Troperville
Editing
Tools
|
My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden.
Conjure by it at your own risk.
When things get strange,
when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights,
when no one else can help you, give me a call.
I'm in the book.
A horror/fantasy/mystery series of novels by Jim Butcher, about a wizard/detective named Harry Dresden, operating out of modern day Chicago and reluctantly hired by a special police task force to solve supernatural crimes. A cross between urban gothic fantasy and Film Noir, while having the Genre Savvy main character crack jokes about the various tropes it uses. Adapted into a drama series on the Sci Fi Channel, which is nowhere near as good as the original books.
Harry meets a wide variety of characters in the series, and some of the more recurring ones are Murphy (the Action Girl cop who's aware of the city's supernatural underworld), Bob (an air spirit -- ghost in the television series -- who lives in a magic skull and literally acts as his Magical Computer), Michael (a literal modern-day paladin wielding a holy sword who frequently helps Harry), Billy the Werewolf and his pack of Alphas (a group of Heroic Wannabees who look up to Harry and kind of annoy him), Thomas (a Loveable Rogue incubus White Court vampire), Susan (Harry's on and off love interest), and Molly (Michael's oldest daughter, former accidental warlock and Harry's jailbait gothgirl apprentice). Like all detective stories, Harry also meets a ridiculous amount of femmes fatale, crime bosses, and hired goons, often the subject of much Lampshade Hanging in the series.
Harry also appears in the My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding, My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon and Many Bloody Returns anthologies. The Harry Dresden graphic novel miniseries recently released is Welcome to the Jungle, and is set sometime after the short story "Reclaiming Faith", but before Storm Front, the first Dresden novel.
This series provides examples of:
- Action Girl - Detective Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, the main Badass Normal. Has shades of The Lancer in the first couple books. (Though you can't blame her: Holding back information from a cop about the investigation she's running in order to protect her? Yeah, that's not going to lead to you looking like a suspect.) As the Badass Normal, she isn't the most powerful character, but she uses her skills as advertised to kick ass and take names at regular occasions, never falling into Faux Action Girl territory.
- Adaptation Decay - The transition from book series to TV series... well, let's just say it lacks much of the flavor and charm of the books. Or the writing quality. Or the canonical details. (Though many of these latter did have somewhat reasonable production considerations behind them. Bob the Skull is no longer a skull, for example, now being instead the ghost of a 16th century sorcerer who appears to Harry - but this not only allowed the producers to avoid problematically poor F/X for Bob, but also gave him a human actor's face and ability to emote.) Still entertaining, sort of, but once you've read the books, there's just no comparison.
- The DVD set of the TV series includes the Pilot, which is a loose adapation of Storm Front and is much closer to the books: Harry has a separate office and apartment, Mister the cat makes an appearance, Bob stays quiet, and Susan shows up (though convincing anyone her last name is Rodriguez would be more difficult than convincing them that magic is real).
- Allergic To Love
- All Girls Want Bad Boys (Harry can't believe Murphy is one of those girls when she admits to liking Kincaid)
- Anti Villain: "Gentleman" Johnny Marcone, the Chicago mob boss is more often help than hindrance to Harry; while his empire of crime is vast and increasing, he maintains order and reduces violence. We ultimately learn from his Start Of Darkness that the motivation that drives him is to prevent Innocent Bystanders from harm, and he is desparate to heal a young girl in a coma from a bullet meant for him. Possibly also Kumori, the necromancer who worked powerful Black Magic to keep a complete stranger alive until he could get to hospital, but was willing to kill the entire city in the hope of ending death.
- Artifact Of Doom: Blackened Denarii coins, that contain a literal Fallen Angel within them. Picking up the coin gives the demon ability to communicate with the coin's bearer and bestow immense skill, magical power, knowledge and experience upon their human hosts. Additional perks include(but are not limited to): immortality, a badass demonic form that varies depending upon the particular fallen, eidetic memory as well as the fact that the Fallen can manipulate nervous system of their host(suppresing pain, casting life-like illusions etc.). Almost all holders of the coins end up becoming evil, insane or both(they might also become permanently possesed by the Fallen within the coin... as long as the possessor is in contact with the coin, as one former human partner of a Fallen explained to Harry in Book 8).
- Badass Longcoat: Harry wears a duster. A magically reinforced, black leather duster. And occasionally gets made fun of because "You look like you belong on the set of El Dorado."
- Badass Normal: Both Johnny Marcone, who is as much a highly skilled armed and unarmed combatant as he is Chicago's undisputed Mob boss, and more than once joins Harry in the field against vampires, demons and werewolves, and Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, a very badass cop who, at "five nothing, one hundred and nothing", can still kick the ass of any non-superpowered person in the novels. Including, as she likes to point out, Harry. Following Small Favor, Murphy may be upgraded to Badass Abnormal if she reconsiders her decision not to become a Knight of the Cross.
- Big Bad: At least one super-nasty per book. Additionally, it seems likely that most of the events of the series so far have been orchestrated by what Harry calls the "Black Council," particularly the traitor on the High White Council.
- Big Friendly Dog: Harry's dog Mouse, who started out that way as a puppy. He has grown quite huge, and is near to or equal human intelligence. He knows that his size would scare the Muggles, so he plays up the sweet, friendly dog act.
- Black Magic: Killing someone using magic and using Mind Control are the main forms we've seen. Addictive, and comes with a death penalty if you get caught.
- Can Not Spit It Out (TV Version only). If Harry could just fit his mouth around "I can't tell you, it's a 'Wizard Thing'" 99% of the angst with Murphy could be dispelled. The books deal with things rather better.
- Chaste Hero: Subverted. Harry likes sex just fine. The trouble is that the majority of women who are eager to sleep with him would kill him or enslave him. Plus, he would rather not indulge out of sheer carnal pleasure, but love. As if this were not handicap enough, he's also kind of clueless about women.
- Harry's five book self-imposed abstinance has comes to an end with Harry and Luccio doing the horizontal tango at the conclusion of Small Favors; although its uncertain if it will deveope into a lasting relationship. Murphy seems to think it won't, but then again, Harry thought the same thing about her and Kincaid.
- Chekhovs Gun: In any book where Harry brews a potion or two for a specific use early in the story, they turn out to be vitally important at the climax -- which, needless to say, is not the purpose for which they were originally made.
- Church Militant: Michael kicks ass for the Lord, in a very positive, idealistic, non-Knight Templar fashion. The other Knights of the Cross are just as ass-kicking, but heavily subvert the "Church" part: one of them was baptized as a Christian by accident, thinking that he was going to an Elvis concert, and the other claims to be an agnostic despite receiving his holy sword direct from the hand of an archangel. (He argues that the "angels" and "demons" could be Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, or he could just be hallucinating the entire thing.)
- Cool Car: The Blue Beetle sort of subverts the trope. It's not even blue all the way through anymore, due to all the repairs it's had to sustain. It's also the only car Harry can reliably drive without his Walking Techbane causing it to go haywire. It also bears several different types of battle damage, giving it character. Thomas' Hummer on the other hand is so cool Harry refuses to admit it aloud.
- Cosmopolitan Council: The Senior Council.
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: In Dead Beat, he animates and then rides a museum dinosaur skeleton into the final conflict. Zombie Dino FTW.
- Dangerously Genre Savvy: Nicodemus is not only insulted by the idea of telling Harry his plans and vulnerabilities when he has the wizard on the ropes, he also keeps Harry in a completely inescapable position and wants to kill him by simply cutting his throat after breakfast. It takes a Heroic Sacrifice by Shiro to save Harry.
- Deal With The Devil: Harry made a deal with a demon he calls "Chauncey", giving up one of his names for information to help him with a case.
- Death By Childbirth: Harry's mother, although it is later revealed that this was the result of a curse.
- Department Of Redundancy Department:
Harry: "...you're going to do everything in your power to be the most respectful, loving, respectful, considerate and respectful daughter in the whole wide world."
- Destructo Nookie:
- Inverted: Harry has to have sex with his quasi-vampire ex girlfriend Susan, in order to keep her mind off drinking his blood and completing her change into a Red Court vampire.
- Played straight (almost): Bob The Skull congratulates Harry on having Destructo Nookie; but it turns out the Spirit in the skull is mistaken.
- Distressed Damsel: The subject of what amounts to a running gag, with Harry inevitably helping her (even when it's unwise) because he has a chivalrous streak he can't seem to override.
- Even The Guys Want Him (Thomas)
- Everyone Calls Him Barkeep: Averted with The Archive.
- Evil Detecting Dog: Mouse.
- Evil Feels Good: Black Magic and vampires.
- Evil Mentor: Justin DuMorne, who tried really really hard to turn young Harry into a Black Magic practitioner. Almost succeeded, too.
- Evil Sorcerer: Victor Wells
- The Fair Folk: Harry has a faerie godmother, only she's the Leanan Sidhe, and there's nothing nice about it.
- On the other hand, Toot-Toot the fairy and his pixie buddies are quite fond of Harry.
- Harry has also earned the friendship of a high-ranking Sidhe, so he has a faerie housekeeping service he can never mention or they'll leave forever.
- Faking The Dead: Several important characters.
- Fate Worse Than Death: Happens to the Winter Knight after Harry defeats the Winter Court's plot.
- Femme Fatale: Too many to list. Once again - subject of a lot of lampshade hanging.
- Flat Earth Atheist: Sanya (see Church Militant example above).
- Friendly Enemy Harry and Lasciel's shadow, in the end
- Subverted with Harry and Marcone. They are civil, and Marcone extends great courtesies to Harry when it suits him, but Harry loathes Marcone, and Marcone is not terribly fond of Dresden.
- In addition, Harry's Fatal Flaw of being unable to ignore a woman mistreated means he has assisted and/or protected Marcone's female underlings more than once, and thus somewhat ingratiated himself to Marcone as a result.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: Subverted; although some vampires like to portray themselves this way, especially to human groupies to be used as food sources, most of them are really nasty monsters. Thomas may be an exception to this subversion, but then again he is half human as well as Harry's half brother.
- Functional Magic - while it generally runs on life energy and (by proxy) emotions, there are a hell of a lot of rules governing it, and not just the White Council's laws against using it to kill, either. For example, any fairie can be forced to comply with a promise if they say it three times, a symbol of faith can be used to consistently ward off or hurt certain creatures, anything with iron will hurt or ward off faeries, a loup-garou werewolf can only be killed with something made from inherited silver, etcetera.
- One of the reasons Bob is such a valuable resource to Harry is that Bob has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the current state of the rules, whether due to vast experience, mystical knowledge, or the ability to compute it all, helping Harry to create highly functional spells and potions.
- It also helps make the Badass Normals genuinely badass - Lieutenant Karrin Murphy has that all-too-rare character trait of "listens to information and makes appropriate use of it".
- Genre Savvy : Most anyone mortal has seen the movies and heard the stories necessary to recognize a trope when they see one. For instance, Murphy once referred to hunting Black Court vamps as "living the cliche."
- Geometric Magic
- Gothic Punk
- Heroic Sacrifice : Shiro sacrifices himself to save Harry's life. Semi-subverted in that Shiro was soon going to die of cancer anyways.
- Honor Before Reason: Harry will tell the reader repeatedly that he is not a good and decent man. But anytime the opportunity occurs to do the right thing at great personal cost, Harry Dresden steps up without a second thought.
- He dove to protect one of Michael's children from the Artifact Of Doom.
- He put his own life on the line to protect another of Michael's children.
- He sacrificed one hand to protect others.
- He gave away one of his magical protections to girl in trouble.
- He risked his life to save a child in danger.
- Hope Spot - seems to happen at least once per book.
- Horny Devils : White Court vampires of House Raith
- Ho Yay: Harry and Thomas Even though they're half-brothers. Half-Bro Yay!
- Huge Guy Tiny Girl
- Inspector Javert : Morgan, Morgan, and again Morgan. Especially so in the first book, but he generally suspects Harry of working black magic and conspiring with demons and vampires at every turn.
- I Am Not Making This Up: The climaxes of Summer Night and every book after. In addition, the entirety of Small Favor is so crazy it approaches The Adventures Of Dr. McNinja territory.
- Kiss Me I Am Virtual: Lasciel in Dead Beat
- Kiss Of The Vampire: The Red Court vampires have a powerful narcotic in their saliva, that addicts their victims to being bitten. They also spit into beverages to poison and thrall people that way.
- Lesbian Vampire
- Living Shadow: Nicodemus has one of these that can strangle people.
- Loners Are Freaks: Harry spends the first few books as a "loner", but less so in the later books when he builds up a decent Nakama.
- Locked Out Of The Loop: Inverted. Charity has the deep dark secret. No one else knows but Harry, and that's because he figured it out.
- Love Potion: Played perfectly straight and despite no mind control being an explicit law for wizards the ethical implications are never mentioned.
- It is not so much mind control or really love-inducing as it simply lowers someone's inhibitions. And Harry's ad does say "No love potions".
- Luke I Am Your Father : Thomas Raith is Harry's half-brother.
- Magic Tool: TV version. Harry uses a drumstick as a
sort of exactly like a Sonic Screwdriver.
- Mama Bear - Charity Carpenter more than fits this trope, considering that despite having to parent seven kids, she manages to make all her husband's armor and functions as his sparring partner. And in Proven Guilty, she storms the gates of Faerie to get her daughter back.
- A Man Is Not A Virgin: The sex lives of some of the guys in the series bring this trope into play straight [no pun intended] or from angles.
- Harry is the butt of many jokes for the length of the dry spells in his sex life.
- Harry himself frequently Hangs A Lampshade on his own dry spells, given how many hot and preternaturally hot women he encounters.
- Particularly given Bob the Skull's obsession with sex and his inability to have it.
- Thomas has given up his incubus lifestyle, and the only person he wants to make love to, he can't.
- Carlos, the big talker.
- Masquerade: Though most of the supernatural creatures don't really bother to hide themselves, the public just refuses to believe they exist.
- Harry himself pays very little attention to the Masquerade. In one book, when a villain taunts him with the fact that they're in public, and Harry wouldn't do anything to reveal himself, he replies, "I'm in the phone book. Under 'Wizards'."
- Mega Neko: Harry's cat, Mister. He's huge. Seriously. Easily thirty pounds and described by Harry as potentially part bobcat.
- Mistaken For Gay: In the later books, Harry and Thomas both mislead with this, though for different reasons.
- It doesn't help that Murphy and by extension SI won't let go of the joke.
- Monster Of The Week: subject of Lampshade Hanging
- Not Now Bernard: Harry brushes off friends and allies trying to give him important information because he is concentrating hard on some task or problem. He has done it once with Bob and once with Susan, to his remorse.
- Not Himself: Various possession plots, and Harry himself is later possessed by a fallen angel.
- Offing The Offspring: Lord Raith, Incubus head of the White Court, kills all his male children when they get old enough to be a threat. The girls, he seduces into sexual slavery. Both of these practices eventually backfire on him, with Harry's help.
- Older Sidekick (Michael, sometimes)
- Our Ghosts Are Different: The ghosts tend to be echoes of the person's last moments with an imprint of their personality. One tragic ghost simply repeats the last action she undertook in life before her death.
- Our Vampires Are Different: The series manages to have its cake and eat it too, by simultaneously subverting and playing straight several now classic vampire tropes. There are three types of vampires, divided into modern Anne-Rice inspired vampires who're humans converted into demons (Red Court), succubi and incubi (White Court), and Dracula-inspired vampires (Black Court), with the last one subject of particularly considerable Lampshade Hanging as Dresden notes that "[Bram] Stoker told everyone how to kill them", with only the strongest and cleverest of them remaining after the beginning of the 20th century. There may or may not be even more types of vampire, though, as an Asia-only "Jade Court" (presumably Jiang Shi-inspired Chi vampires) is very vaguely mentioned at one point as well.
- Our Werewolves Are Different - From the black-magic of the Hexenwulf and the all-but-unstoppable cursed loup-garou to the simple transformation of the "true" werewolf and the wolf that takes on human form, Fool Moon pretty much covers the entire range of possibilities. There are even the Lycanthropes, who only change in their own minds, becoming animalistic beserkers every full moon. Only anthropomorphic wolf-men are non-existent, and the contagious bite is notably absent (as per Bob: "Bah, no. Hollywood stole that from the vampires").
- There's even a werehuman, fercryinoutloud!
- You mean a wolfwere. (Were in this context is a corruption of wer, meaning "man".)
- Playing With Fire - Harry prefers fire magic but will occasionally use wind-based spells when the situation calls for it.
- For a while after the fire magic injured him badly through no fault of his own, Harry defaulted to wind spells.
- Plot Induced Stupidity
- Post Modern Magik - pretty much build around it.
- The Power Of Love - White Court vampires cannot abide the touch of True Love. It causes them burns and physical pain.
- Harry's love for Susan burned one such.
- Thomas has a similar problem. He literally can't touch Justine or anything she gives him made with her own hands for the same reason.
- Prehensile Hair - Deirdre
- Private Eye Monologue - the books are narrated by Harry in the first person and he is a Private Detective after all, so we get hardboiled inner monologues like this:
"Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face."
- Public Domain Artifact - several times, and oddly enough, usually Christian-themed objects despite the main character not being remotely Christian. The three recurring Knights of the Cross each have a magical evil-fighting sword that supposedly has a nail from the True Cross in the hilt (and one is implied to be Excalibur, as well), for instance, and the Shroud of Turin itself is the MacGuffin in the fifth book.
- Rage Against The Mentor
- Robe And Wizard Hat (Partially Subverted. Harry prefers a Badass Longcoat. He's pictured on the cover with a fedora but the books rarely, if ever, mention him with a hat. Plus, Harry does wear a robe in his Wizarding lab because it's cold. Finally, he also has formal robes he must wear for White Council meetings.)
- Because the cadence is exactly the same, every single time Harry says, "I pick up my staff and blasting rod," in my head I hear, "I put on my robe and wizard hat." Every single time.
- The Scottish Trope
- Scully Syndrome
- Sealed Evil In A Can TV version. Every other villain.
- Sharing A Body
- Shut Up Hannibal: Harry to Marcone, mostly.
- Shout Out:
- Dracula (when referencing the Black Court vampires),
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer (Harry tells Inari to "make like Buffy" when they're surrounded by Black Court vampire lackies)
- Angel (before opening his own P.I. business, Harry worked at "Ragged Angel Investigations". Also, Michael Carpenter's wife is named Charity Carpenter)
- Firefly (Inari the Succubus)
- Harry Potter (Dresden notes early on that he often gets calls from people who see his ad in the phone book and apparently just have to call just to ask if he's "really a wizard named Harry")
- Thomas's boat is named the Water Beetle, also a shout out to Harry's beloved car, the Blue Beetle.
- The Blue Beetle itself being a shout out to the comic book character.
- " I follow the Tao of Peter Parker". When the addressed villain doesn't get it, Harry notes that he "must be a DC Comics fan"). Other Spider-Man references abound, as Harry is an admitted fan in-continuity.
- When an enemy doesn't reveal their plan after capturing Harry, Harry later notes that the villain "must have read the Evil Overlord List."
- A serious gut wound is sealed up with superglue, with the character mentioning that they saw it in a werewolf movie
 .
- Murphy and Dresden quote a few lines from Monty Python And The Holy Grail at each other early in White Night, much to Harry's delight and amusement.
- During Proven Guilty, the evil creatures mostly take on the role of generic horror movie monsters. One, however, is quite obviously the Xenomorph from Alien. Others are Captain Ersatzes of Freddy, Jason, and Chucky.
- In Small Favor, Harry (mis)quotes The Princess Bride: "You rush a miracle-worker, you get rotten miracles."
- Toot is a fullblown parody of Full Metal Jacket in Small Favour. "This is my boxcutter. There are many like it, but this one is mine."
- And honestly, these are just the few that stand out. Harry rattles off one such reference every couple of chapters or so, most of the time.
- Spirit Advisor: Lasciel; unusually this time the advisor is evil.
- It appears that Uriel is taking over the job, except without being evil, and more spiritual.
- Bob has been Dresden's primary Spirit Advisor on supernatural matters, more so then the above examples.
- Star Crossed Lovers: Harry and Susan.
- The Straight Will And Grace: Harry and Murphy, in their own words, love each other too much to engage in the kind of relatively shallow sexual relationships they like having with others.
- Supernatural Soap Opera
- The End Of The World As We Know It (multiple times. Also the subject of much Lampshade Hanging)
- Touched By Vorlons Harry gains Soulfire thanks to the Archangel Uriel
- Turn In Your Badge: Murphy is head of Special Investigations, a department of the Chicago PD which deals with the weird stuff. Her success at the job (hiring a professional wizard as a consultant helped) gives her a certain amount of immunity to this, but in one book, she really blows it... and ends up demoted.
- Virgin Power: The White Court find virgins a particular delicacy, so to speak.
- Walking Techbane: wizards, especially Harry, who has to put up with an icebox cooled by real ice, no hot water and a car from the 50s, and can't get near an active computer without frying the motherboard. If he actively tries, he can hex a camera at 100 yards.
- Wedding Day: Subverted in the short stories Butcher wrote for My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding and My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon. The brides were not Runaway Brides; they were abducted by supernatural but still formidable Little Bads.
- We Help The Helpless
- Well Done Son Guy: Ebenezar McCoy, who was the third and most significant of Harry's father figures (including his own father).
- Well Intentioned Extremist: Morgan and Aurora, although the latter is also just plain nuts.
- Words Can Break My Bones: True names (i.e. a person's name pronounced exactly the way they do so themselves) grant a wizard power over the one named.
- Wouldnt Hit A Girl: Harry is chivalrous to the point of it interfering with his ability to defend himself from female attackers. He's knows it's a weakness and a stupid one in a world where female vampires and werewolves and fae can all trivially kill him, but he can't stop himself. If pushed really hard, he can make himself attack a woman, but it takes a ton of pressure to get him to that point.
- Xanatos Gambit: Multiple times, most commonly in relation to the White Court vampires who are pretty much an entire race of Xanatos Gambitters. Examples include:
- The plot of Grave Peril, and even events leading up to the book, is a huge Gambit by Bianca, Mavra and the Leanansidhe for numerous reasons depending on the person involved - to gain an advantage on Harry and/or teach him a lesson, to kill him, to destroy an exceedingly rare Holy Sword and give the Red Court of vampires a chance to launch its long-planned war against the White Council of Wizards. Half of it succeeds, but it backfires pretty majorly on Bianca.
- The entire happenings of Summer Knight are part of a Gambit by Summer Lady Aurora that hinges upon Harry obtaining a piece of Phlebotinum for the villains in the course of his investigation.
- Blood Rites' events are orchestrated by Lord Raith in a ridiculously and needlessly convoluted plot to take out Harry and Thomas and rid himself of the curse Harry's mother gave him. Justified in that the White Court's very nature requires them to solve any conflicts with Gambits if at all possible. Harry also uses Lara Raith in a successful Gambit to bring the villain down.
- White Night features two overlapping Gambits: House Malvora and Madrigal Raith want Harry to take out their rival Skavis for them so they can reap the fruits of his work (fails utterly), and it is later revealed that the entire thing was orchestrated by Lara Raith to make her rivals strike prematurely and be stomped down by Harry (succeeds perfectly).
- It is becoming increasingly apparent that the entire series was the result of a Xanatos Gambit by Harry's mother, or possibly someone using her.
- You Have Failed Me (Every odd numbered lacky.)
- Your Vampires Suck
- Zombie Apocalypse
|
|
