The Dresden Files

On Thomas and Hunger: It was mentioned that since the whole Turn Coat cluster****, (mentioned in Cold Days), Justine basically doing everything she can to pepping up our favorite Raith. Including, basically, overfeeding his Hunger with another (several) hottie to the point said Hunger didn't notice that she doing frisky with Thomas, physically and Emotionally.

Maybe that's why it could work: Said Hunger was too Sleepy to command OBJECTION.

That could just be a line, though. Calling her soulless and all that, rather than any kind of mechanical statement.

Souls in the Dresdenverse clearly have some relationship to the functioning of the body, or else Harry overusing Soulfire wouldn't kill him.

They clearly have a relationship to the proper functioning of a human body, yes. For other creatures, all bets are off.

Apparently it might have some connection to the Big Cheese considering angels are supposedly 100% soul-stuff.

Angels do seem to be the only non-partially-human being with souls, no?

Mouse would like to disagree there.

Considering how every time Harry talks about souls with Bob present, he immediately starts mocking his total lack of understanding, I'd say it's a fair bet that we don't have a great in-universe handle on the subject. The distinction between souls as a source of energy and souls as a part of what makes us, us, angels, Mouse, etc. is pretty unclear.

edited 22nd Sep '16 4:55:22 PM by kingtiger522

Dogs are honorary humans.

Tangent on this, I think we can draw a pretty good line between souls and circles. If an entity passing though a circle breaks it, they have a soul. If an entity can't pass a circle without a focused and directed attack, they don't have one. Where this leaves cats, who can pass though circles but not break it, is unclear.

The best info we get is directly from Uriel: "you are a soul. you have a body." And the description of Spirit/life energy being a renewable resource running like a current or living thing that dissipates on death, with the soul being the soil it grows in, that becomes detached and changing upon death.

It's just as likely that the magic involved requires a certain kind of soul. Not necessarily that you don't have a soul if you can't break a circle. You just aren't compatible with that kind of magic.

But it's stated that circled function the same for everyone, magic wise. A circle made by a fairy works he same way as one made my a vampire or mortal or god. It's so basic even BUTTERS can use it, and he can't even do magic.

edited 22nd Sep '16 9:30:21 PM by SCMof2814

Circles are explicitly a creation of free will, versus the willpower of entities who lack it. There seems to be a cut off point where a circle can be overpowered: it almost happens when Harry traps the Erlking, and Titania blows through it like Harry had trapped her in saran wrap. And for the record, the only time we see someone supposedly without free will empowering such a circle is Mab; and there are a few theories that Mab has preserved enough of her soul beneath her mantle to perhaps still have free will, even if only in a few instances.

There's also when Aurora made a circle of mushrooms to trap Harry in Book 4. The Ladies activating the circle on Demonreach in Cold Days. The skinwalker made one in Turn Coat to keep from being strangled.

I wonder how the mystical aspects of free will work with human beings who are under the influence of mind altering drugs.

Well, you took them because of your free will, or somebody else forced you to take them because of their free will, and so on. So even the things you do while under the influence are the result of the sum of free wills. I think that's how it works.

If an angel or demon forces you to take them, then it's a free will violation and the other side gets a chance to balance things (I guess by forcing somebody else to take drugs? it would be interesting).

edited 23rd Sep '16 1:44:23 AM by Cozzer

I don't think it works that way. Harry didn't balance things in Ghost Story by lying to someone else. Assuming he actually balanced them at all, he did it by uncovering the truth of the sin. Though since he hasn't actually found out WHO did the original transgression, things are probably still not balanced. All we found out was that a Demon or Angel of some sort said the right lie at just the right time to make Harry set up a hit on himself.

It wasn't up to Harry to balance the demonic intervention in Changes, it was up to Uriel. And Uriel achieved balance by speaking seven words to Harry's subconscious during the last chapter, telling him "Mab cannot change who you are".

The whole "Harry discovering how things went" thing was misdirection and had nothing to do with balancing the demon's seven words. It was just Harry's soul accepting a job from Murphy Senior, like any other soul could have done, and very conveniently recovering his crucial memories while doing it.

edited 23rd Sep '16 7:10:23 AM by Cozzer

Right, I forgot about that. And Uriel can't lie, so that still didn't match the idea of forcing somebody else to take drugs. Most likely you'd balance that sort of thing out by an Angel convincing the new junkie to go into rehab of their own free will.

edited 23rd Sep '16 7:12:46 AM by Journeyman

True. Or maybe they'd only be able to do the same physical things, like what happened with the seven words, so it would depend on how exactly the demon forced the guy to take drugs. Like, the angel would be able to force people who believe in omeopathy to swallow actual medicine pills, to counter the demon forcing other people to swallow drug pills. :P

Not likely. The balance seems to have to do with the person who was forced. Otherwise Uriel could have simply told Molly "You did the best you could there" and been even.

edited 23rd Sep '16 8:22:06 AM by Journeyman

From this interview

Hnggggg

Nice that we know the name of Harrys second child. Personally i find the way how Butters gets his knight-jobs a bit over the top (and i loved the lightsaber^^)

Well, ok, I didn't like Knight Butters, but since we have him and complaining about it is useless, him seeing exclamation marks over people is the best way things could have gone from there.