The Dresden Files

Crisis of Infinite Dresden?

The Multiverse can't take it.

"The planet is on fire, and again, I swore, that is not my fault."

"I can hardly believe that this little girl (Almost cuter than Maggie. Almost.) is an inter-dimensional corpsmen. Then again, if you dealing with Multiverse, you bound to see anything imaginable and sometimes unimaginable someday."

"My more pressing concern is that her... Device seems to flirt with me. Poor girl almost got heartbreak when I told her so."

"This planet got Great Flood, and yes, that is not my fault. It's his fault. More precisely, that is his wives faults."

"So, I met another me, who, apparently, got bunch of Devils as his... wives. He admits that he often got weird looks from other me (me included), but Soulgazes and cookies smooth everything out. Mostly cookies, these days. Oh, and hex-resistant smartphone."

Alternate!Morgan: How many Dresdens we got on this ship?!

All the!Dresdens: *raising hands* Yo!

If you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste.

So the climax of Mirror Mirror will be Dresden leading an army of alternate universe Dresdens, right?

Goddamn I hope so. It'll be amazing. Though I assume one universe can only take so many pop culture references/buildings exploding.

“Not a promise, not an oath, or a malediction or a curse. Inevitable." - Taylor Hebert

Save it for the BAT.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

I assume that the half the pop culture references in Crisis of Infinite Dresdens will be to things that don't exist. At least not in this universe.

I sure hope that's a gag in Mirror Mirror.

Reminds me of Parallels where one of characters references an alternate reality game show the other characters have never heard of.

I'm annoyed at the writers of the Paranet Papers again. I finally got ahold of the entire PDF and...

One of the stat-blocked characters in the "Neverglades" setting is a sapient panther. So far, so good...but the illustration is of a big black cat.

So...if Coat-Like-Midnight is meant to be a melanistic Florida panther, why is there no mention of his unusual color? On the other hand, if he's meant to be a melanistic leopard/jaguar, why is there no mention of his unusual species? I get that it's Florida and all, but the pythons are called out as being (descendants of) escaped exotic pets, so...were the writers just not aware that a Florida panther is a puma, not a black jaguar?

edited 15th Aug '15 9:03:09 AM by Karalora

I think thats not a writer issue but an artist issue

"You can reply to this Message!"

Yeah, the writers had nothing to do with creating the impression that he was black-furred. I know the color I always associate with midnight is sorta tan with a white belly.

I mean, you say panther, almost everyone thinks black.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

Florida panthers aren't "real" panthers in the "South American jungle cat" sense. They're what everyone else in the country calls cougars or mountain lions.

Fun fact: there is no "panther" species. There's the genus panthera, which includes most of the big cats, but no actual species called the panther. In Africa and Asia, a "panther" is a leopard; in South and Central America, they're jaguars; in North America, there's just the Florida panther. The "panther with solid black fur" thing (which is what most people think of when they think "panther") is actually a jaguar with "melanism" (essentially, the opposite of albinism).

And that's your biology lesson for the day.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

That's interesting. I know this is wrong, but from a common-culture viewpoint, you'd say that tan or beige is cougar/puma, spotted is leopard and black is panther.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

Okay. Part of the Fount complicating everything is giving all the local panthers melanism. The locals have never known anything different and the outsiders don't know enough about local big cat species to realize that Florida panthers aren't generally black. Problem solved.

Can we just say that "whoever write those paper doesn't really know about Florida panther to ynderstand the context", same reasob with "Dresden is kinda sexist in his case files because that's who he is".

Or simply a minor case of Critical Research Failure

edited 15th Aug '15 11:42:02 PM by 3of4

"You can reply to this Message!"

^ That's my best guess. They saw the phrase "Florida panther," made an assumption, and looked no further. Although they did get the tidbit that "panther" is sometimes rendered "painter" in Southern dialects.

To put it in Southern cultural context: there are many who think that black panthers are an urban legend. Cougars literally can't be melanistic and it's hard to believe we got jaguars or leopards down here.

"Florida panther" is actually a common synonym for "black panther" though.

edited 19th Aug '15 7:04:53 AM by Frishman

If you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste.

What? "Florida panther" refers exclusively to the cougar subspecies found in the Everglades. I mean, it's got "Florida" right in the name, you wouldn't use "Florida panther" to describe, say, melanistic jaguars (which don't live anywhere near Florida).

edited 19th Aug '15 11:56:06 AM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

From a taxonomy standpoint, yes. But you have to remember that these creatures live in the South. We're not the brightest. What you and science are calling a Florida Panther is a cougar to us, because it looks like a cougar, screams like a cougar, and kills like a cougar.

The melanistic cats that are most commonly associated with Florida and which don't feature in any other state in the South with regularity are called black panthers or Florida panthers, because they are black, from Florida, and look like panthers.

Cougars aren't even in the panthera genus anyway so calling them scientifically "panthers" is stupid.

I say "truck" you say "lorry" and it's really just an automobile.

edited 19th Aug '15 12:22:19 PM by Frishman

If you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste.

You're confusing the hell out of me.

1) Florida "panthers" are cougars (or mountain lions, or puma, or a bunch of other names, depending on who you ask — it all refers to the same animal). They're literally the same species (thus "subspecies"). The term "Florida panther" is just a name with no biological or taxonomic relevance. So when you say that "it's a cougar to us", you're right, because it is a cougar.

2) There are no "black panthers" associated with Florida. The only large cats in Florida (or the South in general) are cougars, which, as you yourself note, cannot be melanistic. Florida panthers are never black. The word "panther" (or "black panther") generally refers to melanistic jaguars, which are South American, and less frequently to melanistic leopards, which live in Africa and Asia.

3) This is why the whole "sentient Florida panther named Coat-Like-Midnight because of its black fur" thing is stupid, because a Florida panther can't have that, and no mention is made that this is atypical for the species. Our assumption is that the writers simply didn't realize that Florida panthers aren't black, because "panther" is usually associated with large black cats.

edited 19th Aug '15 12:54:49 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

But once again, down here in the South there's that urban legend about black panthers. So when we hear about something called a "Florida panther"...

Basically, in the South Florida panthers aren't called that by anyone who doesn't care about their proper name, which is most of us. We call them cougars, because they're cougars. Much like we call Russian Blues "cats" because they're cats. We give precisely zero shits about subspecies.

At the same time, we have an urban legend about black panthers being a thing that we have down here in the South. Cougars cannot be black, ergo when someone says that Florida has panthers, guess what color we think they are?

edited 19th Aug '15 1:38:35 PM by Frishman

If you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste.

You're just explaining why they got it wrong (because people associate "panther" with "large black cat", and Everglades cougars are called Florida panthers), which no one's debating. We're just pointing out how they are wrong.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.