Questions Specifically for Jim, Part 3

[Infovore]

Hopefully I'm posting this in the right place. I think this is a question for Jim, although it may have already been answered somewhere and I just didn't find it. If so, sorry!

I've just finished reading Side Jobs and my question is about the story "Last Call". Is the title of the story a nod towards the Tim Powers book of the same name?

My thinking is that the novel Last Call is related to

(click to show/hide)

Dionysus

and the sequel explicitly mentions both

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Maenads and sacramental drunken behaviour.

(I've marked as spoiler's above. I read the policy and don't think this is a spoiler but, I wanted to err on the side of caution)

In my head the connection just jumped out, of course that could quite easily just be in my head …

[Kysk]

Regarding Justins potential Death Curse...

"Or his death curse was something subtle Harry did not notice."

"From here on you shall ALWAYS take cold showers!"

[cass]

Regarding Justins potential Death Curse...


"From here on you shall ALWAYS take cold showers!"

unending guilt & self-recrimination?

[Kysk]

Dear mr Butcher and anyone else reading this,

I am practicing posting as I have  hardly ever been using this (or any other) forum before. How fortuitous that I have a whole bunch of questions (to be answered if/when you have the time and/or inclination of course)! Here is a warm up one:


How does Justine feel now?

When Harry met Justine in Bianca's laundry room she was mad with too much feelings. To me it seemed as if she had had that problem before and being with Thomas made it better. I got the feeling that this was one of the things that made her so attractive to Thomas from the start, for a creature who feeds on emotions a person like that must be like an all-you-can-eat free buffé. No one feeds on her now, as she is protected by True Love, but does she still have her emotional problems? Or did the huge chunk of her life that Thomas ripped out of her cure that?

[sjsharks]

Dear mr Butcher and anyone else reading this,

I am practicing posting as I have  hardly ever been using this (or any other) forum before. How fortuitous that I have a whole bunch of questions (to be answered if/when you have the time and/or inclination of course)! Here is a warm up one:


How does Justine feel now?

When Harry met Justine in Bianca's laundry room she was mad with too much feelings. To me it seemed as if she had had that problem before and being with Thomas made it better. I got the feeling that this was one of the things that made her so attractive to Thomas from the start, for a creature who feeds on emotions a person like that must be like an all-you-can-eat free buffé. No one feeds on her now, as she is protected by True Love, but does she still have her emotional problems? Or did the huge chunk of her life that Thomas ripped out of her cure that?

According to Justine she is on medication, although I think that there is more to it then we are told. And Jim has also said that Thomas and Justine are happier then ever after Turn Coat.

[Dina]

JB said that? Weird. I though Justine would be sad about Thomas.

[sjsharks]

JB said that? Weird. I though Justine would be sad about Thomas.

2010 Mysterious Galaxy Q&A @5:10
Are Thomas and Justine ever going to have a happily ever after?
Thomas and Justine's relationship is really weird.  I know what the relationship is in my head like right now.  Their actually happier now than they've been in ever.  But it's all happening behind the scenes and nobody can see because Thomas has to have his bad ass vampire face on whenever he's in public.  But when they are alone together, nothing else going on, their like totally cute.  Justine wears like these grownup version of footie pajamas so that she can snuggle up next to him on the couch and watch TV without actually burning him.  They don't have like a normal relationship or anything like one, but they've kinda adjusted, their fairly happy.  You don't go around letting the other vampires go "Oh how cute."  I'll have to get to that one of these days, Harry doesn't see that.

[Dina]

Aw, thanks! That means that Thomas is more his older self that what he shows. That is really good!

[Tigris]

That's good to know because what happened to him in TC made me so mad and sad, it's nice to know that him and Justine are happy.

[faithlessprophet]

Jim - I just reread SF for the first time in years, and i just realized that had Harry not lied to Murph about knowing the girl who died, they might have actually hooked up early on, is this a valid theory?

[Kysk]

Thank you so much for the pointers the answer to my last question! Here is a new one:

In SmF, Harry talks about how the Swords of the Knights of the Cross can be destroyed if someone picks them up when they are, as Lea puts it, ownerless. Destroyed as in not only rendered powerless, but also melted or shattered or otherwise made unable to function as swords normally should.

What does it take for the church to be able to destroy the coins? Not just make a bearer give them up and the fallen to loose it's power over them, but actually, physically destroy the coins?

[Kysk]

How is Gard's name supposed to be pronounced?

In James Marster's reading in the audiobook it is pronounced similarly to the english word "guard", but when I saw it I thought it would be more like the scandinavian "Gerd" or "Gärd". I do not know the phonetics for this, but in Swedish it begins with a j-sound and then a long e but further to the front of your mouth and with your tongue flat to the bottom of it than what you would have when you said e in english (kind of like when you say "eh.." because you don't know what else to say), then an r that is almost silent (depending on the dialect) and then a d.

It would be interesting to know which one of the Valkyries she is (even though she might be none of the famous ones). I have not found anyone with that name, the only one I know of in the Asir sagas who goes by that name is the female giant (giantess?) who marries Frej. However, Gärd as a name means "protection", so it would be an apt name for her (the Dresden Files Character, that is).
Gärd as a word is a form of tax though :p

[Kysk]

On the power of a name (This question have been up before, but I did not find an answer to it):

Can you gain power over someone by giving them a name?

That knowing someone's name gives you power over them is pretty well established, but how much power do you get over someone by giving them a name? Wether it be their full, "real" name like a parent naming their child, or a nickname that the person starts to identify themselves with. Is there a difference?

Harry calls Bob back from being creepy Kemler secretary to being nice, albeit pervy, Harry secretary by reminding him of the name Harry gave him. This implies that it should grant you some measure of power, even if he might not be able to force Bob into doing something only using that name it clearly touched him, reached him, in a significant way.

Is it different for beings of a more "spiritual inclination" than humans? They do not change their names as humans do, are they also more sensitive to given names than humans? Or less? Titles seems more important to them, for example you can call upon Mab by naming her the "Queen of Air and Darkness".

What about the Archive, where on the scale does she fit? She got her name, her only name as far as we know, from Harry. But she is human. Not that I think Harry would do anything with it (not that I think he could either, considering the amount of power she has, but let's say we take that imbalance away), but if he wanted to, could he then? Could he conjure her by it for example?  Or do anything along the lines of what that dragon did at Bianca's masquerade?

[Kysk]

On souls:

Does animals have souls?
The question was called for when Harry could not see a soul in Tera West. According to Harry's theory she is a wolf which transforms herself into a human (Which makes me happy, as my favorite scene in any Eddings book is when Poldara sees Belgarath transform himself, tilts her head and says "So that's how you do it" and promptly turns herself human).

Now, if that is true, does it mean that;
a) animals in the Dresdenverse do not have souls. End of discussion.
b) animals do have souls, but they are different from human souls and can therefore not be seen by Harry and other humans, i.e. a soulgaze can only happen between individuals of the same species. In that case, does it take a "talanted" wolf to soulgaze another wolf?

What does it take to get a soul? "Mortal" seem to be one of the requirements, or at least it can be loosely used as a synonym to "someone with a soul". Animals can die, and do so frequently for perfectly natural reasons. Are they mortals then?

Can you create a ghost from something that does not have a soul? Is emotion alone sufficient?

I am quite sure Harry does not have the answer to these questions, but it is always fun to speculate.

[Kysk]

On traveling in the Nevernever:

Even though the beings of the Nevernever seem to be hopelessly behind the changes in the human world, the Nevernever itself seems to be quite malleable to mortal will and emotion.
The roads of the Nevernever are bound to those of ours by mood or emotions.
The roads of the Nevernever occasionally change.
What then happens when the "mood" of a place changes in the mortal world, say a neighborhood that starts out as modern and popular to the upper crust and then degrades into slum, or opposite, slum that gets cleaned up and repaired? Or a playground or a fair where a murder takes place? Does the roads in the Nevernever change because the mortal world changes, or does the mortal world change because it is suddenly connected to a new part of the Nevernever?
In the extreme: could a sufficiently strong wizard use his or her ability to affect the Nevernever to also change things in our world?

Even the laws of magic in our world sometimes change (according to Bob at least) - so, related sidetrack: do they change in the Nevernever at the same time? Or before or after? Are they at any point different in the Nevernever than in this world, or can you always rely on the same algorithms in both places if you are a wizard?


According to Harry's working model of the Nevernever it seems as if it is our world that "takes the lead" and changes first, but his model focuses heavily on human emotions and several of the beings living in the Nevernever are many times older than the human species (is my impression). Did they live in the Nevernever before we came too? How was the Nevernever connected to our world then?

Or have I gotten this backwards?