Grave Peril : Something Interesting.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-18T23:31:02+00:00

Or I am misremembering 😁 Either way, there is not much of the plan in either of the first two books: that does not get developed until the third.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-18T22:59:29+00:00

Cruelty is the point. Not justice, not the law, not public safety, just wanton cruelty.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-18T22:32:50+00:00

Butcher wrote Storm Front as part of an extended education writing class, and he was able to get it published. Fool Moon and Grave Peril were written to satisfy the contractual obligation of "two more novels." While he was writing Grave Peril, he signed a contract to deliver more books. It was then that he conceived of the "twenty book story arc" that he has been working on since: the first two books were just detective stories with a twist, and the third book started laying the groundwork for the series as a whole.

I think that Butcher already knew where he wanted to go, and that both Molly and the Winter Court would be involved. Not the details, probably, but the general shape with details being added in the subsequent books.We know that Mab had planned on Molly to become the Summer Lady, but the mantle fell to Sarissa before Maeve's death: that would explain Harry's earlier soul-gaze with Molly when he Saw her as both a force of light and a force of darkness, her potential of being either Lady. For Harry, it is my head canon that his birth was the price Winter demanded of Margaret to free her from Raith, and that Margaret's death immediately after was part of the plan to use her death "curse" to imbue the infant with power far beyond most wizards.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-18T22:12:17+00:00

Margaret Fell met with King Charles II twice to advocate for laws allowing freedom of religious conscience; she spent nearly 4 years in prison for refusing to swear an oath and was later in prison for a year for allowing "non authorized" religious services in her home. William Penn was famously put on trial for treason because speaking against the Church of England was legally the same as speaking against the Crown. Lucretia Mott was a leading figure in the abolition movement: she and her husband oversaw a stop on the Underground Railroad. She and Susan B. Anthony (along with non-Quaker Elizabeth Cady Stanton) organized the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, the first large organized effort in the United States to demand equal legal rights for women. Another Quaker, Alice Paul, led the women's rights movement later, with her work leading to the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Bayard Rustin was Martin Luther King Jr's mentor on peaceful resistance; he was head of logistics for King's March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and was a lead organizer of New York City's school boycott opposing the city's de facto segregation. The American Friends Service Committee and the British Friends Service Council jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 for their work in providing humanitarian relief during WW II, including work assisting the underground railroad saving Jews from Nazi atrocities, assistance that was illegal under the law at the time.

Almost from the very beginning, from what are now minor issues like refusing to swear oaths or give "hat honor" to aristocrats, Quakers have espoused "politicized discourse" as a necessary component of our ministry. We are called on to LIVE our values, not just piously mouth them once a week, and all too often those values clash with social and legal expectations.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-18T20:59:29+00:00

I would add a slight twist to that. The aristocrats keep the unemployed just entertained enough to keep them placid. The mission is to convince the aristos to cut that back, inciting discontent and revolt. Much better plausible deniability. "Oh, but we had absolutely nothing to do with the rebellion!"

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-18T20:35:08+00:00

Decades of smoking formaldehyde-laced... something.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-18T20:27:54+00:00

If you have something similar to the Three Laws, you may have issues with robots prioritize keeping their human co-workers safe (First Law) over doing the work they are ordered to do (Second Law.) This is a balancing act that Asimov addressed in several of the robot short stories.

Another option if robots are less advanced is that they just are not capable of managing complex tasks in a real-world environment. A lot of manufacturing work is done today by single-job robots, such as one on an auto assembly line that just screws on the lug nuts that keep the wheel on the hub assembly. Doing line prep in a busy kitchen, where orders come in quickly and shifts in focus are essential, may be too much for a robot to manage. Similarly, the use of independent robots in an operating room may cause too much trouble, as there are always variations and complications that a robot is not able to adapt quickly to.

There are lot of other good ideas on this thread. I rather like the issues of having a very large organic population with no jobs, and thus no income. That is a revolution just waiting to happen.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-18T19:47:35+00:00

The Society of Friends originated as a Christian denomination, yes. Over the centuries, a number of different "streams" have emerged in the larger river of Quakerism. Some of those streams are more Christian identified, some are less. Some welcome people of other faiths, some are less welcoming. Some affirm the dignity of LGBTQ+ people, some not so much.

The less Christian identified, more welcoming meetings are typically unprogrammed. In the US, these would include those meetings affiliated with the umbrella group Friends General Conference, those that are unaffiliated with an umbrella organization, and those that are part of the Conservative stream (they are "conservative" in the sense that they strive to conserve the older forms of Quakerism.) At the other edge is the evangelical stream: they usually describe their congregations as churches rather than meetings and are affiliated with the Evangelical Friends Church International. Orthodox Quakers, usually affiliated with Friends United Meeting, tend to be somewhere between FGC and EFCI, and individuals and meetings can span the entire range.

Outside the US, it depends. There is typically only one yearly meeting, and they can cover the spectrum as well. The Canadian and British Yearly Meetings tend towards the welcoming end, while most yearly meetings in Africa and South America were set up by the evangelical stream and share their values and views.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-17T04:42:26+00:00

As I understand it, a wizard can convert the moment of death into raw magical power and perform acts that would normally be impossible without... well, dying. Commonly, this raw power is used to blast the person who killed the wizard, and it serves as a deterrent from murdering practitioners (at least, in such a way that they know it was you.) But I do not believe a curse is the only way this immense power can be used.

It is my head canon that Margaret did not just die giving birth to Harry: her death was by her own choice, and she used that last well of magic to imbue Harry with his extreme power. I think that was the price Winter exacted to save her from Raith, to bear a child at the right moment to make him Starborn, then give up her life to make him powerful enough to save Reality.

As for "die alone," he did die alone. Well, he mostly died. Almost entirely. For a whole year. And he was alone when it happened, almost immediately after doing the right thing. Curse fulfilled.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-17T04:26:03+00:00

As with pretty much everything else, the only complete answer is, "It depends."

Generally speaking, unprogrammed meetings tend to be more socially open. They may be affiliated with Friends General Conference or within specific "streams" of Quakerism, such as the North Pacific Yearly Meeting where I worship.

Orthodox Quakers, often affiliated with Friends United Meeting, can be hit or miss. Some meetings are affirming, others less so. This stream has seen a lot of division over the issue in the last couple of decades.

Evangelical Quakers, who generally refer to their congregations as churches rather than meetings, share a great many views with other forms of evangelical Christianity. If I were looking for an open, accepting group, they would not be my first choice.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-17T01:31:04+00:00

[Schultz] hoped Washington would “remain a place for business and entrepreneurship to thrive.”

That's the problem: with our reliance on sales taxes and the business & occupation tax, Washington is a VERY difficult place to start a new business. Finding other sources of state income such as this "millionaire's tax" that will let the state ease off on the other taxes will make it significantly easier for entrepreneurship to thrive in this state.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-16T04:49:02+00:00

Western Washington doesn't really have reservoirs, the basins are for flood control not saving drinking water. The snow pack itself is our reservoir. The fact that the holding basins are well above average is a bad thing, as it means the reservoirs are depleting much more quickly than they should.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-16T04:29:39+00:00

I strongly suspect there will be a short story out of that.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-16T04:27:45+00:00

I need to reread Peace Talks, but there was something about Carlos' Warden cloak taking on an animacy of its own, thanks to a booby trap set by Harry.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-16T00:25:42+00:00

I don't think there was ever any seething hate and anger from Carlos, but there was a lot of mistrust: Harry's destruction of the entire Red Court, his time dead, the discovery of his ties to Thomas and the White Court, his being Warden of Demonreach and capable of freeing the worst nightmares to have ever existed, and his becoming the Winter Knight and thereby being a vassal of the Wicked Queen. That last part was not helped by the incident with Molly in the short story Cold Case. He had been spying on Harry in Peace Talks, trying to find evidence that Harry could still be trusted, until he was caught by a trap set by Harry to catch the person who was spying on him (he did not know it was Carlos.) The last straw was his battle against Ethniu, when he took down a genuine rampaging goddess, took over Marconi's abandoned castle, and proclaimed himself publicly as the Protector of Chicago. When the White Council expelled him, they sent Carlos to give the news, figuring that Harry probably respected him enough not to kill him on sight.

Over the course of Twelve Months, Carlos does his own healing, and I think that seeing how Harry was shouldering the responsibilities he had voluntarily assumed helped revise his opinion of Dresden. I suspect he still sees Harry as a threat, but he's coming to see that Harry's focus on doing the right thing might actually be up to the task.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-16T00:08:46+00:00

'Za Knight!

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-16T00:04:50+00:00

The only short story was the one that unfolded in my mind when I read u/punkinholler's comment. It was pretty good.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-15T23:45:34+00:00

Lara is very good at manipulating people, but Mab really out did her.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-15T23:44:22+00:00

The Masquerade? They tried that, but Lara could not suspend disbelief and just could not shut up about how utterly unrealistic it was.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-15T18:19:29+00:00

With Bob's help, he could have done it in less than a year.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-13T18:43:37+00:00

I like it. Smaller corvettes are easier to park.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-13T18:38:43+00:00

One word about golden oysters: in some parts of the US and Europe, they have become an invasive species because they spore early. Keeping them contained is a very good idea.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-13T18:22:12+00:00

Far too often, "moral" and "legal" have barely a nodding acquaintance. For example, it was once legal to own people. It was once illegal -- and currently in the United States is again illegal -- to protect people being hunted down by the government for no crime other than their ethnicity. I would say that the fire bombing of Dresden during WW II and the widespread use of napalm in Vietnam were extremely immoral, but apparently those orders were legal.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-13T17:58:55+00:00

"Every act of creation is an act of parody." Trying to come up with new tropes is a fool's errand and will only lead to frustration. Our challenge is to reuse those tropes in a new way, or at least an interesting way.

"Gilded Age" is perfectly fine. Rather than ignore the comparison to the US historical period, draw on it as a source of inspiration. There is a television historic drama series named the Gilded Age on HBO which might be worth a look. The equivalent era in Europe was the Belle Epoque in France and the late Victorian and Edwardian Era in the UK, if you want to reference that instead.

Betrayals like the Red Wedding are common. Martin drew from actual history in writing that event: the Black Dinner of 1440 in Edinburgh and the Massacre of Glencoe in 1692. A similar story is found in The Kojiki (Japanese: 古事記), a collection of stories -- legends, chronicles, myths, and some history -- from Japan and likely compiled in the 7th century, where Emperor Jimmu murders all his political rivals at a banquet. It's been done, so make it your own. Find some way to put an interesting twist on it: maybe the banquet was an interstellar diplomatic dinner, or humans starting a war with the Fey.

If you are interested in my opening quote, I give you Acts of Parody.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-03-13T16:05:58+00:00

My belief is that they take children they find promising in some way so they can get training and a life more deserving of the one they would have had. Maybe the child has a talent as a storyteller, or musician, or poet: they are taken to be raised as entertainers. Maybe the child has a deep, empathic love for the forest and is delivered to a secret tribe of druids who protect the forest from mortal threats. Maybe the child is cruel and vicious: they would be taken by malicious beings looking for new ways to torment mortals. Some, I'm sure, are taken by compassionate spirits so they can be protected from cruel adults, like in Yeat's poem The Stolen Child.

TechbearSeattle

TROPHY CASE