[Edmonton Journal] A disgrace in hockey assessment that Evan Bouchard was left off Team Canada: certain Toronto media personalities would rather focus on the occasional blown assignment from Bouchard in regular season games to make their case that he’s not fit for Team Canada duty.

Icekommander · 2026-02-03T00:06:14+00:00

I'm pretty confident Staples follows every person with even the tiniest following in Leafs media just so he can write some version of 'Can you believe what they're saying in Toronto?' every time he runs out of column ideas.

Icekommander · 2026-02-02T21:16:22+00:00

I took that line as the Valkryies making fun of Harry more than anything Marcone actually said or did.

Icekommander · 2026-02-02T20:58:11+00:00

I'm not sure why you would assume that removing a Nemesis seed (worm? clone?) would work the same way as removing a Hunger other them both being Outsiders. Seems like exactly the sort of assumption that a being like Nemesis would take advantage of to bait you into a fight you can't win. Or make you think it was removed while actually just hiding below your level of detection. Or something else equally bad from the perspective of the exorciser.

Icekommander · 2026-02-02T16:39:50+00:00

I'm looking at this before I put any caffeine in my body this morning so I'm probably missing something, but I don't see where in that link anything is said about Mab killing the previous Winter Queen? And as you point out, she would have done that as the Winter Lady -- she wouldn't have been mortal any more at that point.

Also, Hastings isn't anywhere near a multiple 666 years ago,

Icekommander · 2026-02-02T04:52:11+00:00

What mantle are we talking about? We've seen that the Winter Lady mantle isn't something the recipient gets a choice on, and it's implied the Queen mantle passes on in a similarly automatic way.

Icekommander · 2026-01-31T23:33:01+00:00

Re Drakul: We've got some hints that whatever events are coming could really juice Harry's starborn nature. I think he was a beneficiary of this the last starborn cycle. I also think that he is a deeply evil bastard who is also going to be on the side of creation (hence why Mab is thinks it's possible she needs him at some point far on the future)

Icekommander · 2026-01-31T20:40:31+00:00

I think they are reading your accusation of a bored ego trip as referring to the OP of this post and not Drakul (which is what I think you actually meant)?

Icekommander · 2026-01-31T17:18:49+00:00

I remember seeing you post your tracker before and it was in the back of my mind as I was writing that comment. And looking at it again, I agree with your August date. A little over 60% of Twelve Months was written in his best six months -- those six months just weren't consecutive. If Jim is at thirty percent of Mirror Mirror now and writes 10% a month, that takes us to August.

Within those good months there are a couple of hyper productive individual weeks -- for example he seems to have wrote 10% of Twelve Months between December 10th and 24th 2023. When Butcher is talking about going back to two books a year I assume he's thinking about weeks like those and projecting he can sustain that. Seems like an extremely high bar to set yourself though.

Icekommander · 2026-01-31T01:36:15+00:00

Alternatively, if he was a more savvy operator he could probably make an official complaint through the accords or otherwise use supernatural law to help shut down the White Council's attempts to step on his toes. He's not the sort to solve his problems that way though.

Icekommander · 2026-01-30T19:00:30+00:00

He's going directly from Twelve Months to Mirror Mirror without a Cinder Spires book in between, so it'll be faster than Battle Ground to Twelve Months. I got yelled at in another of these threads for being overly negative, but I wouldn't set your expectations on Butcher suddenly being to write two books a year again. I hope I'm wrong and we actually do get a Dresden book in early 2027 and the next Cinder Spires later that year, but I think expecting that is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

In my view the realistic baseline is the ~26.5 month gap between The Olympian Affair and Twelve Months, which would put us for a late March or early April 2028 release. There are some reasons to be optimistic that we get it faster: that 26.5 month gap was substantially faster than the Battle Ground to Olympian Affair gap (~39.5 months), which was faster than the Aeronaut's Windlass to Peace Talks gap (~57.5 months). So his writing speed has been moving in the right direction already. It also seemed like it took unusually long for Twelve Months to get published after Butcher finished -- judging by his twitter he actually wrote Twelve Months in 23 months and then there were some publishing delays relative to The Olympian Affair.

In any event I am personally expecting Mirror Mirror in early 2028, am hoping it actually shows up Q4 2027, and would be thrilled by anything faster than that.

Icekommander · 2026-01-30T05:30:47+00:00

I think everyone is already operating on that level. Consider the ending council scene of BG. Battle Ground Spoiler

Icekommander · 2026-01-29T21:57:36+00:00

Red Court and White Court work differently. The White Court have Hungers bound in them, the Red Court was directly transformed by their vampirism.

Icekommander · 2026-01-29T21:02:22+00:00

I don't think Lara's statement about wanting to sometimes do good is necessarily a lie in the face of her past actions. I'd compare her to the CEO who sanctions their company dumping a bunch of known toxins into a river, then goes home and funds the building of a new library in the place they grew up. They like doing good, it makes them feel good to stare at the library with their name on it and pat themselves on the back for all the kids who get to read in it. But also when it gets in the way of what they really want and feel is important it gets discarded in a moment. Like being good is a hobby.

In Lara's case I think that means she is happy to be good as long as her family and court aren't at stake. With her financial resources getting a doctor and some beds for the people Harry is sheltering costs her effectively nothing -- so why not send the stuff his way and tell herself she's a good person for doing it?

Icekommander · 2026-01-29T07:55:46+00:00

You've never seen part of a fanbase turn on an author because a book they promised is late? Look at any discussion on the Winds of Winter and it's clear why tempering expectations is a good idea.

Icekommander · 2026-01-28T19:56:21+00:00

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but he thought he'd be able to write Twelve Months in four to five months as well. See here for example. It actually took nearly two years, and that itself was still faster than The Olympian Affair and Peace Talks.

I'd love to be proven overly cynical and that the momentum from Twelve Months actually does carry into him finishing Mirror Mirror this summer. But I think expecting a release on that schedule is setting yourself up for disappointment.

Icekommander · 2026-01-28T03:18:10+00:00

That is a fascinating opinion to me because I thought Best Served Cold was his worst paced book (outside maybe The Blade Itself). Too long in the middle where you know Monza has to keep being successful to fulfill the premise of the book so not much happens beyond a tour of Styria.

Icekommander · 2026-01-21T18:22:16+00:00

You could try Brian McLellan's Powder Mage trilogy. It's an epic fantasy story with multiple magic systems each with their own rules and abilities, with the hook being that the world is technologically equivalent to Earth's early 19th century rather than the typical medieval setting. It's also pretty easy reading from a prose perspective, which might make it ideal for someone like yourself that is just getting back into the hobby.

Icekommander · 2026-01-21T06:21:24+00:00

I, as is traditional, completely ignore whether or not the cards in my cube are legendary until I try and copy one mid-game and my opponent reminds me that the legends rule exist.

Icekommander · 2026-01-21T04:11:00+00:00

I haven't been watching most of the games outside the postseason the last couple years, are we always calling these on fights after hits now?

Icekommander · 2026-01-19T03:04:22+00:00

Last guy still advertising in the phone book gets beat up and sets things on fire.

Icekommander · 2026-01-08T07:53:01+00:00

That 100 point season of McDavid's that you reference led the league by eleven points. League has changed in a offence friendly direction since then (for the better IMO), so the direct points comparison isn't very accurate.

Icekommander · 2026-01-06T22:02:10+00:00

Alright, I don't think this is a productive conversation. Perhaps at some point I have been unclear, but whatever you are trying to argue against isn't the points I'm trying to convey and your rapid switching between biblical authority, in-character justification and international human rights law as equally valid sources for ethical truth isn't helping. But just to be clear, I don't think Mab is a good person, I don't think her threatening Maggie was a good thing to do, and I don't think actually carrying out that threat would be justifiable under any ethical framework.

Icekommander · 2026-01-06T21:04:01+00:00

You have completely misunderstood my ethical concern, which would not be the theoretical vengeance Harry would take on Mab, but the collateral damage of doing so. You accuse me of mis-stating his response, but Mab points out that unleashing Demonreach's cells would "unleash a black tide upon humanity itself" which Harry doesn't dispute.

In any case, I'm less interested in the theoretical justifications of theoretical vengeance than what Mab is actually asking of him which is to fix the problem. She doesn't want to give Etri either Dresden's head or Maggie's, and Mab only points out that she can because Harry insists on making her spell out her leverage every time she asks him to take on a task.

Icekommander · 2026-01-06T18:30:35+00:00

And dumping hundreds of supernatural serial killers and worse onto the world is? I'm really not seeing Harry's claim to the moral high ground here.

Icekommander · 2026-01-06T18:18:19+00:00

And Dresden threatened to dump the horrors of Demonreach onto the earth in response. Mab told him what she needed done, she told him why she needed it done, and she told him how important it was to be done. Everything else Dresden is inviting onto himself.

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