Questions

[wyltok]

I don't think most bearers take that first step of rejection. They probably slip the coin in their pocket and carry it around like a secret treasure. Without that first rejection, they would be open to the full temptation at the start.

No, I think once you touch the coin the Fallen can try to tempt you. It is only following an act of refusal (Harry sealing the coin) that the Fallen is forced to resort to more subtle means.

A system that allows Malcolm Dresden to appear to balance out Lasciel's Shadow "cheating" but allows the coin to tempt you fully from the word go unless you perform an act of refusal doesn't seem internally consistent to me. Particularly since the former was a smaller deal than the latter and (presumably) occurs less often. Neither does a system that only defends you when you make an informed choice (meaning, when you're most likely to not fall into temptation by mistaked in the first place) instead of defending you when you're making an uninformed choice (when you're more likely to be tricked). It would only really work in an universe where the bad guys are winning, methinks, or the good guys are dicks (Uriel doesn't seem to be one of those, at least). Unless I'm misunderstanding your logic?

[Serack]

wyltok, coz already said most of what I wanted to reply for your earlier questions.

As to your latest questions, leme first quote the free will section of the WoJ compilation since it says some stuff that addresses your concerns about how the "system" works in the books.  I'll italicize the stuff that I think is most pertinent.

Free Will
Very old, very long WoJ about free will
2008 ComicCon Playing God panel Q&A @~7:00
How do you come up with the bounds between Characters free will and the Divine Hand?
For the Dresden Files, the whole point of The Almighty positive good forces that are out there is that free will is important and they respect that and you've gotta have it and use it.  That's the entire point.  They are a force of freedom.  And it's the bad guys who are going around doing whatever they can to abrogate free will.  So for me, where you draw the line is what defines where good stops and evil starts is by how much you're taking away free will and how much you're enabling it.
2011 Marscon
Could you explain free will to us from Bob’s perspective?
Free will from Bob’s perspective? Bob thinks free will is a complete illusion, uh, since he doesn’t really have it. Um, it’s a conceit that mortals have to make themselves feel like they can be in control of things. Uh, but really, it doesn’t actually exist, that’s Bob’s take on it.  But then again, Bob doesn’t really have free will, he’s sort of…
He said that Lash got it.
Lash isn’t Bob.
Well, no, but he [Bob] said that Lash got, obtained free will.
Yeah, Bob doesn’t have to tell the truth to Dresden! (Laughter) I mean, come on! Bob offered it as a possible explanation, but you know, Bob’s essentially…he’s a theoretician. That’s what he does… ‘Explain this’ , ‘Okay, maybe it was this, I don’t know.’ But yeah, he tries to stay out of the whole, anything like, anything that verges on morality, Bob tries to avoid speaking with any authority on because he doesn’t have any compass himself. It all depends on who actually happens to be in possession of the skull at the time.
2011 Fast Forward, Contemporary Science Fiction interview
There is a rather long discussion as to what constitutes free will as an element in the back end of this book (Ghost Story).  Is what is presented and discussed as a concept, your own philosophy?  How did that come about, the idea that free will is making your choices based upon truth.
Right, and in the Dresden Files universe it's a vital component.  It's what devides mortals, human beings, from everybody else.  Is that we're the ones that have elements of both good and evil inside us, we're the ones who get to chose what to do.  And because that's who we are, we make the world around us through those choices.  The forces of the universe, these cosmic forces are always ballanced against one another, and we're the ones who can tilt that see-saw one way or another with our actions.  I think that is largely true in real life, but it is certainly a very fun, dramatic use of the concept of free will for writing with.  It's very important in general, and that's why Harry, as he's gotten more mature, he's striven so much harder to make sure that other people have a choice, you know, he's not trying to make choices for people any more, he's trying to make sure that they know what's going on, and can make an informed choice.
2011 Bitten by Books Q&A
Lash was apparently able to gain free will from harry, a mortal. Can mortals potentially grant free will to other supernaturals like vampires and faries?”
That’s… a spectacularly complicated question, really. 
Lash didn’t gain free will, per se. Lash gained individuality, became a singular entity, self-motivated and distinct from the personality of Lasciel the Fallen. That personality was strongly influenced by Dresden, who believes very strongly in individual choice and responsibility, but doesn’t necessarily equate to free will in the sense of what mortals possess.
You might note that Lash essentially committed suicide with her “free will.” A choice which rather strongly resembles another choice a few books later in the series.

You seem rather concerned about fairness and such, but it has already been well established in the series that just because you are ignorant of the consequences of your actions in the DresdenVerse does not give you any extra protection from making bad decisions and suffering their consequences.  This is illustrated over and over with ignorant teenagers breaking the laws of magic and going down the slippery slope towards evil, thus showing the ignorant are vastly more vulnerable to the repercussions of falling to temptation.

[Serack]

Some additional thoughts.  These are inspired by some of the comments from one of the DFRPG developers with respect to Laws of Magic breaking.

Corruption Isn't Always About Evil

We have a tendency to look at the Laws as things that turn ordinary, nice wizards into MFing Kemmler. So, it's understandable that some players are going to have an issue with the idea of being a Lawbreaker, because they don't really want their character to be an Evil Jackass.

But all we really know, as a baseline, is that breaking the Laws fundamentally changes you somehow. There's a lot of room to decide how you're going to express that change. That's why you don't have to, if you don't want to, worry about intent too much - good intentions can cause corruption just as much as bad ones.

Let's look at another Joe Wizard. This is a young dude, just getting started, who fries a mugger in self-defense because he's afraid. First Law violation, period dot.

But what if we decide the aspect is "Crippling, Massive Guilt"? 'Cause clearly, Joe's not a bad guy, right? No one expects he's going to go from magical self-defense to setting kittens on fire just to listen to them shriek.

However, what could happen is that his guilt keeps him from using his magic, even when its arguably necessary. Even when it could help people and prevent harm. Even when an innocent is being held up by the throat by a loup-garou, and he could save that person, but God, what if something goes wrong? What if he misses? What if he kills another innocent? Better that they die by the loup-garou's hand than his, right? Better he doesn't have it on his conscience, right?

And soon, this Joe Wizard finds himself utterly incapable of risk and sacrifice. His decisions become inherently selfish, all centered around keeping him, at all costs, from having to deal with that guilt again.

How is that not a kind of corruption?

So, keep in mind that you don't have to characterize this process as a descent into blistering, making-soup-with-babies sadism. Anything that people can feel can be taken too far and become destructive.

Even though Harry was not subjected to diabolical temptation due to picking up the coin for a significant period of time afterwords, does not mean that he was not subjected to some consequences.

I thought about those who had fought beside me before.  I thought about my friend Michael, whose kid had been the one about to pick up the coin.

I hadn't seen Michael since then.  I hadn't called.  He'd called me a couple of times, invited me to Thanksgiving dinner a couple times, asked if I was all right a couple of times.  I had turned down  his invitations and cut every phone conversation short.  Michael didn't know that I'd picked up one of the Blackened Denarii, taken possession of a token that could arguably make me a member of the Knights of the Blackened Denarius...

I'd never told him about the coin.  I didn't want him to know that I was sharing brain space with a demon.  I didn't wnat him to think less of me.  Michael had integrity.  Most of my adult life, the White Council at large had been sure that I was some kind of monster just waiting for the right time to morph into its true form and start laying waste to everything around me.  But Michael had been firmly on my side since the first time we'd met.  His unwavering support had made me feel a whole hell of a lot better about my life.

I didn't want him to look at me the way he'd looked at the Denarians we'd fought.  So until I got rid of Lasciel's stupid mental sock puppet, I wasn't going to ask him for help.

One more thing.  My ideas on this topic are not set in stone.  I have a general idea of things that is constantly shaped by the info I get on the subject.  I just happened to finish reading Dead Beat last night, and the 2 books before it in the past few weeks, so the subject canon is particularly fresh in my mind.  (I just read the above passage earlier today, having quickly started the next book after finishing DB)

[Ms Duck]

Heres my idea on why harry resited for years; he has a ridculously strong will combined with a crippling fear of his own power. I seriously doubt the circle ever did anything - it was just harry. Hes that stubborn, and that guilty about the 'death' of elaine- and possibly justin as well. He peter parker y'know. Snarky, shy about women, and would rather stick his hand in a grinder than accept evil power.... Do you tthink most people are like that? I dont. And for another point, i doubt the coins need infromed consent..just consent.

[wyltok]

Uhm, Serack and cozarkian, lemme try to return to the original point:
- If I'm understanding your position correctly, you believe there are constraints that limited how Lasciel's Shadow could interact with Harry's conscious mind, particularly between the events at the end of Death Masks and the beginning of Dead Beat. You believe these constraints are the reason why the background Rock & Roll music Harry had been hearing since picking up the coin stopped playing once his conscious mind chose to reject the coin. You believe these constraints are binding enough that Lasciel's Shadow didn't have any way of continuing to play the music, even if it wanted to.

- You then propose that these constraints were loosened by Harry's actions in Blood Rites, namely, his subconscious use of Hellfire. The (elegant) logic behind this belief is that we are told in Dead Beat that his conscious use of Hellfire was required in order to allow Lasciel's Shadow to communicate with Harry's conscious mind. One would expect, then, that Harry's subconscious use of Hellfire would be required in order to allow Lasciel's Shadow to communicate with Harry's subconscious mind.

My questions to you, I'm afraid, remain unanswered, by either you or cozarkian:
- How can the constraints be binding if Lasciel's Shadow managed to "cheat" around them?

- Why did Lasciel's Shadow appear to wait from Blood Rites until Dead Beat before "cheating"?

In all fairness, I did ask a third question that did get answered by both you and cozarkian, namely, how did Lasciel's Shadow fail after three years whereas other Shadows succeed in a few weeks at most (or presumably, fail completely in a shorter span of time). Cozarkian proposed that the temptation process was inherently different from Harry's in most cases, heavily skewed toward the Shadows' favor. When I suggested that such a system didn't seem consistent to me, you replied saying that there's no reason to expect the system to seem fair from our perspective. I can't really argue that point, so I shall concede it.

Still, my two questions above remain unanswered. My proposed answer to them is the following:
- At some point, Lasciel's Shadow was free to act in a certain way and chose to wait until her actions had maximum impact before acting. I believe we can all agree a time period like that existed between Blood Rites and Dead Beat. Just to clarify, by "free to act" I don't mean there would be no consequences for her actions; what I mean is, there were constraints stopping her from acting.

- The idea that Lasciel's Shadow was constrained from acting in a certain way ("cheating") during one time period and then later chose not to act in that exact certain way until a time of her choosing has more moving parts to it than the idea that she just chose to not act in that way ("cheating") until a time of her own choosing from the very beginning. Occam's Razor would suggest that maybe there was never any constraint on her actions in the first place.

- The fact that that it still counted as "cheating" when she finally acted means that she was either unaware that there would be consequences (unlikely) or she believed the consequences were worth it. Meaning, the consequences did not have the power to stop her from cheating at that point in time, which suggests that nothing had the power to stop her from cheating earlier, either. Since the act that has been defined as "cheating" is at the very least the same as playing music, and nothing could stop Lasciel's Shadow from cheating, nothing could stop her from playing music, either.

In other news, both sides seem to agree that the magic empowering the circle in and of itself did absolutely nothing to limit the coin or Lasciel's Shadow. Granted, you believe the act of empowering the circle did limit the access Lasciel's Shadow had to Harry's conscious mind, but at least we agree on something, no?

[DragonEyes]

Heres my idea on why harry resited for years; he has a ridculously strong will combined with a crippling fear of his own power. I seriously doubt the circle ever did anything - it was just harry. Hes that stubborn, and that guilty about the 'death' of elaine- and possibly justin as well. He peter parker y'know. Snarky, shy about women, and would rather stick his hand in a grinder than accept evil power.... Do you tthink most people are like that? I dont. And for another point, i doubt the coins need infromed consent..just consent.

Mostly agree here, but add in that he's more cunning than he lets on. He wouldn't have succeeded as long as he did, had he not been able to change Lash as he resisted.

[knnn]

Slightly unrelated, but here goes:

If an entity that is omniscient enough to know that "7 words" will drive a specific wizard in a specific mental condition to arrange his own death, wouldn't that same entity also realize that it wouldn't "take"?

[Serack]

Uhm, Serack and cozarkian, lemme try to return to the original point:
- If I'm understanding your position correctly, you believe there are constraints that limited how Lasciel's Shadow could interact with Harry's conscious mind, particularly between the events at the end of Death Masks and the beginning of Dead Beat. You believe these constraints are the reason why the background Rock & Roll music Harry had been hearing since picking up the coin stopped playing once his conscious mind chose to reject the coin. You believe these constraints are binding enough that Lasciel's Shadow didn't have any way of continuing to play the music, even if it wanted to.

- You then propose that these constraints were loosened by Harry's actions in Blood Rites, namely, his subconscious use of Hellfire. The (elegant) logic behind this belief is that we are told in Dead Beat that his conscious use of Hellfire was required in order to allow Lasciel's Shadow to communicate with Harry's conscious mind. One would expect, then, that Harry's subconscious use of Hellfire would be required in order to allow Lasciel's Shadow to communicate with Harry's subconscious mind.

My questions to you, I'm afraid, remain unanswered, by either you or cozarkian:
- How can the constraints be binding if Lasciel's Shadow managed to "cheat" around them?

- Why did Lasciel's Shadow appear to wait from Blood Rites until Dead Beat before "cheating"?

I don't have a good direct answer to your questions.  I might be able to make some vague supositions, but they aren't well supported.  When we first started talking about this I actually checked to see if Harry used hellfire again in DB before Shela showed up.  Shela showed up immediately before the altercation with Cowl, and after the altercation with Grevane, but pretty much the only magic used against Grevane's zombies was that he blew out his rear window with his ring.  Easy answer thus denied to me, the next best answers I have are... hmmmm...

Firstly, Id! Harry (is the ! necessary? I saw you using it I think) said that he had been communicating with the shadow for a few months.  BR happened in early Autumn according to the DF Timeline sticky, and DB happens at the end of October, so there was about a year between them.  So unless Id! Harry was severly lowballing that rough description of how long they had been communicating, he didn't immediately start talking to her after the first subconcious usage of Hellfire (although until the godess got recruited as a beta, there is evidence that Jim ran rather loose with such timeline type stuff.  Ergo, in a Doylist sense {it's great to have a name for that now}, that part of the delay might not be terribly important). 

The thing is, I like how you go through such a clean logical progression from subconscious to conscious communication with the avenues closed and opened by Harry's concious and subconcious decisions... However Shela was already communicating with Harry's concious mind before he chose to employ hellfire.  So, analizing this to a bloody pulp I get these two ideas:

a)  That bit of communication "crossed the line" (Malcolm's words) that shouldn't have been crossed because Harry hadn't conciously embraced any of her temptations, which is kinda handy for attempting to answer your questions in terms that you already call eloquent...  maybe.

b)  Conciously embracing Hellfire opened a chink in Harry's armor allowing direct offers of corrupting power.  This reasoning is a little delicate, but up to that point, Shela was just building rapport... She did help out a little with finding that book, so obviously some assistance was given...  But it wasn't an offering of power yet.  It wasn't truely corrupting until she could offer such memory recall as an asset available from the Shadow, which is the chink exploited when Harry had her help him remember the Word of Kemmler.  (I just realized that this perfect memory recall dovetails very well into the perfect recollection of the GS flashbacks...  which sends a lot of new thoughts swirling through my brain...)

So in attempting to directly answer your questions, the best I can do is that the Shadow was constrained from offering true corrupting power to Harry but "cheated" by building rapport with his concious mind as Shela before he conciously accepted power (Hellfire) from her.  The pushing the envelope was only available to her because of his subconciously accepting the power (and his subconcious communicating with her in the time since), and she chose to pull that card dispite the consequences of "crossing the line" because she saw that he was undergoing some stressful situations that were likely to cause him to embrace the Hellfire she managed to offer his subconcious, and would thus give her lots of opportunities to offer him tantalizing power through the course of the events of DB.  Plus, the reader can't experience the intricacies of the plotline unless those intracies happen in "the worst weekend of Harry's year" as Jim calls the "case files."

Notice that the opening of PG (which I am reading now) sees Lasciel manifesting before Harry's concious mind unbidden for the first time since the events of DB because she sensed that the stressful events to come would offer her more opportunities to offer him corrupting power. (Ref ch 3 of PG)

In all fairness, I did ask a third question that did get answered by both you and cozarkian, namely, how did Lasciel's Shadow fail after three years whereas other Shadows succeed in a few weeks at most (or presumably, fail completely in a shorter span of time). Cozarkian proposed that the temptation process was inherently different from Harry's in most cases, heavily skewed toward the Shadows' favor. When I suggested that such a system didn't seem consistent to me, you replied saying that there's no reason to expect the system to seem fair from our perspective. I can't really argue that point, so I shall concede it.

Still, my two questions above remain unanswered. My proposed answer to them is the following:
- At some point, Lasciel's Shadow was free to act in a certain way and chose to wait until her actions had maximum impact before acting. I believe we can all agree a time period like that existed between Blood Rites and Dead Beat. Just to clarify, by "free to act" I don't mean there would be no consequences for her actions; what I mean is, there were constraints stopping her from acting.

- The idea that Lasciel's Shadow was constrained from acting in a certain way ("cheating") during one time period and then later chose not to act in that exact certain way until a time of her choosing has more moving parts to it than the idea that she just chose to not act in that way ("cheating") until a time of her own choosing from the very beginning. Occam's Razor would suggest that maybe there was never any constraint on her actions in the first place.

- The fact that that it still counted as "cheating" when she finally acted means that she was either unaware that there would be consequences (unlikely) or she believed the consequences were worth it. Meaning, the consequences did not have the power to stop her from cheating at that point in time, which suggests that nothing had the power to stop her from cheating earlier, either. Since the act that has been defined as "cheating" is at the very least the same as playing music, and nothing could stop Lasciel's Shadow from cheating, nothing could stop her from playing music, either.

The thing is, the story goes through a lot of trouble to describe how there were lines and limits on what the shadow could do (Ref, the 2 dream sceens, 1 with Malcome, the other with the shadow and hot tub.  Interesting the symbolism in that in the Malcolm dream Harry was cold and uncomfortable, and Malcolm allowed him to mix his own Coffee to warm up... compared to Harry waking up in a luxurious hot tub he had never experienced before.)  Your Occam's Razor argument is not strong enough for me to just throw away all that world building effort.

Another Doylist monkey wrench, is that when Jim wrote in the Lasciel Shadow plot, and BR, he had intended for the events of Proven Guilty to precede the events of Dead Beat.  Jim switched the two because of book 7 being the first hard cover release.  This gives another strong Doylist argument for why the Shadow's progressive interactions were a little disjointed.

In other news, both sides seem to agree that the magic empowering the circle in and of itself did absolutely nothing to limit the coin or Lasciel's Shadow. Granted, you believe the act of empowering the circle did limit the access Lasciel's Shadow had to Harry's conscious mind, but at least we agree on something, no?

To me, those two statements are completely contradictory...  My conceptualization of DV magic is the altering of reality with your will.  So in those terms Harry's empowering the circle was a willful alteration of Lasciel's ability to influence him.  Thus it was a sucessful magical spell, not an empty gesture that did absolutely nothing.

[Ms Duck]

I think most of these arguments underestimate both lash and harry. why did lash sing at all? To let harry know she was ther. Why stop? To make him think shes gone. Why wait? She was studying him. Why did he resist? Well, why did he resist corpsetaker? Or nico? Or all the other offers? Hes just that stubborn. Hes the hero yall

[knnn]

Mrs. Duck raises an interesting point.

We know that Fallen have limited ability to play with someone's mind until they make a choice to allow them in.  And yet, we also know that most shadows don't last more than a few weeks before the person takes up the coin.  So what is to stop someone from picking up a coin, putting it in his pocket and forgetting about it?

Answer:

What better way to continually remind someone that they have power at their fingertips than to play some song in the background that they can't get rid of?

[Serack]

I think most of these arguments underestimate both lash and harry. why did lash sing at all? To let harry know she was ther. Why stop? To make him think shes gone. Why wait? She was studying him. Why did he resist? Well, why did he resist corpsetaker? Or nico? Or all the other offers? Hes just that stubborn. Hes the hero yall

Honestly, I don't think the "singing" should be given any weight.

The way I read it Lasciel was not singing at all, but rather Harry was drowning out Lasciel's wispers by thinking about/singing Heavy Metal songs.

I left the cookout without saying good-bye, and headed  home.  I heard something the whole time, something wispering almost inaudibly.  I drowned it out with loud and off-key singing, and got to work.

Ten hours later, I put down the excavating pick and glowered at the two-foot hole I had chipped in my lab's concrete floor.  The whispering in my head had segued into "Sympathy for the Devil" by the stones.

"Harry," whispered a gentle voice.

I dropped the coin into the hole.  I slipped a steel ring about three inches across around it.  I muttered to myself and willed energy into the ring.  The whispering abruptly cut off.

I dumped two buckets of cement into the hole and smoothed it until it was level with the rest of my floor.  After that I hurried out of the lab and shut the door behind me.

By the way, PG might have a little ret conning on the details of the prison.  Either Harry dug up the coin and amped up the prison (unlikely) or Jim reworked the details of the prison after the fact.

A ring of plain silver was set into the floor - my summoning circle.  Underneath it lay a foot and a half or so of concrete, and then another heavy metal box, wrapped with its own little circle of wards and spells.  Inside the box was a blackened silver coin.

[Serack]

By the way, some of these concepts were only vaguely worked out in my mind before this discussion, so I am enjoying the opportunity to sharpen them through discussion, and the opportunity to wave around my DF nerd flag so vigerously.

[Ms Duck]

The singing i refered too was the rolling stones. I think she was taking time to move in, was concerned about the possibility of getting evicted by a greater power (such as mab) and decided to lay low and be subtle. Lash had to be aware that mab was chasing him at this point.

[Serack]

The singing i refered too was the rolling stones.

I understood that you were referring to this.  I still say Lasciel was not singing, Harry was.

He was taking Lasciel's nearly inaudible wispers and giving them off key theme music in an extreemly deliberate attempt to denigh any other message.

Actually, at the end, it looks almost as though Harry backed off of the theme music enough to actually hear the words of the wispering before finally cutting them off completely with the circle.

As too:

I think she was taking time to move in, was concerned about the possibility of getting evicted by a greater power (such as mab) and decided to lay low and be subtle. Lash had to be aware that mab was chasing him at this point.

The true hurdle she had to overcome was not external to Harry.  It was Harry's own stuborness.  The singing is no evidence otherwise since it wasn't Lasciel/Lasciel's shadow doing it.  Rather the fact that the wispering was a constant preasure that required the singing to drown it out until the spell cut it off is evidence that the spell was an effective way of exercising this stuborness in a way that severly limited Lasciel's influence over him.

[wyltok]

Firstly, Id! Harry (is the ! necessary? I saw you using it I think) said that he had been communicating with the shadow for a few months.

Using and abusing memes amuses me. This one in particular comes from fanfiction websites.

So in attempting to directly answer your questions, the best I can do is that the Shadow was constrained from offering true corrupting power to Harry but "cheated" by building rapport with his concious mind as Shela before he conciously accepted power (Hellfire) from her.  The pushing the envelope was only available to her because of his subconciously accepting the power (and his subconcious communicating with her in the time since), and she chose to pull that card dispite the consequences of "crossing the line" because she saw that he was undergoing some stressful situations that were likely to cause him to embrace the Hellfire she managed to offer his subconcious, and would thus give her lots of opportunities to offer him tantalizing power through the course of the events of DB. 
[...]
The thing is, the story goes through a lot of trouble to describe how there were lines and limits on what the shadow could do (Ref, the 2 dream sceens, 1 with Malcome, the other with the shadow and hot tub.  Interesting the symbolism in that in the Malcolm dream Harry was cold and uncomfortable, and Malcolm allowed him to mix his own Coffee to warm up... compared to Harry waking up in a luxurious hot tub he had never experienced before.)  Your Occam's Razor argument is not strong enough for me to just throw away all that world building effort.

I agree with you, by definition, Occam's Razor is never a strong argument. It's more of a gut check than anything, namely "Am I adding this complexity because it makes sense with the evidence available, or am I adding this complexity because it appeals to me in some way?"

Basically, I believe there's two questions; we agree on one, but disagree on the other:
1. Why did Lasciel's Shadow wait from the actions of Blood Rites (or whenever Id!Harry started talking to her, makes no difference) until the actions of Dead Beat before "cheating"?
- My answer: she was waiting for the time where cheating would give her the most advantage.
- Your answer: she was waiting for the time where cheating would give her the most advantage (or as you put it, "[...]she chose to pull that card dispite the consequences of "crossing the line" because she saw that he was undergoing some stressful situations[...]").

2. Why did Lasciel's Shadow not "cheat" from the moment Harry empowered the circle until the actions of Blood Rites (or whenever Id!Harry started talking to her, makes no difference)?
- My answer: she was waiting for the time where cheating would give her the most advantage.
- Your answer: empowering the circle somehow makes cheating impossible for her until Harry's actions in Blood Rites.

You gotta admit, it's a little out of left field. To use a word I used previously, it seems inconsistent (I know, there's no reason to believe Lasciel's Shadow would follow fair rules, but there you go).

To me, those two statements are completely contradictory...  My conceptualization of DV magic is the altering of reality with your will.  So in those terms Harry's empowering the circle was a willful alteration of Lasciel's ability to influence him.  Thus it was a sucessful magical spell, not an empty gesture that did absolutely nothing.

I have Doylist issues with this assertion, rather than Watsonian ones. You make it sound like the only reason Harry managed to cut the Shadow off from his conscious mind was because he'd been trained in the art of focusing his will to alter reality (A.K.A. magic). I want the aesop to be "Harry resisted Lasciel's Shadow because he's a good man"; I don't want the fantastic aesop to be "Harry resisted Lasciel's Shadow because he can do magic". I believe this is what Ms. Duck means by saying we are underestimating Harry.

(From a Watsonian perspective, we know one can renounce a coin without magic, since Sanya did it. So, I guess I have Watsonian issues with it, too.)

The true hurdle she had to overcome was not external to Harry.  It was Harry's own stuborness.  The singing is no evidence otherwise since it wasn't Lasciel/Lasciel's shadow doing it.  Rather the fact that the wispering was a constant preasure that required the singing to drown it out until the spell cut it off is evidence that the spell was an effective way of exercising this stuborness in a way that severly limited Lasciel's influence over him.

The difference between what you say and what Ms. Duck is saying is that you believe that Harry's stubbornness somehow makes some of Lasciel's Shadow's options no longer available by reason of being impossible, while she (and I) believe his stubbornnes makes some of her options no longer available by reason of being dumb/counterproductive instead.

(Apologies to Ms. Duck if I misunderstood her.)