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Messages - Snark Knight

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1
DF Spoilers / Re: Continuity drift - Lara and soul gazes
« on: Yesterday at 08:10:52 PM »
Quote from: Mira on Yesterday at 05:59:55 PM
Is a soul gaze even possible with a full vampire?  Does Lara have a soul to gaze, or is she like a full blooded Fae,no soul so no soul gaze possible?

Thomas was fully activated as a vampire when Harry soulgazed him in Blood Rites.  His species status is the same as Lara's.

So it works with WCV ... but I'd guess it would be worse with Lara since she's in harmony with her demon, compared to Thomas restrainig his.

2
Cinder Spires Spoilers / Re: Eager for new Cinder Spires book
« on: Yesterday at 02:45:33 PM »
Personally, my interest is Mirror Mirror > Cinder Spires 3 > Twelve Months.

But that's because I'm expecting MM to reveal enough to figure out many of the nagging mysteries in the DF.

3
DF Spoilers / Continuity drift - Lara and soul gazes
« on: Yesterday at 01:57:47 PM »
So my local store let me pick up my preordered copy of Twelve Months when it came in this week, instead of the official release day.

I noticed something odd in an early chapter - on the way out of Harry and Lara's first date, she asks why he's avoidant of eye contact, and he explains soulgazes like it's her first time hearing about that.

But Carlos already did one with her, to scare himself out of attraction to her, back in White Night.  And she seemed to know exactly what he was doing, telling him it wasn't going to scare her off.  That seems like a miss for the betas not to have raised ... might this be another deliberate hint of something hinky going on with the continuity?

4
DF Spoilers / Re: Matter crossing a circle boundary… disrupts the circle
« on: Yesterday at 01:29:31 AM »
Quote from: Mira on January 15, 2026, 03:04:37 PM
Also in Changes you will remember that while he didn't laugh at Harry's attempt at a mental circle, Uriel smiled and said that it really wouldn't stop him if he really wanted to cross it.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure Harry couldn't actually manage a circle that would stop an archangel who really wanted to cross it *with* physical props either.

Also, wasn't it mentioned at one point that cats are good pets for practitioners because they can cross a circle without disrupting it?

5
DF Spoilers / Re: Can we see Rudy take up a sword
« on: December 11, 2025, 09:28:27 PM »
Quote from: Mira on December 11, 2025, 12:43:47 PM
Fight against?  Or acting to stop and save Harry from himself in the emotion of the moment.

Yeah, I read that way more in the save Harry from himself sense - "against" is not really applicable.  The faithsaber burned him to *warn* him, after all.

I'm not sure I buy the part about intense anger indicating Harry still has a shadow attached to him after all, either.  He got a lot colder than when Lash was torqueing his temper, real quickly.  Seems more Winter mantle behaviour.

My read on the scene was something powerful and knowledgeable, probably one or both of the Fallen, manipulated Rudy's mind and snarled Harry up from using his power for anything defensive for a few seconds.  But they were counting on the Winter mantle to take care of driving him to the actual revenge murder part.

Could saving Rudy for a future purpose have been another dimension of the Knight's purpose?  I think they were mostly there to counter the Fallen cheating to manipulate Harry into murder, but I guess a dual objective is possible.  I'd still be surprised if any future purpose Rudy was spared for is a knighthood of his own, though.  He's basically the Gollum of TDF - best I can see is doing some accidental good, then tripping into a (metaphorical) volcano.

6
DF Spoilers / Re: Can we see Rudy take up a sword
« on: December 08, 2025, 10:56:24 PM »
Quote from: g33k on November 24, 2025, 05:01:08 PM
TBH, I think that was just Rudy being incredibly stupid, and with abysmal trigger-discipline.

He didn't mean to shoot, he was just "twitchy," had his finger on the trigger when he shouldn't have... and twitched at the wrong moment.

I still think there was more to that scene.  Lot of hints that something above Harry's weight class was subtly breaking the rules to ensure the outcome.

Best guess, Lasciel and/or Anduriel were whispering to Rudy to manipulate him.  Killing Karrin ended the possibility of her undertaking any more knightly activities after learning from her mistake in SG, and nearly corrupted Harry into committing a wrathful cold-blooded murder in revenge - would have, if not for the intervention of two KotC (hmmm...).  Both Fallen also had ample pettier motives to want revenge against both Harry and Karrin, for their combined roles in both Lash' redemption and screwing over the Denarian's agenda in SG.

He's still a toad, but I'm pretty sure he was robbed of the choice to be anything other than a toad in that particular moment.

7
DF Spoilers / Re: If you can have just one question answered....
« on: December 08, 2025, 10:00:25 PM »
Yeah, Cowl's identity would be a big one.  Probably at or near the top of my list.

It's hard to tell if that's realistic for the plot of Twelve Months, though.  A gradual-paced meditation on mental healing doesn't seem like a great fit for an Outsider-heavy plot.  I can't really see my other two biggest questions (the deeper objectives of the Denarians and the Black Court) fitting in terribly well here either.  Mirror Mirror is probably a better fit for the really juicy lore drops.

Within the scope of what we know of the plot, the biggest payoff that seems likely would probably be Listens to Wind and his cadre sharing some more details of what starborn actually means.  And, yeah, that's within maybe my top ten mystery box questions, but ultimately, the rough shape has already been sketched on that one.

I suppose some of the bigger issues might be connected to rooting out the rest of the infiltration of the White Court, though, so anything is technically possible.

8
DF Spoilers / Re: Twelve Months, chapter one
« on: November 17, 2025, 04:02:48 AM »
Quote from: KurtinStGeorge on November 15, 2025, 07:52:37 AM
I hadn't thought about how Lara will react to Harry dealing with grief, other than trying to use it to gain some kind of advantage over him.  Lara is the closest thing to being immortal as a flesh and blood being can get.  Though she can be killed, she barely ages.  I wonder if she has ever felt grief herself.   
Do White Court vamps ever feel and suffer through grief in their own extended lives?  To feel grief you probably have to have empathy, otherwise you wouldn't feel anything.  But most White Court vamps seem to revel in their own psychopathy, if the conversations we've he have heard with Lord Raith, Madeline Raith, Madrigal Raith and Vito Malvora are any indication.  Empathy just isn't their thing.

I think she'd probably say she grieved some of the half-brothers their father killed before they could become competition.  Then again, she was ready to, with obvious reluctance, follow his order to kill Thomas too.  She may also have been to one degree or another somewhat fond of some some of the people she's consumed, though obviously short of true love - perhaps enough to regret "how it has to be", but not much more than that.  So whatever she felt and would self-describe as grief was probably *very* muted, compared to messy human emotions.

9
DF Spoilers / Re: Jim Butcher at Dragon Con 2025
« on: September 21, 2025, 02:00:51 PM »
Quote from: g33k on September 20, 2025, 05:23:37 PM
Remember:  Slate had to die to give up his Mantle.

I think... Fix would be OK with that.

Just sayin'

Oh, I don't think Fix would have a problem with ending Slate.  But Harry himself was worried about becoming the next Slate.  What could even motivate Fix, who had first-hand experience of himself and his friends being Slates victims, to consider taking an offer to be the Winter Knight?

10
DF Spoilers / Re: Jim Butcher at Dragon Con 2025
« on: September 19, 2025, 02:46:37 AM »
Quote from: g33k on September 18, 2025, 05:53:55 PM
Mirror!Mab will then have two WK's!!!  How will she leverage this?
Also:  ... WK Fix?  WK Thomas?  Still(again?) WK Lloyd Slate?

Prime Harry's visit might be bringing her up to one active knight, if Slate still found his way to extended crucifixion via a slightly different path in the mirror universe.  The divergence at the end of GP might not have really started spiraling a whole lot by SK's timeframe in that universe, so it's possible.

Although mirror Mab easily might have gone with another option already if she concluded mirror Harry was no longer a good candidate. Perhaps Thomas, although there are possibilities for the GP divergence where he wouldn't have survived.  I don't see how Fix would go for it; he has too much bad blood against Slate.

11
DF Spoilers / Re: Out Law, novella (?)
« on: September 18, 2025, 03:17:45 PM »
Quote from: Mira on September 10, 2025, 03:52:27 AM
Yes, he does like to be his own man and also likes his power and his own little empire.  Namshiel will have to manage him so that Marcone believes he is calling the shots.  This basically is what Andriel has done with Nic, he buys that it is an equal partnership. Something Harry never bought when Lasciel offered it, but will Marcone see through it?

Namshiel's character and motivation is an area I'm actually quite curious about.  What we saw of him in SmF as one of the Fallen who dominates the host and was pretty firmly in Tessa's camp seems contradictory to later WoJ that he's basically the magic nerd and a bit of a loner from the other Fallen who mostly just wants to refine his experiments.  The latter sounds like he would have been a pretty good fit for Harry, if Nic had had his coin available instead of Lasciel's.

Then again, he also got pretty badly burned by Tessa and Rosanna - they betrayed him and left him to be un-hosted. I think they were hoping he'd stay coin-bound as long as possible in the assumption he was nem-fected, as cover for one or both of them being the actual 'Judas' as Nic put it.

Is he long-gaming a plan to dominate Marcone, or has he made a strategic choice that his bridges are well and truly burned with the other 29, and an actual alliance with Marcone is in his interest?

12
DF Spoilers / Re: Jim Butcher at Dragon Con 2025
« on: September 18, 2025, 03:13:24 PM »
Quote from: KurtinStGeorge on September 11, 2025, 03:30:29 PM
If that part of Winter remains behind it should go back to Mab which would probably make her believe that Harry is dead. 

I believe there was a WoJ that Mirror Mab would be of the position that she's Winter, prime Harry is Winter, so he works for her while he's in that universe.

13
DF Spoilers / Re: Jim Butcher at Dragon Con 2025
« on: September 18, 2025, 03:09:38 PM »
Quote from: KurtinStGeorge on September 07, 2025, 12:53:31 AM
Also in Mirror Mirror: Relating to the soulgaze scene in Proven Guilty between Harry and Molly.  We will see how different choices could lead to different outcomes.

Mirror Molly as Morgan's Warden apprentice, let's go!

14
DF Spoilers / Re: Murphy
« on: September 06, 2025, 03:04:47 AM »
Quote from: KurtinStGeorge on August 29, 2025, 01:43:01 AM
So, how does someone become a Valkyrie?

In universe?  I'd guess they accept Vadderung's job offer prior to physical death.  Ms. Gard delivered such an offer to Murphy and referred to the "health plan" - ie Valkyrie healing factor - as a perk.

15
DF Spoilers / Re: Choices
« on: April 17, 2025, 02:01:19 AM »
Quote from: peterwiggin94 on April 14, 2025, 01:43:57 PM
Assuming Jim hasn't changed his mind, he's told us what the big choice was. It's at the end of Grave Peril when Harry goes to save Susan. Our Harry summons a bunch of vengeful ghosts to kill the vampires when he could have absorbed their power and lashed out. The other Harry does the later.

He said the divergence was late in GP.  There's still room for it to be a few possibilities.  One of the big possibilities is !Harry might have taken Bianca's coward's bargain, to abandon Susan and walk free. 

Depending how far back you stretch late in Grave Peril, it could also be a few other things. There was a moment relatively late in the book when Thomas came to Harry to return Amoracchius after he recovered it from the earlier fighting and propose teaming up to rescue Susan and Justine, where Michael wanted to kill him without even seeing what was in the box because vampires are all bad.  If Harry hadn't gone to bat for hearing Thomas out at that point?  Well, that could start a pretty dark timeline.

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