally, no offense meant).

Re the person who hit Harry's car from behind. 

Thomas mentions it at the end of that book as a loose end.

If you're talking about the end of Proven Guilty, it was Eb who mentioned it as a loose end.

As far as Kincaid saying Harry was as human as he was...  Personally, I'm fascinated by Kincaid.  And I'm quite sure that comment had meaning - and not just that being a Wizard is enough to differentiate himself from a vanilla human. 

I read that as a pretty straightforward comment calling Dresden out for throwing stones from his glass front porch.
 He doesn't need to be a scion of something from the nevernever to be less than human.
A lifespan of a couple centuries and the ability to harness the forces of creation and destruction with your mind makes you pretty darn inhuman.

Mortal practitioners.  Kincaid is a scion.  We know that now.  And that he made his choice a long time ago.  I really can't see him throwing out a comment like that in reference to something they both knew - that Dresden was a Wizard. 

Not to say I know what it means.  But I'm pretty sure it's important.

Anyway, after more than an hour reading this thread...  that enough from me. 

Again, you guys are just amazing!

Ona

Thank you Enjorous & Amber...

Yes, I read the introduction to simplemachines, but couldn't find many specifics on "how to".

And I'm not sure what you mean by opening the post in different tabs...  When I hit the quote button, all I get is the HTML for quotes.  Do I hit the quote button on the specific posts I want to quote?  Do I go back and cut and paste between the " " as it were?  At another forum I spend quite a bit of time at, if you want to quote multiple posts, there's a checkbox - almost invisible - that you have to check in each of the posts you want to quote.  Is it something like that?

Thanks in any case, for answering my call for help 

Ona

Where is the discussion on using parenthesis to show range?  I've searched and searched and can't find it.  I've been using them essentially mathematically - but I would *love* more range!

Thanks,

Ona