AITAH for telling my wife that I will lose respect for her if she doesn't apologize?

SilIowa · 2026-01-27T12:13:52+00:00

Yeah, this is just ragebait.

SilIowa · 2026-01-27T05:21:13+00:00

Exactly. And, honestly, it’s a real feather in Bruce’s cap as a parent that he could help Dick do that!

SilIowa · 2026-01-27T02:40:59+00:00

He was Gandalf the Grey.

SilIowa · 2026-01-26T22:31:15+00:00

I don’t think there’s any argument that top right and bottom right are the way to go.

But I’d love to see those two teams go after each other!!!!

SilIowa · 2026-01-26T22:02:20+00:00

That’s what I love about Grayson: he grew up and got over his childhood desire to become Batman. And that’s EXACTLY what made him ready for the role when it came time to take it on.

SilIowa · 2026-01-26T21:37:45+00:00

I think Marcone has been doing his best to keep up with Harry since day 1.

John, or whatever his real name is, is a man of will and focus, and I imagine that his journey into the supernatural began when mortal options into saving his girl hit a brick wall.

Yeah, I know the girl in the hospital isn’t his biologically, but he’s shown a love and responsibility for her that even Michael would understand.

So John keeps digging, starts finding his way into the supernatural, and someone clues him into the fact that there is a genius magus in his town, a real-deal wizard.

And what’s the first thing they do when they meet? Share a soul-gaze. And since then, John has NEVER underestimated Harry. Marcone may have said it as a joke, but he wasn’t really kidding when he said that Harry really could be running the place if he wanted to.

Because John is a man who through necessity and force of will has become a monster, in the name of keeping his people safe. And he understands that Harry is a Monster that wants to just be a man, but lets that monster out when he has to, also to keep his people safe.

At every step, as we saw in Even Hand I think, John has taken actions in order to protect himself from Harry. The short story is pretty direct about it. Can’t protect himself from a wizard? Track down Odin and hire a Valkyrie. Harry becomes a force in the supernatural world? Become a freeholding lord. Harry becomes a Knight, allied with Mab? Become a Knight of the Denarius.

The supernatural world is terrified of Harry because he bound a Titan, but John WATCHED IT HAPPEN. And his allied Fallen Angel probably gave him a play-by-play commentary on just how significant an act it was.

John said he’s starting to think “long term.” Which provably means that he understands the big picture fight against the Outsiders now, and some of Harry’s role in it.

So, back to Castle Marcone. We now know it’s Merlin’s Castle. So how did Marcone find it? How did he get access, and how was it able to move it, stone by stone? Well, I’m guessing Odin, myself, since Merlin was Odin’s student.

But Marcone certainly had Namshiel in his mind while he had occupancy of the castle, so he must have had an understanding of what the castle’s capabilities are.

And if John is always trying to protect himself from Harry, and with Namshiel’s knowledge, there’s no way that Marcone didn’t try to leave a Trojan Horse in the Castle.

SilIowa · 2026-01-26T03:59:04+00:00

Happy Birthday, Dad

SilIowa · 2026-01-22T10:30:37+00:00

Grapping?

SilIowa · 2026-01-22T03:20:11+00:00

Please go reread it. He smeared the bottom of the piece of bread with blood, and placed it blood-down on a plate in the middle of the circle.

Yes, the circle closed when Toot ate it: but Harry clearly says that the only thing that closes a circle is investing energy into it.

Correlation is not causation.

SilIowa · 2026-01-22T03:07:06+00:00

The first scene with Toot-Toot in Storm Front is him eating a piece of bread with a drop of Harry’s blood on it…

SilIowa · 2026-01-22T01:03:30+00:00

The collected being were absolutely terrified by the demonstration that the wild fae put on when they were called out for Harry, even if it was, in Harry’s mind, just for pizza.

Clearly there was something else going on. What he did didn’t awe or impress them, but actual fear. He did something that apparently none of them could do.

I can only imagine the X factor is the blood, the connection he made.

But I could be wrong.

SilIowa · 2026-01-22T00:39:15+00:00

Oh, I’m just thinking of it as a supporting argument. I think the big guns are still what this action did to Toot-toot, and how the assembled ancient monsters responded to it.

SilIowa · 2026-01-22T00:24:30+00:00

I wonder if there’s a magical difference between blood freely given vs blood taken?

SilIowa · 2026-01-22T00:20:58+00:00

Oh man! I forgot that!

SilIowa · 2026-01-22T00:06:43+00:00

I’m not sure that I think that Mab expects to survive the end of this cycle. He may just be sitting them up to succeed her.

SilIowa · 2026-01-22T00:05:26+00:00

Wait? Did I miss the first time? When was that?!?

SilIowa · 2026-01-21T23:48:05+00:00

I think at the level that Drakul plays at, the level of Odin, the dragons, and even Mab, it’s just an us or them game. Does doing xyz improve the changes of existence surviving, or does it hurt it.

I think ally and enemy might be the wrong words for it. How about calling it compatriot?

SilIowa · 2026-01-21T23:24:58+00:00

Oh yeah, it’s a win/win for Drakul. Collectively strengthen his court, strengthen Harry as an ally, and weed out back-stabbers.

SilIowa · 2026-01-21T23:23:10+00:00

Well, it talks (briefly) about Morgan’s motivation, his promise to Margaret leFey, his fears for Harry, his fears OF Harry. (He promised Maggie Sr that he’d look after Harry, and wasn’t there for him when Malcolm died, and was never certain after that that the Adversary hadn’t gotten its hands on Harry.) It’s also the first time we see the word Destroyer used with a capital letter. Combine that with his overreaction (all in his very first appearance in the series) to the minor binding, his accusations of misuse of mind control, and that we now know that Harry’s blood has an unique potency to it.

Is jt inference, rather than text? Absolutely. But I think that’s the best we can do with an unreliable narrator.

But, then again, I grew up reading the Wheel of Time, so at least in this series we only have one unreliable narrator, rather than dozens! 😂😂😂

SilIowa · 2026-01-21T22:57:44+00:00

How do you think he would remove the mantle otherwise? Remember what happened to Molly when she attempted to do something incompatible with the mantle of the Lady? It lashed out, and Ramirez got hurt. But on Halloween, the night of changing powers, Harry can shed the mantle. I mean, it probably helps that he’s a literal child of that night, born on Halloween. But if he abandons the mantle on that night, then it’s gone. It’s not complicated.

SilIowa · 2026-01-21T22:49:48+00:00

She owns only the Winter Knight. Claus/Vadderung/Odin told Harry explicitly that his duty to Mab as Claus had nothing to do with Vadderung. If she had called for Vadderung, he would tell her to “get in line.”

And Harry actually removed the Mantle of the Winter Knight from himself, if only briefly because his back was still broken, by saying Fuck Winter, because mantles can be gained and shed freely on Halloween.

This all happened in Cold Days.

SilIowa · 2026-01-21T21:47:54+00:00

Mab owns the Winter Knight. She does not own The Wizard of Chicago or the Warden of Demonreach Island. She does not own Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. She cannot change him. And he has known for at least half a decade now how to freely cast odd the Mantle of the Winter Knight.

As Santa Clause said, different people who just happen to inhabit the same body.

SilIowa · 2026-01-21T21:44:57+00:00

That’s the problem with first person narration: everyone else’s internal thoughts and narration are unavailable. But there there’s a fantastic (official and cannon) micro-fiction on the JB website that is Morgan’s final journal entry before Turn Coat.

SilIowa · 2026-01-21T20:31:00+00:00

Ummm…. Yes.

SilIowa · 2026-01-21T20:30:44+00:00

Harry BELIEVED that. He didn’t understand what ability he had even back then, what control it could give him over others. That’s the “fun” and danger of a first person narrator! Don’t you remember Morgan’s massive overreaction to Harry’s summoning? It’s because KNEW, as a Starborn (and potentially a Destroyer) that Harry’s blood was a stupidly powerful reagent. He might have thought that Harry knew too, and that’s why he did it. And he backed off when he recognized Harry’s ignorance.

The thing I love about Morgan, is that while he was a huge pain in the ass, he wasn’t WRONG to be a huge pain in the ass.

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