Was Eb a lot more like Harry in the past?

[groinkick]

Eb has deep seated hatred for some things in the Dresdenverse.  The White Court, and Kincaid.  Also at one time his daughter believed he would help her, and the vamps with their plans...  I'm wondering if Eb was a little more like Dresden in the past.  That he actually had friendships with shady characters. 

Betrayal is something that is difficult to forgive, and I suspect that either one major event, or a series of smaller ones led to Eb becoming what I can only describe as bigoted towards things that aren't human... 

Maybe Eb is right, and Dresden is just naive about the world.  Maybe there isn't a single non human that should be trusted. 

[Mira]

 While Eb could very well have had friendships with shady characters, I doubt he was ever like Harry.. Though they are very alike in one aspect, stubborn as mules when they think they are right.

[vincentric]

Eb is respectful of most things that are non-human. He even brought some who he'd earned a favor from to Chichen Itza. His hatred seems to be focused on the vampires because of Maggie and some other things hinted at in his talks with Harry in PT and BG. I doubt we'll ever get the full story but perhaps TM will spend more time on filling in backstory as part of Harry's healing.

[Mira]

Eb is respectful of most things that are non-human. He even brought some who he'd earned a favor from to Chichen Itza. His hatred seems to be focused on the vampires because of Maggie and some other things hinted at in his talks with Harry in PT and BG. I doubt we'll ever get the full story but perhaps TM will spend more time on filling in backstory as part of Harry's healing.

My point on vampires, the stubbornness that Harry and Eb share as a character trait, it is both a weakness and a strength.

[Bad Alias]

Betrayal is something that is difficult to forgive, and I suspect that either one major event, or a series of smaller ones led to Eb becoming what I can only describe as bigoted towards things that aren't human.

Eb seems bigoted towards some inhuman things, but he seems respectful of the danger posed other inhuman things as well. And bigoted/racist/etc. aren't really the best words when talking about fictional species. They are in fact different. All these supernatural species are dangerous. Sure, some are underestimated, but that danger is ignored at the rist of great cost. See Dead Faerie Queen and the Little Folk.

[ZhonLord]

Maybe Eb is right, and Dresden is just naive about the world.  Maybe there isn't a single non human that should be trusted.

I'm gonna be that guy....  Toot-Toot.  Also Elder Gruff, River Shoulders, Vadderung/Kringle, many would argue the Angels are trustworthy....


Back to the topic at hand though... I'd say it's entirely possible.  It's a pretty common thing in storytelling where the people who are the best, strongest, and most experienced, are either the ones who played it the safest (the Merlin) or the ones who dove headfirst into the dark, crazy and scary, and survived it long enough to become a very potent individual (Dresden).  And considering that Ebenezar is the Blackstaff, I'm inclined to say he went through the latter path to achieve his strength and skill.  So he may well have started as a similar person to Harry and just be further down that path.

[heidi_storage]

Many would argue the Angels are trustworthy....

Not me. Uriel is tricksy.

[TheCuriousFan]

Not me. Uriel is tricksy.

Especially after his manipulations in Changes/Ghost Story.

[Con]

WOJ's on Eb's youth is that if anything he was even more reckless then Dresden. Dresden chooses his fights. WOJ is the difference is Dresden would like ot just sit at home read a book after a long day. Eb's the guy that clocks of work and goes looking for a fight.

WOJ:

Yeah in my head, history is especially intertwined within the Dresden Files supernatural world. There's lots of other people who have done other things. There were knights of the sword fighting the American revolution. There's all kinds of stuff, oh my god the Seven Years War is such a mess Dresden Files style because that's the Merlin and Ebenezar were young hotheads that were out kicking butt and they did it in very different ways and on different sides of the war. Which neither one of them was supposed to be doing because the White Council's got this whole thing about "wizards do not do politics because we watched what happened to Camelot and it was awful". But I don't know if I'm ever going to get to write those or not, it'd be fun. I'd love to write the story of hunting down Kemmler, that would be cool. Cause it would be like sixty years long, it starts like, a little bit after the end of the Civil War and goes all the way through to World War One where he was out there operating but anyway. That's for future stuff, paying off my gambling debts and so on.

WOJ2:

For the Dresden Files, this whole America fusion thing, in a historical sense it just started this past-we're only on like our second season. We kind of had that cool first season and now we're kind of wandering around I think, in the second season. But a lot of the people who were alive and especially the people who were doing magic, they were there when America was getting started. Listens To Wind, you know, he got to see the entire decline of the way of life of the native Americans, he had to live through that. People like Ebenezar and the Merlin, they were involved in the French and Indian war, so this whole America thing is new to them, it might not last, a couple hundred years, whatever. It's one of those cultural differences we have, one of my favourite sayings is "in America a hundred years is a long time, in Europe a hundred miles is a long drive". We've got a very very different experience culturally and historically than a lot of the folks overseas.

That being said, you get a different sort of point of view of magic based on who you are. Listens to Wind has a very native American, a very shamanistic approach to magic, his magic is very much based in the natural world. The guys who are the White Council old school, who are from the old world, they've got an elemental tradition of magic that comes up from the Roman empire and developed in the Middle Ages, they're the inheritors of that school of thought. You get to somebody like Harry Dresden... Harry's got this very, I think for him I kind of think of him as more of a colonial craftsmen of magic. He's somebody more like a silversmith... he's putting together what's going to work-not a silversmith that's too highbrow, he's a blacksmith, he's a plumber of magic. He's working with magic, with these forces and he's gotta put them together to get the job done and he doesn't really have an ego about it, as long as it gets the job done it doesn't have to make him look good, it doesn't have to support the dignity of wizardry. He's got goals, he's trying to get things done. Someone who is brought up in one of the older schools will have teachers who say "but you've also gotta stop and think about all these other things", Harry had a teacher who was more like "you know what, let's teach you how to not be a psychotic killing machine first and after that we'll worry about the niceties" so there's all these niceties that he never got and Harry never went to finishing school like all these other wizards who will do stuff with style. Even younger wizards who are more his age like Chandler, who was brought up in a very British tradition and Chandler's the kind of guy who would say "but a gentleman wouldn't", that's his point of view. For Dresden, he has a much more American point of view and I think we're looking at different philosophies just based on the history they're brought up with. And poor Harry has my history so he has issues with bullies, so stuff like that.

I can't find the fight at the end of the day quote but it's out there somewhere.

@TheCuriousFan. You'd probably know where to find it better than me, but also Serack if you're still around.

[TheCuriousFan]

Yeah I typed that one up.

Hello, well as an older woman I am interested in McCoy, Blackstaff McCoy. Just kind of sexy and *audience drowned her out* I don't know twenty years ago I was doing *audience drowned her out again*. So is there a way that you might write something about the old dude?

It's possible. Though if I wrote McCoy I would go back to where he was wrecking stuff and getting in trouble all the time and then write that guy, he was way worse than Dresden. *audience drowned her out yet again* Yeah I mean Dresden's the kind of guy who, yeah he gets into trouble and stuff but what he /really/ wants to do is be at home reading on the couch with his dog, that's really the kind of way he wants to spend his life. McCoy was the kind of guy who would just kind of look around after work one day and say "you wanna go get in a fight?" and then they would go do that, so it was much different.

[Con]

Aaah cool I was using Ebenezar in the search find bar not McCoy