Why? It IS a bit large, but fits well on the page.

Your mileage varies; I don't think it fits well at all. On my screen it's less than a centimeter shy of the center mark. The text is shunted over to the right half of the screen and it makes it more difficult for me to read.

More importantly, Images In Wiki Pages says that 300 pixels wide is the maximum and that smaller is better. The current image is 373 wide. If someone has an image that's 300 or even 250 wide that would be perfect.

Alright, fixed it myself. I couldn't find an image that was 300 wide, the closest I found was 264 wide.

As for the second, fans can decide something is Discontinuity even if the creator loves it.

Considering it was a separate continuity regardless of whether it was endorsed or not, I'm not seeing how it applies at all.

There's a bunch of them on the Shout Out trope page; I doubt that they cover all of them, though.

Probably should halve been asked on the forums, but I will answer here.

Aurora's defeat has nothing to do with how much power she or the pixies had. It had more to do with surprise, her not having enough time to even use any of her power (Harry had time to plan/get ready for the bees' attack), and ''steel'' knives. If there had been just one pixie she might have been able to counter attack one way or another, but there were over a dozen. How well could you concentrate and retaliate if a dozen hummingbirds suddenly appeared in front of you and attacked you? With knives? She had no chance of surviving.

I will not say that there are no Plot Holes anywhere in the books (Butcher acknowledges most of them), but Aurora's defeat is not one of them.

What do you mean she couldn't have handled them, she could have made a shield around her, made a barrier in front of pixies, blew them away with wind... any number of ways. As for it happening too quickly: if you want to take that as a viable explanation then you should add Talking is a free action? They exchanged whole sentences after he released Toot-toot.

On a side not: Which ones does he acknowledge, and why not add them?

For that example it sounds more like your trying to expand the definition of plot hole in order to damn the series—hence I don't exactly trust your assessment.

She saw Toot-toot for maybe 5 sec. She did not recognize a "single pixie" (basically the lowest fey of all) as any sort of threat. This made the shock of seeing a dozen or more pixies coming at her even greater. Even then, she did not realize their threat right away. Once Toot-toot called the other pixies, she probably had less then a sec to run the emotional gambit from amused to surprised to recognizing the threat to reacting. She only made it to the recognizing part and did not have time to react. If she did have time to react she would have won with ease, but that is why Dresden waited to release them for so long. There were other times he could have used their help and did not use them because he knew that he would probably need them in that fight.

As for some Plot Holes, the most famous one is the geography of Chicago in the early books. But that is already listed under Did Not Do The Research. Actually, I can not think of any "good" examples of Plot Holes.

From my experience, any time someone wants to list a Plot Hole on a works page, they're just throwing up some Fridge Logic to try and make the work look bad. The amusing thing is most of them I've seen have either been discussed already on the It Just Bugs Me pages, or it's something that could easily be answered if the poster were actually interested in the answer rather than complaining that the show stinks.

Well it wasn't fridge logic for me, rather a kick in the nuts for suspension of disbelief but whatever I won't press further to adding this example.

Although it seems like fans are overprotective of the page if what Belian said was true.

Fairy magic is generally ineffective against Cold Iron. Even if Aurora had thrown up a shield, the knives would have cut right through it.

Rereading the scene in question, I agree that this is not a plot hole at all. Aurora initially responds with disbelief and mockery at Harry bringing out Toot, and then the little guy sounds the charge. She is, for an instant, shocked when all the pixies swarm out, and then immediately raises her hand to cast a spell to obliterate them. Before she gets the spell off, they're all over her and slicing her with cold iron. There's no way she could have defended herself in time; we know pixies like Toot and his crew are fast as hell when they want to be, and the scene makes it very clear that Aurora is acting to defend herself. She just moves too slowly to actually do anything before one of the pixies slices her hand, and at that point it was all over except for the bleeding.

It also confirms that if Harry had released the pixies further away from her, she would have wiped them out. The only reason they were able to kill her was because they attacked her at close range. Even then, she almost wiped them out. I'm not seeing plot hole here at all.

That did actually happen. It's not a Dresden book if there's no pop culture reference in it somewhere, so it definitely has the potential to be a shout-out to City of Heroes.

A google search shows that other places do use squick the same way we do, sadly.

Squick is an old, old internet word.

Because the "Deliberately Goading" thing is a pure fabrication on your part?

That was all Martin's idea—his long term goal. Not Harry's. Do reread the pertinent segment. I'd suggest p. 415 through 420 of the Hardback edition, the last pages of chapter 48.

Uh, maybe the part where I said I agreed MEH wasn't the right trope is not obvious enough? As for the goading part, it is an issue of interpretation (rather than 'fabrication'), Harry clearly realizes the reaction he is going to get out of Susan by pointing out the role of Martin in the kidnapping (note the part when he mentions that he will never forgive himself for it, page 415 of the Hardback edition, 5th paragraph, since we are being all referencey now ;) ). He may be getting the idea of the follow-up from Martin thanks to the soulgaze, but the part where he sacrifices the humanity of Susan is his own initiative.

The situation is classic Shoot The Dog. A horrible, perhaps even reprehensible action that is required by the circumstances and which force the heroes to take action they normally wouldn't. He is forced to nudge and then kill Susan in order to save their child (Which is the decision she would have made, too) and stop the war and kill off the Red Court. Shoot The Dog at its finest.

EDIT: An looking at the page, I see that this is already there as a Shoot The Dog entry, so it's been taken care of. It could probably use some expansion, but the trope is there.

Sounds good to me, I may expand the Shoot The Dog entry about this a little.

The interpretation comes only with the clarity of hindsight. Don't look at the final outcome, look at the immediate outcome.

My read on the situation is that he'd been a Badass Abnormal as a Denarian, then reverted to Badass Normal when he gave up the coin. Then, when he picked up the sword, he returned to Badass Abnormal status.

Good kull.

Funny Tibit, the RPG lists that the only way one can be resistant to damage is to have an exploitable flaw as well.

I personally find it hilarious that the troper who added this section thought that killing a ghost was some ridiculously incredible achievement when they whack one at the beginning of the story and Harry mentions they've been knocking off hostile ghosts for the last couple of weeks before the book started.

That's its current status, though. Speculation on how things will develop belongs in Wild Mass Guessing, not on the main page.

Eaten by the Malvora family of the White Court.

I did the splitting when the page issue came up, and I thought about that, but no. The books are too interconnected and build too much on each other for that to be economical. And since we're going to have more than 20 books in all, I think it'd turn into a mess. Eventually, the pages may have to be split in three instead of two, but this should work for now, I hope.

I might be flogging a dead horse here, but why were the tropes put on separate pages instead of being put in folders like we do for every other trope-heavy series on the site?

VERY late reply, sorry for that. But the issues was that basically the pages were too big, enough to affect the servers. Adding folders does not do anything to make page length more manageable, so the splitting was necessary.

The stories and tropes are too interconnected, which makes sense, but why are they on separate pages instead of being in separate folders on the same page like Wheel of Time.

Clicking through is annoying.

I don't know about Hyde Park, but the other stuff probably falls under Everything Is Racist. I remember in the RPG Harry warning Bill that only Ebenezer McCoy, Harry's mentor, has the privilege of calling Listens To Winds Injun Joe to his face. Anyone else does so at their own peril.

Remember, a lot of the characters either are, or were mentored by, people that predated the Civil Rights Movement, and the White Council is shown to be obstinate, set in its ways, and Eurocentric (and depicted as a bad thing), and the rest is Harry's POV.

Yeah, whoever's doing the accusing is a stick-up-his-ass Everything Is Racist moron. Using a couple words—while noting explicitly that those words aren't to be used by most people—doesn't make something racist. Most likely whoever wrote that just has a hate-on for the series and is scrounging for anything they can to criticize.

Whilst 'Injun Joe' appears to be a case of N Word Privileges, the repeated, unlampshaded use of 'oriental' in Harry's POV is more legitimately unfortunate. Whilst it doesn't have the same weighting, it's rather similar to regularly using 'negro' to describe black people. In other words, it was OK once, but...

Whether or not something is racist is about what happens in it, not just what words a character uses.

In that case, would you be OK with a book that referred to 'niggers', 'chinks', and so on without any apparent self-awareness?

As for how it happens, the Dresden Files (or, at least, Harry's POV) generally use it to indicate some measure of exoticism and otherness. Ye olde 'mysterious Orient'. Whilst Dresden's certainly not as bad about it as those books, I'm reminded of the House of Night series, which seemed to consider 'being a vampire' and 'being Native American' equally alien.

That's why I said, "Not just what words a character uses." As you said, "oriental" simply doesn't carry the weight of those other words. Hell, I can't even recall ever seeing it used derogatorially. From the usage of it I've seen, most people use it as a discriptor, and most people are genuinely unaware that it's seen as offensive. Off the top of my head, honestly, I couldn't tell you even why it's apparently offensive.

What makes a work racist is things like what characters of the different races are depicted as being and doing. The Native American is called "Injun Joe," yes. But he's also one of the most powerful people around, has the main character's respect, and is treated as a well rounded, good person. Admittedly, I don't recall seeing many asians in the books, but Ancient Mai is, again, one of the most powerful people around, and while she might not be on Dresden's side, necessarily, still a goodguy without really any stereotypes played up.

That is what decides whether or not a work is racist. Not whether a couple words are used incidentally in the narration, but how the people of a given race are portrayed.

No offense, but you shouldn't tell people what they can or can't consider racist. The issues are far more complicated than you are giving them credit for. Also, re: the Hyde Park thing, it was PoC fans who lived in that area who raised concerns. It's incredibly rude to presume to tell them what they may or may not find offensive.

I'm not at all telling people what they can or can't consider racist. I made no such blanket statements.

What I'm saying is that it's totally blowing things out of proportion to say that it's "proof" that Jim Butcher is racist because of a pair of words he uses (one of which, as was explained, is explicitly noted as only being acceptable as N Word Privileges for a select few). Saying a work or author is racist just because of those two words—and completely ignoring their context, or the actual treatment of the characters of those races—is, frankly, short sighted and ignorant in itself.

As for the Hyde Park thing, I don't recall the circumstances in which the park's mentioned in the books, so how is it mentioned? And what's the Po C being referred to?(Nevermind)

^{Realized it was "person of color"; sorry, the way it was phrased I thought it meant "fans of Po C" and that Po C was another IP}

Does Harry go on about how the blacks and hispanics in the area make him uncomfortable and are subhuman? Or does he just mention he doesn't like the park, and someone jumped to the conclusion that obviously this is because of the black and latino population?

Just an accusation of racism means nothing. Hell, I was once called a racist when I specifically said it would be wrong to stereotype black people as loving fried chicken and watermelon—the "logic" being that because I was even aware of the stereotype, I was a racist but I just didn't realize it.

So, to answer the original question, unless the books are negatively portraying people of those races in such a way that makes it clear that they're bad because they're that race, or all people of that race are bad, no, then the books aren't racist.

Edit: To add to that, after a quick look around, half the people accusing the books of being racist use the argument that "there's only white people, and anyone else is a monster lurking in the dark."

Which ignores that Dresden's true love (Susan Rodriguez) and best Warden friend (Carlos Ramirez) are both good, and Hispanic; the last surviving Knight of the Cross (which is as capital-G Good as you get) is a black guy, while the one who sacrificed his life to save Dresden was Japanese; several good cops, including the head of SI after Murphy's dismissal, are black; three of the seven-member High Council are minorities (Martha Liberty's black, Ancient Mai is Chinese, Listens-To-Wind is Native American), and all portrayed as good; and those are just the ones off the top of my head.

The biggest and most frequent criticism of Butcher's POC characters is not that they're poorly-executed (though the two Asian characters, Shiro and Ancient Mai, are a bit on the stereotypical side), but that there's so few of them. For instance, Rawlins is the only recurring black character (and perhaps the only black character, period) who is native to Chicago. At the last census, Chicago's population was 37% black, and only 42% white. You can see how non-white readers might find Butcher's overwhelmingly pallid portrayal of the city to be a bit weird, no?

That, and there are other unfortunate gaffes. Hyde Park (or, more accurately, the area near the university - Butcher got the name wrong, as I recall) was described in Dead Beat as being pretty much Chicago's version of The City Narrows, 'home to the worst excesses of inner-city decay'. In reality, it is a moderately poor but clean and well-ordered neighbourhood that is only notable for its particular concentration of non-white inhabitants. Honest mistake or no (and let's face it, he should have done more research there), you can see where the annoyance stemmed from.

Annoyance, yes, I can understand. Starting the criticism with "FUCK YOU JIM BUTCHER!", as the original complaint went, and automatically assuming that Butcher was motivated out of malicious racism, however, is a different story entirely. It wouldn't be the first time he's made a mistake about the geography and demographics of the city (giving the baseball stadium a parking lot, for instance), and if the original complaint had been delivered more civilly than with "FUCK YOU, YOU RACIST SOB!" then I imagine Butcher would have, in turn, reacted more civilly.

As for the demographics portrayed*

^{first off, I forgot about Rashid, oughta be 4 of 7, not 3 of 7, but anyway}

, okay, part of it is, unavoidably, that Harry is white and, in the real world, whether you're racist or not, and whether it should be the case or not, people do tend to associate themselves with people of the same ethnicity. Just because 37% of the population of the city is black doesn't mean that those people are evenly distributed throughout the city and regularly associate and interact that 42% of white people.

This is on both sides of the coin: If you walk through a city, you'll usually see the groups segregated, white people with white people, black people hanging out together. So from that perspective, it makes sense that a white guy would, in fact, mostly hang around with other white people. I work in a (admittedly much smaller) city, and when I walk through town, there are definitely areas where I see nothing but black people, and others that are predominantly white. Ask yourself this: If I were to write a story about a person living and working in one of those predominantly-black areas, and my story included only two white people among his friends and associates, would that be racist?

Yes, Butcher could probably have included more people of various ethnicities, but Harry isn't taking a census of the city here, he's just interacting with his friends and allies. Also, I could've sworn Stallings was black too, but I might be getting him mixed up with Rawlins.

And looking at the character sheet, a solid chunk of the people he interacts with on a regular basis either aren't Chicago natives to begin with (and thus aren't indicative of whether or not Butcher is portraying the city correctly) or are literally monsters who it's probably best to not count (though I imagine someone will take issue with the bloodsucking monster vampires being almost uniformly from South America with Hispanic names).

Bottom line is, yes, there's probably some Unfortunate Implications, which I'm finding are absolutely inevitable no matter what you try to do and how you try to do it. This doesn't, however, mean the books are "racist" or that Jim Butcher is.

The 'fuck you Jim Butcher' was in relation to someone being told that their neighbourhood was (and now I have the precise wording to hand) 'a bizarre blend of the worst a large city had to offer marching side by side with the erudite academia of the University of Chicago. It wasn’t the kind of place I wanted to walk around after dark, […..] cheap apartments that were flying gang colors on the windows nearest the doors'. And he got the name wrong, too. And whitewashed the place. Again.

I'm pretty sure that if my home turf received that sort of writeup, my reaction would also be 'fuck you, Jim Butcher'.

It's hardly the way to start any kind of constructive dialogue, though. Instead of giving the benefit of the doubt and allowing that Butcher might have simply been mistaken about the neighborhood (he doesn't live in Chicago, remember), the complainant jumped right on, "Oh, it's because you're scared of black people, isn't it?"

I can understand being pissed, but screaming obscenities and accusations of racism isn't going to inspire the author to apologize and/or fix it.

It was an Internet rant, intended to vent a single reader's frustrations after one gaffe too far. It was not meant to begin a serious dialogue about geography in the Dresden Files. It only became a topic of discussion because someone else linked to it. Not all complaints are designed for the use of the author, after all.

A link you might find useful, on the infamous 'tone argument'.

Oh, and here is a link to the original 'fuck you Jim Butcher' article, plus another one discussing Butcher's response to it.

Whether it was intended for Butcher or not, it still found its way to him, which is all but inevitable on the internet. He didn't put it in a private journal, he put it on the internet where literally the entire world could see it.

Quite possibly, it short-circuited any meaningful dialogue that could've resulted because Butcher seems to have taken it pretty personally, and he couldn't let it go through the subsequent conversation with another tweeter. The guy has a legit complaint, as you said, anyone would be annoyed at the least if their home neighborhood was portrayed like that...though reading the post now, he says he was there for 4 months, so it probably wasn't his "home turf".

But that's no call to be uncivil in a public forum, and the internet is definitely a public forum. It benefits nobody to go off like that—because that "FUCK YOU JIM BUTCHER!" is what introduced the problem to the author, he's that much less likely to admit fault or rectify it in future books (he could've easily had Harry, say, stop in the area for an extended period of time and learn that it's not what he thought).

The original complainant should have pointed out the mistakes and why they're mistakes; insulting and swearing at someone is not the way to be constructive, and is only going to put someone on the defensive.

As for the tone argument, racism isn't uniform, and the response to it should reflect what was behind the offensive comment. Deliberate malice should evoke a different response than simple ignorance. As I said, the original complainant appears to be assuming Butcher was acting out of the former rather than the latter.

You assume that the author would have cared one way or the other about Butcher's reaction. Generally, if you're sufficiently angry that you're going 'fuck you <name>', the subject's finer feelings and chances of improvement are not of particular relevance to you. Offended parties do not have an obligation to educate the people who offended them.

Also, you might want to read (or re-read) the original article. It's not that the author assumes Butcher is being malicious, it's that they're honestly bewildered by why he thought that neighbourhood was so awful, and start running through possible theories (one Starbucks too many, a dodgy Mexican restaurant, too many black people...) that might explain it. Although the fact that he depicted the place as primarily white probably didn't help.

Doesn't much matter what the author of it cared about—it's still a public forum, and he chose to conduct himself in a way that has demonstrably damaged the possibility of constructive dialogue with anyone else who wants to discuss it with the author. Look at the ensuing dialogue: Butcher feels insulted by the language of it, and the accusation of racism, and thus the civil person who tries to talk about it with him can't get anywhere.

I did read it, and those aren't "possible theories," they're dripping sarcasm followed by a direct accusation of being racist.

The blogger's tone is clear: The paragraph starting with "Was it the Starbucks..." is a listing of all the good things about the neighborhood that Butcher couldn't possibly have seen as the bad parts. It's said sarcastically to contrast the following paragraph, which are still-benign things, but with the ethnicity of each called out to imply that Butcher walked in and panicked at the sight of something non-White.

He then sets aside the line about black people on its own, to deliberately and specifically call the author out, by name, with an accusatory and condescending tone: "Was it the Black people, Jim Butcher? Did they make you feel unsafe?"

That is not bewilderment, that is confrontational and accusatory rhetoric—he seems to take the description like a personal attack. He's assuming that while Butcher didn't know anything about the neighborhood, he knew the demographic of it enough that that alone made him deliberately change it to depict it as a crappy slum...while removing the demographic that "scared" him so much, apparently.

I have to say, to me, if it really was that Jim Butcher was racist against black people, wouldn't it make more sense for him to make the crappy slum that Harry doesn't want to walk around in predominantly black? Not saying it's right to "whitewash" the place, but it seems contradictory to me the idea that he's both A. racist against black people and B. making the crappy area predominantly white.

The much, much more likely scenario is that Butcher looked at a map of Chicago or someone who had been there, got some misinformation and came to the wrong conclusion about the area. Or that he had heard there was an area close to there that was rough (the original post mentions things are bad several streets down from where Dresden goes) and assumed the same was true for the surrounding streets as well.

Laculus, as the person who called out Butcher for his reaction to the Hyde Park thing and later met the man cordially, I'd had my share of racism apologists about this and I admire you for keeping this up.

Mr Death, I write a lot of Dresden fanfic and in doing so do a lot of research on the city of Chicago to portray it accurately. A basic google search would have given a more accurate depiction of the area around the university. Butcher, by choosing to set his books in a city, can be held accountable when he makes major mistakes about the location. He whitewashed and it was racially skeevy as fuck. I personally don't think he did it out of malice— but as we say on the internet, Intent Isn't Magical. He offended real, actual Po C Chicagoans and they were upset about it.

Their post was angry. Anger is not a bad thing, and when you shut someone down for having an angry tone, you *are* invoking a tone argument and shutting off legitimate concerns. Apologism and getting pissed about people daring to perceive racism in a poorly researched part of a book is not the productive response. Acknowledging something unfair was published and making an effort to do better in the future is a much better reaction.

And can we stop with this idea that "fuck you Jim Butcher" was a personal attack? Let's be real— it wasn't. No one intended for Butcher to see it and even if he did, it was not directed at Jim Butcher the person but Jim Butcher the Best-Selling Novelist Who Made My Community Look Like a Crime Den. They are not the same. These people don't know Jim Butcher. They probably couldn't pick him out of a line up. They were mad at the books for simultaneously whitewashing and disparaging their home.

Also, Jim Butcher learned from the incident, by his own admission. He even told off his fans when they wouldn't stop trolling me. I got the impression from him that no hard feelings remain over what happened.

I'm pretty sure Mr. Butcher isn't racist. Some things that wind up in his books sadly are, but more out of ignorance than intent. But that doesn't mean we should not make conversation about them. Media does not exist in a vacuum and these things matter and are worthy of our time.

Yes, I understand that a mistake was made, and they were right to be upset about it. I'm not denying that, and Butcher ought to have done more thorough research. He screwed up, there's no sense in denying that, and the people who had their neighborhood portrayed poorly are well within their rights to be upset. (And I sincerely hope that first line isn't meant to imply that you think I'm a "racism apologist".)

As for the anger, no, I'm not trying to shut anyone down—I'm saying they have a legit grievance, but they should have gone about airing that grievance more civilly. Anger may not be bad in and of itself, but it's not a blank check to throw out manners, whatever the cause of that anger may be. How you say something does matter, whether you're angry or not. Jim Butcher deserves as much respect as anyone else does.

No one intended for Butcher to see it, and it wasn't intended at Butcher the person? Well, as you just said, "Intent Isn't Magical," and that cuts both ways. Jim Butcher the Best-Selling Novelist Who Made My Community Look Like a Crime Den is still a real person who has a right to be angry when someone calls him out on a public forum with a "FUCK YOU", and accuses him of being a racist. Whether the blogger knows him or could pick him out of a lineup is immaterial—not knowing someone personally is no excuse for treating them in such a manner.

Nowhere did I say that we shouldn't make conversation about it. In fact, I mean the opposite, that conversation should happen, and that launching "FUCK YOU!" at someone is not a good way to start that conversation. I should hope it's not too much to ask for or expect that people be civil with one another when they're upset.

Ta for the support, Lucy, and I'm glad that what I was saying made a halfway bit of sense to someone else. Oh, and it's spelt 'iaculus', by the way. Very understandable mistake, seeing as our uppercase I and lowercase l look pretty much identical.

The thing is, things had already gotten offensive when their neighbourhood was compared to a crime den, and whilst 'he started it' is rarely a good excuse, you have to remember that marginalised groups, by definition, deal with this sort of shit all the time. It's significantly harder to be polite and respectful when dealing with something offensive when it's the hundredth time you and yours have been insulted, sidelined, or generally misrepresented that day alone, and whilst you (general 'you') can glibly ask them to rise above it, you have to realise that there comes a point when you're effectively requiring them to be superhuman. If a white author can get a pass for being iffy about race ('hey, everything has Unfortunate Implications, what can you do about it, huh?'), a black reader should be granted that same leeway for being rude about a certain racist screw-up.

That is why the tone argument is generally seen as a 'silencing tactic' - it denies marginalised people the opportunity to express exactly how angry they are about something, instead demanding that they suck it up and be nice to the people who are already being exceedingly rude to them on a regular basis. It means that every complaint they make must be carefully framed as a polite lesson to the ignorant privileged, rather than them just saying to their readers 'fuck it, this author isn't worth your money, and here's why'. As mentioned above, why should they be obliged to teach the people who offended them, rather than just warning others away? To analogise, an author can read a review in a newspaper if he wants, but that review is not for him, but to inform customers about whether his book's worth buying.

Besides, while I'm glad that things apparently worked out in the end, I'm personally of the opinion that if an author gets sufficiently bent out of shape about one angry, frustrated reader's rant that a more polite reader cannot make any headway discussing issues in their text with them, that is the author's problem, not the reader's. As an author, people will not like your work. More than a few of them will be impolite about it. That is not a reason to ignore them (authors are human, and humans make mistakes), but it is a reason not to get too worked up when someone criticises you.

Also, regarding the thingy a couple of posts up, it's not so much a contradiction as two separate things intersecting. First, Chicago is depicted here as overwhelmingly white - recurring POC natives to the city can be counted on the fingers of a blind carpenter's hand, and background characters, when given physical descriptions, are pretty much invariably pallid. Which, as mentioned, is a bit weird when the city as a whole is only 42% white, and Dresden's adventures are not restricted to known all-white ghettos (not that Chicago has a huge number of those). Second, when we're introduced to one of the city's most obviously non-white neighbourhoods, it's essentially The City Narrows. In other words, it can rather appear as if the ethnic makeup of real-world Chicago is not mapped out in the Dresden Files by a greater number of brown people showing up in certain areas, but by a greater degree of urban decay. An accident? Most likely. Unfortunate? Hell yes.

Apologies about the name, Iaculus. And apologies for the implication, Mr Death.

I'd add more, but I think Iaculus made the arguments I would have. Hit me up when y'all get to the gender/sex issues of the series. :laughs:

Apology accepted. I was pretty sure you didn't mean it that way, but I wanted to make sure.

I guess I'll just say I disagree with the principles behind the tone argument. I was always taught that if I want to make my point and be taken seriously, to do so in a courteous manner. I know it's not as serious an issue, but whenever I swore at someone on this wiki, even if I was totally, objectively in the right, I got reprimanded for it, for example.

And being civil and respectful isn't necessarily just for the benefit of the person you're speaking to, but to anyone else who might be watching the discussion. It's not always about changing the other party's mind, but of also gaining support for your position.

If, without any other context, you see two people in disagreement and one is swearing up a blue streak and the other isn't, who would you be more likely to take seriously or take the side of?

If, without any other context, you see two people in disagreement and one is swearing up a blue streak and the other isn't, who would you be more likely to take seriously or take the side of?

Let me flip that around a little. If, without any other context, you see two people in disagreement and one is dressed in nice, expensive clothes and the other looks like a tramp off the street (even a particularly clean tramp), who would you be more likely to take seriously or take the side of? Most folks, whether consciously or not, will pick the guy with the professional-looking duds, as innumerable court cases have demonstrated, but that kind of sucks if you're not all that wealthy and you have more difficulty in affording and maintaining a nice suit (or, you know, buying one at all).

Politeness, like good clothing, is something of a privilege. It's easy to be polite when the issues at hand are not personally relevant or offensive to you, and significantly harder when they're just part of a long list of racist/sexist/homophobic/whatever crap thrown your way. Well, that, and it's sometimes very hard indeed to illustrate just how not-cool something is whilst remaining polite. Not everyone is addicted to understatement like us Brits.

So what if it's "very hard"? It must have been "very hard" for Gandhi to practice non-violence, or for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to do the same, but they managed it, and are both much better remembered, and more successful in their efforts, than those contemporaries of theirs who might have been shouting and swearing, or escalating to violence, out of anger and frustration.

Yes, I know those are two rather extreme examples (since the men must have the patience of saints), and honestly I was trying to avoid mentioning King in particular because part of me felt it would be seen as something of a "low blow," like I was trying to play some kind of reverse race card, but it's the clearest way I think I can make my point.

If they can preach and practice peaceful, civil discourse in the face of threats to their own lives while trying to change the way their country works, I don't think it's really too much to ask for people to exercise a little personal restraint when dealing with what is most likely an honest mistake.

Yeah, I'm sorry, Mr. Death, but your privilege is showing. Not everyone is MLK or Gandhi, and not everyone should have to be. Especially if you're going to brush off the offending authors' follies as understandable slips that are nothing worth making a fuss about.

I think you're misunderstanding why I brought them up. It was not to say "everyone should be like them;" that is a totally unrealistic expectation. I brought them up to say if they can do it when they're facing things like the constant, ingrained oppression of their people and literal, physical threats to their own lives and the lives of their loved ones, then it's probably possible, even if "very hard", to take a deep breath and not flip out when a fantasy author makes a mistake about your neighborhood out of simple ignorance.

I never said everyone is or should have to be MLK or Gandhi—hence me saying they're extreme examples and they must have the patience of saints. The "your privilege is showing" is simply uncalled for.

I also never said that it's nothing worth making a fuss about and, in fact, I said exactly the opposite in my previous posts, that it's a legitimate grievance that they have every right to voice. I have said this, or similar things, more than once during this discussion.

I'm saying when that fuss is made, maybe it should be made without resorting to screaming, cursing, and accusing the author of being a racist.

So basically, we are no longer arguing about whether the complaints were valid, but how they were presented?

Ah. Okay then.

I'm with Iaculus. Your privilege is showing and you really need to read that link s/he gave you on the tone argument. I mean this in the nicest way possible: I don't think you understand why the tone argument is problematic, and it's making you seem apathetic to this issue.

Basic manners still apply, whatever the subject is. Speaking as a professional writer and editor, it's been my personal experience that how you present your complaints and arguments matters in a real, tangible way, whatever the subject is.

This whole thread illustrates my point: I was initially defending Butcher because the initial complaint was a screaming, cursing, condescending and accusatory rant—seeing that, I thought it was yet another random internet guy flipping out over nothing, and dismissed it. Generally speaking, people are more likely to tl;dr or otherwise ignore a capslocked and/or bolded rant that starts with "FUCK YOU!" and ends with an insulting accusation like, "Was it the black people? Did they make you feel unsafe?"

If the initial complaint had presented itself more calmly, I, and others, would have been more likely to take it more seriously, and less likely to dismiss it or defend Butcher against it.

That is what I'm talking about. Not "educating" the offender, or even trying to change his mind in particular. Change happens when you convince the people watching that you're right, and it's easier to do that when you're not flipping out and cursing.

I'm promoting civil discourse—not trying to silence anyone or ignore the issue. I have acknowledged they were right to be angry, and to voice that anger, and that Butcher should've done his homework.

Butcher and his fans' initial dismissal of it would not have happened, and the whole thing would've been over sooner and more amicably, if the initial complaint had been made in a less insulting manner.

Finally, "Your privilege is showing" is, frankly, insulting and rude, even if you mean it in the nicest way possible. I take offense to the idea that because you think I'm white, I'm "privileged" and thus my argument can be dismissed because I just don't get it. You may not actually mean it that way, but it's coming off as dismissive and condescending.

Harry is Lee Pace. Thomas is (by Word Of God and fandom agreement) Matt Bomer. I like Maria Bello for Murphy. Christina Hendricks for the Leanansidhe. Thandie Newton for Mab.

Marcone is hard. A friend suggested Jeffrey Donovan, another Adrian Padsar. I think if you mixed them with a dash of Gabriel Macht, that'd be about right. Or, if we had access to a time machine, a young Ray Liotta.

Luccio's younger body is Summer Glau. The description is almost absolutely dead on.

I thought Justine would be Summer as a reference to River.

On that note, Morena Baccarin as Lara, perhaps? Hell, why not just bring over the whole Firefly crew? We know Butcher's a fan, after all. Anyone else thing Nathan Fillion would make a decent Harry?

At the author meet I attended, JB said his perfect pick for Harry would be a young Harrison Ford, actually. I think Pace has the required height, the somewhat underfed look, the perfect scruff (when he lets it go out), and is good at playing of characters that are in turns hilarious and heartbreaking.

If y'all want to see an awesome Dream Casting, I'm a fan of this one: http://robanybody.livejournal.com/482171.html

The same person also did another Po C Dream Casting that I think is far superior, especially with the casting of the Carpenters: http://robanybody.livejournal.com/487315.html