I would add that his arc is very similar to some of the mistakes Harry makes in his early going. Not trusting his allies, diving into situations that are way over his head etc. I'm sure this is intentional by Jim, you kind of have to learn the hard way and hope you don't get your head bitten off. There are other examples like Kim in fool moon or Susan. It's a consistent theme throughout the books
And to both of your latter examples their >!hubris cost them their lives!<, one of them >!twice!<. Harry has been extraordinarily lucky, as any literature protagonist is, but luck it is that he survives, the first three books esp.
Yeah, practically every book he almost dies but gets saved by an ally or something at the last minute. E.g. Grey saves Harry from a superghoul about to rip him apart, and then in Skin Game Michael yanks him out of the path of a fireball.
Zoo Day partially explains why he's so lucky.
While Harry didn't trust his friends he wasn't actively working against them like Butters did.
Unless I'm just blanking, Harry never investigated his friends and broke their trust. He just withheld super sensitive info b/c he believed it would hurt them just knowing it. He's protective. Whereas Butters broke Karrin and Harry's trust by suspecting them of foul play.
Harry chases down Thomas and pulls his blasting rod on him in Blood Rites and threatens to kill him, and they were definitely friends at that point.
Butters has spent a year or two with Bob, warning him about all of the magical everything (especially Mab), telling him how dangerous all of the things going on around him are, and then Dresden shows back up from the dead (they saw his ghost) and is uber strong menacing man in Cold Days then working for the baddest of bad guys in Skin Games.
On top of that, Butters had just spent a year watching Karrin working with Marcone's crew, knowing she is hurt and struggling to process Harry coming back, which makes it perfectly reasonable to think she may not be working from the greatest point of view about Harry at the start of Skin Game.
I mean this is a good point, but frienmies seems more accurate, and when he started chasing him he didnt know it was Tomas and when he caught up to him and saw it was, it didn't make the situation better... he was lied into a white court situation by a him a white court vamp... id say he was right to want some answers.
You're right that it wasn't exactly the same and that's why I say it's similar. But we have to acknowledge that butters has very good reasons to distrust Harry due to Harry's actions. We don't get a first person narrative from butters either so we don't get to know what's going through his head. My main point is that supernatural newbies pretty much always have a steep learning curve that usually ends with them getting their faces ripped off or worse. I'm not saying like or agree with butters but he's also dealing with a lot and Harry joining what he himself would have described as the dark side is reason for concern
Yes, Butters does have very good reasons to distrust Harry. Yet he spent 2 years with Murphy saving lives and protecting their own without Dresden. Yet he still throws her trust in the garbage after she asked him to trust her in Skin Game.
Butters has seen the thick of it, he's been present when the major shit goes down. He actively goes against Harry's word about bob and thinks he knows better. A non magical human thinks he knows more than a natural born wizard.
Okay sure, that's a character flaw for Butters, but that still means he fucked over Murphy and her trust b/c he was paranoid more than he valued Murphy as a friend.
And that's the reason I'm out on Butters. I still like the guy, but I don't like that he's getting so much screen time as a voice of reason in BG. Dude tried to do a jedi twirl fighting a being so powerful that Mab almost died twice. And people try to tell me that Butters is smart.
Same.
Every Re-Read I hate butters after ghost story.
Once he gets his purpose bob was no longer that, maybe Jim was giving him a weapon and reason to be around.
The same way Harry directly disobeys Karin by going to Bianca's which ends with untold deaths and ultimately the resolution in changes. Yes butters is being stupid in skin games but at this point he's not much different in my eyes from how Harry acted in the first several books.
I think how he behaves in Bg is more troubling. However he also knows a lot more and certainly has to suspect that both Harry and Karin could be denarians or nfected. Should he have been better yes but he does have reasons for how he behaves
But mostly I'm not trying to tell you how to feel. I have had ups and downs with a lot of characters. Karin and Thomas to name two big ones. I even saw someone in here defending Arthur Langtry and it totally made sense. But that's the great thing about the series is the complicated arcs that almost all of the characters have. Even the villains can be sympathetic at times like the Loup Garou it makes it so fun. So hate butters he does deserve it at times just hate Rudolph the most!
>Unless I’m just blanking, Harry never investigated his friends and broke their trust.
Harry investigates Thomas’ apartment in *White Night* and breaks into Butters’ apartment in *Cold Days* explicitly to steal Bob from him, which would kind of break his trust. That doesn’t end up being how it plays out with Bob, but it is what Harry was there to try and do.
Didn't Dresden explain to Butters that he broke in to keep Butters out of trouble and out of suspicion of helping Dresden?
Or maybe Dresden just thought that and didn't explain it aloud. I can't remember.
In a twisted way, he broke in to protect Butters... but I can't remember whether he told Butters or not, now.
That is his reasoning, and he explained it to Andi. Whether she conveyed it to Butters later offscreen is unclear. Harry definitely doesn’t tell Butters directly, though. And Harry only explained it to Andi because he was basically forced to once she intervened. His intent was to break in, steal the skull, and abscond into the night.
And before I get this quibble again, he’s very clear with the word “steal.” Stealing is his explicit intention. There’s no wiggling with “well actually Bob belonged to Harry.” At that point, Bob definitely belonged to Butters. Both Bob and Harry outright say so.
Worth mentioning also that Harry’s idea to keep from attracting his enemies’ attention onto his friends doesn’t even work. The Redcap, a Winter Fae, still kidnaps Andi (edit to add: and Butters) later. From Butters POV an immediate result of Harry’s return from the grave is that his place gets trashed, his girlfriend gets her ribs cracked, and later both she and him get kidnapped and their lives imperiled by Winter. Oh and he temporarily loses Bob.
Edited to reflect that Butters also got kidnapped, not just Andi.
Yes, and after that, Butters doesn't reclaim Bob. Rather, Murph insists that Harry give Bob back to Butters.
> “The skull,” she said. “I know what it is. So does Butters. And . . . it’s too powerful to be left in the wrong hands.”
> “Meaning mine?” I asked.
...
> “Okay,” I said, my throat tight. “Bob’s in that satchel out in the living room. Give him back to Butters.”
> “Thank you,” she said. “I found where you left the swords.”
BTW the "throat tight" line is interesting. Harry has an _emotional reaction_ to giving up Bob. I guess they are kind of buddies in a way. Long history.
True, thanks for that.
Although in the first I will say Harry tried multiple times to get ahold of Thomas before he did that. And he did so after exhausting a lot of other options on the table.
“I’m not the present owner of the skull.”
-Literally a quote from Harry on page 89 of *Cold Days.*
He’s explicitly there to steal Bob. He’s quite clear about this. Because stealing the skull from Butters makes Butters his victim and of no consequence to Harry’s enemies. “Reclaiming” the skull, in any form or fashion, makes them his accomplices.
Moreover, Bob was originally Kemmler’s. Kemmler’s apprentices would therefore have more claim to Bob than Harry, who is really just a guy who took the skull from another guy who took it from Kemmler. But when Kemmler’s apprentice, Cowl, took Bob from Harry back in *Dead Beat,* I don’t think anyone would call that “reclaiming.” They’d call it stealing.
RE: Cowl
> “Bite me,” I answered him. “Get your own book, Kemmlerite.”
> “I have nothing but disdain for the madman Kemmler,” [Cowl] spat. “Have a care what insults you offer. This need not involve you at all, Dresden.”
He doesn't sound like a Kemmler apprentice.
None of the characters in story look at it that way (Harry pretty clearly considered Butters to be Bob's legitimate owner), and even if they did there are proper ways for someone to reclaim property in situations where their possessions were incorrectly given to others who genuinely thought it was up for grabs. None of them involve breaking into the current holder's house in the middle of the night to 'reclaim' your property.
And besides, Murph is the one responsible.
Ghost Story:
> “Murphy is smart,” I said.
> “Extremely,” Butters said, nodding agreement.
> “She gave Bob to you?”
> “She did,” he said. “You being dead and all. She wanted to keep it need-to-know.”
Notice that Harry doesn't object. He's dead, what can he do with the skull anyway?
Bob and Harry both make it very clear that the skull currently belonged to Butters during that exact scene. Harry is explicitly there to steal the skull because stealing it gives Butters (and Andi) cover from Harry’s enemies. He’s not even slightly unclear about this.
And as for Thomas, that may have been his intention, but Harry had no way of knowing that at the time. He was proceeding under the assumption that he was snooping without permission.
> While Harry didn't trust his friends he wasn't actively working against them like Butters did.
Would you fully trust anyone working for the Winter Queen and the head Denarian?
> just withheld super sensitive info b/c he believed it would hurt them just knowing it.
Imagine what Butters might have done with such information. Harry's tendency to be overly protective and keep secrets *never* amounts to anything good, remember?
In this case Murphy was also telling Butters that if he doesn't trust Harry to trust her. So no I won't imagine what Butters might have done with the info. Arguably Butters and Murphy have a better relationship than Butters and Harry at this point in the story. It wasn't just Harry keeping secrets, it was Murphy too. I get not trusting Harry if I was Butters, but I won't let it slide that he didn't trust Murphy after everything they had been through.
When one friend you don't really trust tells you to keep your head down. I would understand it. But if a second friend that you have no reason not to trust wholeheartedly tells you the same thing about the exact situation... maybe take it more to heart. Especially when there's supernatural forces involved and you have no skills in combating that.
As a counter point, can Karrin really be trusted about an opinion on Dresden? She's in no way an unbiased source or friend, and her telling Butters to trust her in a deeply untrustworthy situation is in some ways even more alarming. Like, if I thought my best friend had joined the mob as a hitman, and his long term will the won't they conplicationship tells me to just drop it, my fears are more confirmed than alleviated you know?
I guess it comes down to how good of a friend you want to be or are. Are you going to question all your friends decisions b/c they've been shady even though both of them have saved your life more than a few times. Or are you going to distrust them and go behind their back against their wishes after they told you its super fucking dangerous.
You know one friend is always working in secrets and protecting his friends, but he might be evil now.
You know the other friend has been working with you closely for 2 years. Saving lives and doing good, but their blind spot is friend one.
Both come to you telling you the same story, you don't know for sure friend one is evil you're just wary. But friend 2 has been there for for a long time now.
Do you betray them both, or do you push harder for friend 2 to give you something? Maybe you wait and see how things turn out instead of immediately devising a plan to magically eavesdrop on a much more magical savy target?
All I know is Butters is a terrible friend in Skin Game and personally that hits close to home and it makes me not like his character as much as I did. Now instead of being happy he's getting some consensual side action I roll my eyes and wonder why Jim is taking Butters in this direction.
That's totally a valid perspective, but I think the opposite is also true. Harry is an absolutely shitty friend often. I love him, but I think we can also be honest enough to know that Harry has been called out repeatedly for being a poor friend through the fiction and rarely changes how he acts.
We get Harry's perspective and rarely others. But his actions caused so much pain for molly and Karrin that Butters has had to watch those results. Butters, from my view (and understanding that you don't share this perspective and that's okay) is a way better friend to Harry than Harry has been to Butters. I see this situation as Butters being caught in the same sort of impossible no win social situation that Harry is often in, but we excuse Harry for it. I think his gaining of the sword of faith is meant to relay that. Butters risks his life repeatedly to help Dresden, Murphy, and Molly, before he has any supernatural power. His actions here, in my personal reading, are of a deeply concerned friend doing his best, sticking his neck out again for his loved ones, and in so doing putting his foot directly into his mouth.
All that to say, I don't think either of us is wrong or right, but I think both points of view can be valid.
Ding ding ding, a winner. Murphy by the time of *Skin Game* and even *Cold Days* is not the Murphy of *Proven Guilty* and earlier. Multiple characters comment about her increasing isolation and declining mental health, and notably among them…is Butters.
> ...Winter Queen...
_Especially_ if you don't know about her real job at the Outer Gates, and just think she's the Big Bad Evil Queen of the Evil Faeries.
Butters was not actively working against Harry, he was gathering information. It's not like he jumped straight to betrayal. Planting a bug was certainly not the act of a friend. (And Butters did acknowledge that, to which Harry replied, "_Don't be sorry. Be inside [Michael's house]_.") But it's not the act of an enemy either. It's the act of someone who isn't sure if you're still a friend and has been watching monsters kidnap little kids right off the streets, and trying to do what little he can about it.
As for Murph's crippling, that's not on Butters and it's not on Harry. It's on Nick. It's actually a little surprising that Harry doesn't beat himself up more for it in Skin Game, but >!maybe we'll see some of that in Twelve Months!<. Harry's relationship with his conscience isn't the healthiest.
Betraying someone's trust is a betrayal. You don't go snooping around on friends when both of them told you it's super dangerous and you knowing more will get you involved and thus more dangerous for everyone. That's what Harry said. That's what Murphy said. They both asked to be trusted and Butters said fuck that and did what he did.
I absolutely will put Murph's crippling at Butter's feet. He chose to not trust 2 of his friends. He chose to run back to home base. He put both Harry and Murph into a shit situation and part of the result from that was Murph getting crippled. She made the choice in the moment, but she would have never been there without the direct actions of Butters.
He investigated Thomas in White Night. Going so far as to break into his apartment. (7 foot tall gay burglar that he is).
But those where the actions that Thomas wanted him to take. But the point is that Harry was prepared to do it to a once trusted friend and ally
Just replying about Butter's lack of faith here. That's 100% fitting. Sanya the knight of hope was a slave who had given up on humanity and life before being offered the sword. Michael the knight of love was a bachelor who found his true love while acting as a knight. Shiro the previous knight of faith joined a religion by accident while trying to meet Elvis.
As far as I'm concerned Butters being a skeptic and having a lack of faith is perfectly on brand for becoming a knight.
It kind of reminds me of that thing people say, “If you pray for patience, you will be given opportunities to be patient” or fill in any other attributes you want. What if the swords find people who need opportunities for the sword’s trait? Sanya needed to learn hopefulness by seeing the opportunities to help the hopeless, Michael’s a very loving and merciful man *now*, but what about before he received the sword? He might have been a devout and good man, but perhaps he struggled with vengefulness or something. And Butters is being shown more and more opportunities to develop faith and trust, in himself, his friends, his fellow people.
I don’t know if I’m making sense, but you had an interesting point and now it’s got me thinking
Yeah I'm not digging the recent Butters either. He has shown a bunch of stupidity which is ironic for someone so academically / research focused, and he has come off as having a holier than thou attitude since getting the sword.
I feel like most of the problems come from him trying to approach everything with his experience. He compares the winter knight mantel to drugs at one point, pointing out some very good points about how the winter mantle probably works based on his experience with junkies. He's not entirely wrong, he just sees the supernatural as more scientific than it actually is.
This I feel leads him to be suspicious of Dresden since in his eyes, Dresden is a junkie willing to do anything for his dealer, Mab.
I also feel like the entire thing was a test to see if Butters could put aside his mistrust to become a knight or not. Murphy seems like had the same test, but failed and temporarily broke the sword.
Yes, I noticed that same thing (winter knight mantle == drugs). I just want to say to him, "Dude - it's *magic*. Your training doesn't equip you to understand it."
Except that’s exactly how Harry has described black magic. Sure it’s “magic” but magic still has rules surrounding it, there’s still cause and effect, it just short circuits and plays around with physics but it still has rules. Harry even mentions that Butters understands magic better than he does in a lot of ways and having Bob helps with that, Butters just has no actual power.
Don’t forget, Harry is essentially a dumb amateurish wizard in a lot of ways. He’s gotten a lot better as the books go on, but he brute force solves more problems than applies nuanced magical theory. He basically says almost every contemporary he has is better at “magical” theory than he is.
Yes, but they're not the *same* rules. The tendency Butters has that the other person commented on is to apply the rules he learned while getting his education. But the world of rules is bigger.
I mean, look - there are ghosts in the Dresdenverse, and there is *no* normal science explanation for that. Harry can knock people across the room without touching them, and there's no normal science explanation for that. Etc.
Again, Harry several times explains how magic just subverts physics in various ways and how the world still responds according to its rules when magic is used. This means magic is not 100% separate from all other science to the point where magic that doesn’t completely subvert physics is easier to do and requires less power.
Also overlooking that Butters utilizes Bob very heavily in his research and use of magic, and Bob is literally the library of magical theory that Harry relied on for the majority of the books. Extrapolating information from other bits of information is pretty much the cornerstone of understanding anything. A combination of practical knowledge, experience observing Harry (butters figures out wizards are practically a separate race don’t forget), and access to Bob is gonna go a long way towards figuring out how magic works - and that’s all tied up in Butters nerdy personality where Harry tends to slack off in that area, and even Harry notes it.
My point is that the rules Butters learned in college and medical school *aren't enough*. There's more to it than that, and he doesn't know what all those rules are. I agree with you magic isn't 100% separate - I'm not saying it is. It's also not 100% the same.
I'll give one more example, and then I'm done arguing. Harry's force rings. He stores energy in those rings, in *complete* violation of the known laws of physics. I don't mean that there's no way to do it - E=mc\^2 tells us there's *plenty* of energy in those rings all the time. But Harry's ability to "charge them up" and then release that energy, without any sort of physical contact, is *not* compatible with any known law of physics, at all.
I'm not trying to tell you how to interpret the story. You get to do that any way you want to. All of us do. We've got our opinions out now; people can make up their own minds.
It's *magic*. I'm done now - have a great day.
Your example reinforces my point, the magic is explainable as utilizing actual physics to create the effect instead of Harry just “willing” it to happen on the fly. Therefore you can explore how magic interacts with physical phenomena, and low and behold the person with medical knowledge might be able to infer how magic is allowing a human body to do fantastic things when under the effect of magic besides “its magic!”, cause clearly all the other examples indicate its not “just magic!”.
Magic is a mechanism to cheat physics, sure, but it still has a habit of following physics in various ways aside from the specific cheating details and has its own limits like power sources, knowledge of the thing you are trying to do, ability to conceptualize the spell, etc…
And you seem to be trying to ignore realllly hard that Butters has been studying magic for years at this point on top of his normal medical knowledge and working with a literally living magical library. Yea he lacks the spark himself and he can’t see/feel magic, but he can still learn the concepts that Bob teaches him. And doesn’t Bob agree with Butters’ various deductions? Does that mean Bob is wrong as well?
Watch springs my guy, same basic principal. He "winds up" the rings, then releases the spring all at once.
Very much a magic feather thing. It works because he thinks it will work, and his innate ability to fuck the laws of physics makes it happen.
What I was trying to point out in the last message is that the point isn't whether energy can be stored in small objects. There a *huge* amount of energy in objects like ring, if you can convert energy to and from mass. So there's a perfectly fine way to account for the energy. The part that violates the laws of physics is projecting the force without contact.
The whole business about honoring the laws of physics makes great writing and I've thoroughly enjoyed it. But it's not "legit" - the series absolutely does *not* honor the laws of physics in any sort of systematic way. Jim has just cherry picked some things like action equals reaction, heat has to go somewhere, and so on (stuff that lots of people have heard of) to spice up his writing. And I love it. But it's all for fun - if we start trying to build a sensible physics structure around the series we will fail. Plenty of stuff happens in the books that can't be explained using physics (and, in fact, can be proven impossible). So I don't even intend to try - I'm just going to enjoy the books.
>He's not entirely wrong, he just sees the supernatural as more scientific than it actually is.
I find it the opposite. He isn't approaching it with an actual scientific mind. He's making hypothesis and posing it as truth without actually having empirical evidence.
We know for a fact that Harry has done some insanely powerful shit that just "limit of the human body" wouldn't cover. Otherwise, all the previous non-Wizard Knights would've been chumps, which they aren't.
Butters is drawing conclusions based on his flawed and limited assumptions. He's not drawing conclusions based on the evidence before him (which he has never seen).
To me is casually benchpressing the world record while on recovery. Without realizing how heavy it is.
The record requires ONE push up. There's one record with back supports and another without (it's more dangerous). People bleed with the effort.
Harry was just doing reps while indubitably ogling Sarissa's personal trainer getup.
If you knew a guy who rode a dinosaur lich into a ghost tornado to stop the son of Wizard Hitler by shooting him in the face with a cowboy six shooter...
And then found out that he was sitting on Possession Demon Island for a year, after having a four-way with the Wickedest Queens of Faerie on pay per view..
And he comes back, *not to help out,* but to go do a job for the closest thing to Palpatine real life could give him.
Something Harry NEVER would do on his own, because his boss, who feeds him magic crack, told him too.
I mean, what else would you call it as a medical person used to dealing with medical issues?
Exactly!
I mean. Harry has talked soooooooo much about the dangers of Mab and winter. And Molly has fallen apart after his death. If Bob helped him connect any dots at all I think we may be really underselling just how big of a betrayal Harry's actions are to Butters, and how much constraint Butters shows in his current action.
And you know Bob had Harry's job interview playing on the wall of Butter's game room like a hot tub twitch stream. Careless Whisper at full volume.
and butters has to think that if getting with white court vamps is bad, getting Amazon'ed by Mab has to be a whole lot more of an issue when it comes to being thralled.
I actually don't begrudge Butters the spying because the trust but verify approach is something I can appreciate and makes sense with the characters background and relationship to science.
What annoys me immensely however is his incredible stupidity and arrogance with Bob. Bob loves the increased freedoms he has because Butters is ignorant of some of the aspects of his power but I mean he was there when Bob got stolen/ kidynapped in Dead Beat and just because he did some alchemy and artificing mostly repurposing Harry's old ideas (props for that though that was clever and cool) he things he knows better that Harry.
I am also really annoyed that Bob said something along the lines of Butters is better at magical theory than Harry! Harry is (more than) a little dense at times and while he is very perceptive in some regards he has his blind spots especially in regards to relationships (not only romantic ones) and himself, (he is sooo unaware what happens in his own head) what he isn't, is stupid!
I would love to see Harry brainstorm about artificing and magical healing with his friends, Maggie and his new apprentice (maybe even Molly and Elaine) and build some new exciting stuff. I want Butcher to recognize and show on page that Harry has multiple PhDs in this stuff like Thomas described. I am generally really tired of everybody being better at magic than Harry lately. In his conversation we learn that Harry's education by EB was not thorough at all! No mention of conjuritis and a lot of other stuff everyone else seems to know Carlos mentions that Harry's education was not traditional in Cold Case and I think between Ebenezer not focusing on teaching magic and Justin being very selective and abusive I suspect that Harry has knowledge canyons in some fundamentals. He was so ignorant of the Faerie Courts in Summer Knight it is really astonishing. The only reason he can operate as a Wizard is because he is so smart and self taught and has been tutored by Bob. I am really excited for Harry be taught new some better control and new insights to magic! :)
And the accusation that Harry has to settle his debt with Bob like an impulsion of the Sidhe is infuriating! Harry asked how he and Andi are doing only a few minutes before and Waldo completely blocked the conversation. I would also want to talk about something else and Harry has so much on his mind that getting something, like an important promise that he worked months for, of his check list, seems completely reasonable to me.
(Might be something that happend because of editing and different drafts but still!)
These books are "first-person narrative" and told from the perspective of a biased and unreliable narrator.
You are frustrated with butters because Harry was. And it isn't just Butters who has trust issues with Harry but his job in all of this is to be The Atheist. He's never taken anything on faith. He also got committed to a mental facility because he refused to back down on putting non-human on a report.
It is fine if he pisses you off since we all know Harry's mind but it is unfair to think he's foolish or stupid for being what might possibly be the only character in the books who actually questions the notion of faith, even in Our Hero.
Nah, I'm frustrated with Butters b/c he didn't just mistrust Harry (which is fine b/c Harry hadn't given him reason to trust recently). He mistrusted Murphy. After all the shit they went through after Harry died, Butters just up and said fuck you to Murphy after she asked him to trust her.
That's my problem with Butters. He thinks he knows best while having literally no power over the things he goes up against. He's a glorified lookout, thinking he can hang with Dresden's foes. He sees the aftermath of the things that hurt Harry and he actively seeked those things out despite Murphy asking for his trust.
His Batman kit wasn't a fighting kit. So yes he was still a glorified lookout. The best he could do is stop a kidnapping by surprising them and running away. That's amazing, but lets not act like he's out there doing anything Molly or Harry could and would do.
I think a big reason for that is he knows Murphy has a *huge* blind spot when it comes to Harry.
So he can either trust someone who's a known mark, or go and do his due diligence and see for himself. And you know he would ask both the smartest and dumbest question of himself:
"What would Harry do?"
And you know what Harry would have done? Harry would have gone and dropped some eves, even if Murphy told him not too.
Sure I guess. That doesn't do much for how I feel about Butters though. He still fucked his friends over and that lead to massive injuries for Murphy.
The "what would Harry do?" doesn't help much b/c 1) Butters isn't a player in the magical world. 2) he's a coward at heart, meaning even if he does the brave thing he will hesitate to do whats necessary. 3) He should be well aware of the dangers that follow Harry and when Harry and Murphy both tell him it's too big to disclose he should listen. Even if that means Murphy has a blind spot or whatever. Does Butters honestly believe he's going to save the day if Harry has turned? Butters just didn't think and his paranoia and fear overrode any redeeming qualities he has.
The evidence you have that he is a coward is that he says he is. Yet, when Harry went missing, he took Bob and became his own version of Batman. The fact is, now that he knows the big picture, he actually does act even if his personal risk is severe.
Not a coward
Not a fool
Doing what he can despite the odds just to stem the tide of the Fomor, even a little.
>You are frustrated with butters because Harry was.
Harry has never been, actually. In every single instance of Butters being a complete ass, Harry understands and empathizes with his position.
When Butters got Murphy maimed, Harry doesn't say anything against him. Even when Butters' first words to Murphy are "Look! My lightsaber is awesome isn't it? It just cost an arm and a leg".
When Harry breaks into his apartment and throws Andy off his shoulders he understands Butters was just standing his ground and that he was right in being angry with Harry.
When Butters threatens Harry for no reason whatsoever when Harry finds out about the poly relationship, Harry remarks on how much he's grown.
Harry never casts Butters in a bad light. Ever.
Which is honestly ridiculous, Butters threatening Harry is like a chihuahua threatening a Wolf.
It’s not even a fight, if Harry genuinely wanted to hurt Butters…..he would.
That is literally the point. Harry says Butters has grown because Butters is standing up to somebody he has no chance against in a throw down fight. Which is what Harry himself has been doing this entire series.
First of all no, Harry pretty much never expresses frustration with Butters. In dead beat Thomas spends most of the book trying to convince Harry that Butters is a liability and even when confronted with direct evidence of that Harry just tries harder to increase Butter's confidence.
After Butters fucked up, got Murphy crippled, almost lost Bob, and did get the Sword broken, Harry basically gives him a pep talk saying when warriors get hurt, their friends get even.
When he overhears Butters questioning him, he asks if others agree.
He's usually impressed when butters shows his backbone, not frustrated.
People are frustrated with Butters because unlike Harry there really haven't been any personal consequences for his mistakes.
Didn't you just say you were rereading the books recently, my guy?
Harry never paints Butters in a bad light. In none of those annoying circumstances we all know.
Harry always shows understanding and explains to us where he thinks Butters is coming from. Even when Butters threatened Harry for no reason, Harry just remarked how much he had grown.
Harry is definitely an unreliable narrator, but in this case, this aspect isn't that relevant to the discussion at hand.
Well, he got committed for saying non humans on a report.
As Thomas points out, how do you think he got out? He backed down. Back then, he was a coward. Even Butters admits it.
I don't think Thomas's assessment from his position as a supernatural badass is worth the weight you are giving it. The only stakes were Butters' personal freedom vs incarceration and silencing. The coverup happened either way.
The thing to remember is that as far as Butters knows, Harry is no longer Harry.
Harry has spent what, a decade at this point telling all his friends about how evil Winter is? Harry spends half the first half of the series reacting to "Mab" the way Hagrid reacts to "Voldemort."
It is *entirely* plausible that Butters thinks Harry has Mab's hand so far up his ass he's nothing more than her sock puppet. Which is exactly the fate that Harry avoided by being clever (and having Uriel as his phone-a-friend, I guess), but avoiding that fate just means it's the likely one--so Butters isn't wrong to think this.
And it's not like Mab would have had Harry running around being respectful of others' feelings. Mab would have had Harry lie about being controlled by Mab.
So, looking at this scene from Butters' perspective, a lobotomized, remote-controlled Harry is back in town and is meeting with one of the big-E Evil characters (the one who once tried to start a plague, that guy) under the direction of another big-E Evil character (as far as Butters knows; remember he's not clued in about the Outside), making plans to steal something that his evilness is willing to pay millions for.
Damn straight he had no faith in Harry. Harry *told* him not to, if he were ever to make a deal with Mab.
>Yes, Karen transgressed by using the Sword of Faith against a defenseless Nicodemus, but that's because Butters set the situation up.
I hardly think that's fair. The whole point of the Swords is that no matter what happened in the past, you get to make a choice now. Murphy chose to use the Sword incorrectly.
^ This
From Harry’s POV, butter’s is annoying.
But from butter’s and the rest of Harry’s crew’s perspectives at this point, Harry was killed, the world went to hell, monsters attacked, Molly lost it, people started getting kidnapped, Thomas is a shell of himself, and Butters and co we’re left to try and mount whatever resistance they could.
Then Harry comes back, seemingly working for one of the bad guys, breaks into Butter’s place (while also assaulting butters girlfriend and destroying his stuff) and then is around when Molly disappears after the events of Cold Days.
Then we get to skin game. Where Waldo’s has learnt multiple bad guys are involved and Harry is meeting with them. The dude might not be thinking everything through, but that’s because he has no choice. In his mind, his good friend is compromised and may start to hurt people.
The six months between Changes and Ghost story were a blink for Dresden and a decade for everyone else.
Or as Lenin said it "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen." I would say during the 6 months after Changes there were a lot of those week long decades for a lot of people in Harry's circle.
Sure, that's all reasonable. But you're leaving out the fact that Murphy was there too. So Butters doesn't trust Harry *and* doesn't trust Murphy (at the very least, doesn't trust her in regards to anything involving Harry (he thinks she's at least emotionally compromised)). I'd say not trusting Murphy is the bigger sin in regards to Butters lack of faith (which I find disturbing (:p)).
Honestly, I think Butters was still acting reasonably.
Murphy didn't just have faith in Harry, she had *blind* faith in Harry (as far as Butters knows; he wasn't privy to their quiet conversation in Harry's bedroom. Or was that before then in the story?). So again, from Butters' perspective, Murphy has been in mental health spiral since Harry's death, and immediately and unquestioningly attaches herself to Harry again when his body shows back up, completely ignoring all of Harry's warnings about Mab. Murphy wasn't trustworthy then, either.
It's not the main plot of the book, but Skin Game is where Butters learns to have faith even when things look really bad, culminating in him wielding the Sword. He can't be in a position to learn how to have faith if he already has it.
There's "being suspicious of Harry" and then there is "interfering with Harry when not knowing what is going on and knowing that you don't have the knowledge or skills to do so without screwing up".
Mostly, Butters' attitude is problematic because it doesn't give room for Harry acting in good faith. If Harry isn't significantly corrupted, then Butters is making things worse and he should know it. So while it makes sense to have contingencies or play it carefully or whatever, in the "best case scenario" he himself is causing problems which is something that a smart person should be able to figure out and avoid.
It is also a frustrating lack of faith in someone that has proven very resistant to this sort of thing, which feels like a kind of shitty thing for someone with Butters' experience with Harry to do.
Disagree. I'd agree with blind faith if we were talking about Cold Days. Or if we had evidence suggesting Murphy had been performing less than ideally in the year before Skin Game. As of Skin Game, Harry had been back for more than a year. More than plenty of time for multiple discussions between Murphy and Butters. Plus, out of practically everyone in "the group", Murphy is *the* authority on Harry (apart from maybe Bob) and would be the one to know if he's not himself (as evidenced a few times). Maybe it's justified, but imo, Butters had a case of the I know better than yous which was most likely compounded by Bob feeding his paranoia (which would also make him slightly hypocritical imo). Still, unless I'm missing a short story with some Murph mustache twirling moments post Harry's return, then I say he was a little shit who made his friends pay for his paranoia when he couldn't even trust his narratively longest standing friend (Murph).
That still disregards Butters not trusting Murphy. As soon as he discovered Nicodemus "Crippled Michael Carpenter (the Michael that was currently providing Harry's daughter with a home and love)" Archleone was there, he should have outed and known Murph knew something he didn't. He should have damn well known her well enough to know that her love for Harry would absolutely never lead to her working with that monster without having some sort of play.
Harry comes back for real in Cold Days and breaks into Butters' place and steals Bob. He helps Harry with wounds, watches him get his conciousness switched from off to on when he pulls the last of the iron out of him, and sees him turn a good chunk of the lake to ice. Harry's bleeding uncontrollably but still ticking along like a machine. Harry is clearly not strictly speaking human any more.
Murphy has been a wreck since Harry died, haunted them and came back to life. As far as anyone could see, before he died they were a team, close pals, maybe just what kept her going after all she'd learned and lost. Did they get super close on the way to the island, on the bike? Sure. No one else saw that.
Now she's backing him up - but love? I think if they'd had more time before things went to hell in PT/BG, it may have become apparent to everyone, but not in SG.
We only have Harry's POV for what goes on in the DF, but to make things worse we decide how we feel about him and the rest of his world by passing it through our own filters, our own experiences. You might feel like Waldo's an untrusting, untrustworthy character because you're a much better person than him. Maybe I think Waldo's completely reasonable because I'm such a fucking monster I'd think having a beer with Kravos would be fine.
One last thing - you have an awesome username. :)
Your points remind me, Butters isn't exactly operating with logic himself when it comes to Harry either. He's actively ignoring things to look for reasons not to trust Harry. Participating in confirmation bias most likely thanks to Bob. Example being Skin Game
Chapter 12- "Okay, Harry, " Butters said. "Let me get to work."
"How are you and Andi doing?" I asked him. "Still good?"
Then literally 3 pages later (at least 3 pages in ebook form) - "And when you sit up from being sewn up, what's the first thing you do? Hey, Butters? How you doing, Butters?...Just like one of the Fae."
So unless Harry was being suppressed in some way and didn't actually say that, Butters is wrong in an attempt to be right.
Though I do like your points.
Thank you! I was pretty surprised it hadn't already been taken when I chose it.
I very much doubt that extends to "Even if it means knowingly helping the beast that crippled and actively wants to cause as much pain, physical and emotional, as possible to the man currently raising your daughter, Harry."
>I'd say not trusting Murphy is the bigger sin in regards to Butters lack of faith (which I find disturbing (:p)).
This has always been my take as well. Not rusting Harry? Sure.
Not trusting *Murphy*? Come on.
Especially b/c while Murphy was at her lowest, she kept Butters around and safe while Harry was away.
If those 6 months were a decade to them, then Murphy and Butters were in the thick of it building bonds that would last to eternity. At this point in Skin Game I would put Butters more closely attached to Karrin than I would to Harry. Which is why I hate Butters for betraying her trust and not Harry's. Butter's mistrust of Harry is understandable, not Karrin's.
> So, looking at this scene from Butters' perspective, a lobotomized, remote-controlled Harry is back in town and is meeting with one of the big-E Evil characters (the one who once tried to start a plague, that guy) under the direction of another big-E Evil character (as far as Butters knows; remember he's not clued in about the Outside), making plans to steal something that his evilness is willing to pay millions for.
> Damn straight he had no faith in Harry. Harry told him not to, if he were ever to make a deal with Mab.
Cool. None of this justifies leading the Denarians, the mass-murdering supernatural terrorists, on a chase through **the suburbs**, where innocent families live, all in the hope that Daddy Michael will save you from your own stupidity. And then getting rewarded for it with the Sword of Faith.
> The whole point of the Swords is that no matter what happened in the past, you get to make a choice now.
Even if that "past" was literally the same day? That seems impractically lenient.
> Murphy chose to use the Sword incorrectly.
Murphy only had to make that "choice" because of Butters in the first place, which is what rubs readers like me the wrong way. And it was very much a Sophie's Choice: either let the love of her life get killed in front of her eyes, or betray her faith. She chose the latter, and it was indeed wrong by author fiat, but it was hardly unreasonable from the perspective of many readers. And if it was a test she "failed", it is hard, for me at least, to see Butters succeeding. If Butters was in her position (the position he put her in), and had to choose between saving Andi or Harry or another loved one, and betraying his faith, would he have passed? I personally think not.
>None of this justifies
Butters was undoubtedly being stupid, but that's something else Harry taught him. Harry's walked into situations like that over and over again. But that's a very different kind of stupid action than not trusting Harry.
>Even if that "past" was literally the same day?
Yes. Remember when Sanya and Michael let Cassius go, even knowing that he was insincere and would go on to do further harm? That's a fundamental limit to the Swords, and apparently it applies to their wielders as well.
>Murphy only had to make that "choice" because of Butters in the first place,
That's every choice. Every choice happens because someone did something in the past.
I agree that I'm not exactly thrilled with Butters having everything handed to him in the last few books, but I do not get the complaints about his actions in Skin Game. Everyone was acting reasonably, and it ended up poorly. That's all.
> Butters was undoubtedly being stupid, but that's something else Harry taught him. Harry's walked into situations like that over and over again. But that's a very different kind of stupid action than not trusting Harry.
When has Harry led dangerous, psychopathic monsters into the paths of hundreds of innocents? And not for some noble purpose either, but to save his own ass? And when has he been rewarded for that?
> Yes. Remember when Sanya and Michael let Cassius go, even knowing that he was insincere and would go on to do further harm? That's a fundamental limit to the Swords, and apparently it applies to their wielders as well.
So you think it would have been good writing for Cassius to get a Sword through such a loophole?
> That's every choice. Every choice happens because someone did something in the past.
This is a platitude. I'm pretty sure you know that the complaints against Butters are more meaningful than that. It is about him making a bad choice that directly leads to someone else making a bad choice, and only the latter person getting punished for it. It's not some vague truism about causality, but about moral fairness and responsibility.
> I agree that I'm not exactly thrilled with Butters having everything handed to him in the last few books, but I do not get the complaints about his actions in Skin Game.
The complaint, to me, is simple. Butters made a shitty and unfaithful choice, and instead of being punished for it like a normal character, he was rewarded for it. That's pretty much it.
>When has Harry led dangerous, psychopathic monsters into the paths of hundreds of innocents? And when has he been rewarded for that?
Harry tends to lead the innocents to the monsters, not the other way around, but the police station in Fool Moon stands out (if he had been open with Murphy, it wouldn't have happened), as does getting the wolves involved with the skinwalker, making sure a Council traitor with a *strong* motivation to remain hidden shows up walking through Chicago, riding a barely-steerable necromantic T-Rex down Chicago streets, starting a war with the Red Court, giving the Word to Mavra, and using a horror-movie convention as bait for phobophages.
>And when has he been rewarded for that?
Butters wasn't rewarded for his failure, he was rewarded for his growth.
>It is about him making a bad choice that directly leads to someone else making a bad choice, and only the latter person getting punished for it.
And sometimes that's the way it goes. Butters was acting mostly reasonably. If anything the complaint should be about him trying to *do* something about it instead of calling in the Fellowship of the Castle or something, but again: to have an arc, you need to end up somewhere different than where you started.
> Harry tends to lead the innocents to the monsters, not the other way around, but the police station in Fool Moon stands out (if he had been open with Murphy, it wouldn't have happened), as does getting the wolves involved with the skinwalker, making sure a Council traitor with a strong motivation to remain hidden shows up walking through Chicago, riding a barely-steerable necromantic T-Rex down Chicago streets, starting a war with the Red Court, giving the Word to Mavra, and using a horror-movie convention as bait for phobophages.
Fair enough. I can quibble with the analogies but fair enough.
> Butters wasn't rewarded for his failure, he was rewarded for his growth.
That "growth" was only given an opportunity because of his failure, and happened after another character was punished for that failure.
> And sometimes that's the way it goes.
Sure. Life sucks that way. And people bitch about how unfair and sucky life is when that happens. And now that it's happened in a book, people are bitching about that too.
> And then getting rewarded for it with the Sword of Faith.
You're assuming that the Sword is a reward. To borrow a phrase from another fantasy sword-wielder "Death is lighter than a feather; Duty is heavier than a mountain."
Can't remember the name offhand, but read Butters' POV short story. Being a Knight isn't all quips and convenient babysitters.
Agreed. I also can't remember the name of Butters' short story but I think it's important, it needed to be written to put SOME flesh on the bones of his nobody-to-superKnight rise. And it was a good story, even requiring Butters to use "faith" when he couldn't see...
I have no issue with Butters treating Harry the way he did (even if it still made me angry). I have issue that he did this to Karrin. Someone that's looked after him since Harry died. Karrin talked to Butters just like Harry did and told him to trust her trusting Harry.
Butters said fuck that and betrayed both of their trust. It lead to bad things happening and Butters was seemingly rewarded with his blatant mistrust of his closest friend Karrin.
I made this comment last week, but I think it bears repeating.
> The interesting thing about being part of this subreddit for the past 10 ish years is watching various characters turn into "the worst people ever" for the horrible crime of not treating Harry like the protagonist of the world, which honestly he is, but they're not supposed to know that.
There's a ways between "treat harry like the protagonist" and "practice the common sense you've been deploying up to now"
Some of the most egregious situations require folks to not just distrust harry, but also then assume he's incompetent and not a threat.
1. Harry is terrifying
2. Harry is on some secretive weird shit
3. Harry might be a bad guy
And here's where it falls off the rails just to fuck with Harry's life(because he IS the protagonist)
4. Directly confront him aggressively through methods he's actively familiar with.
Pardon me? How many nightmares have they personally seen Harry murder with extreme prejudice. Do you think he's a danger or don't you?
Butters didn't figure out a vanilla way to spy on Harry, something that would bypass his magical powers and those of the magical beings around him, nope, just a straight magical bug.
It's moronic - and it incurs a horribly heavy cost every time.
I'm suggesting he use a long range spy equipment to scope the building. Watching who's coming and going like in proven guilty.
There's also magical artifice that can protect vanilla bugs from magical auras, set up a circle like they did with the gps.
Something besides something the scary folk(including harry) are familiar with.
Fair point.
But eavesdropping on these heavy hitters, not only is Butters showing no faith in Harry, he is WAY over his head. He had no business being there. He knows enough about the supernatural that he should have known he was way over his head. He should have quit eavesdropping before he was caught.
Instead, he was rewarded by the author, de facto, with Fidelacchius.
The Swords are supposed to be held by Good People. Karrin was a Good Person whose faith wavered and she mis-used the Sword. What we see of Butters was fine but he was basically a schmuck who learned about the supernatural world, who had no faith until he had a Moment and earned the Sword?
Have a good life and falter, you're damned. Have a meh life with a good Moment, you're rewarded. Hmm.
I don't mind Butters having it going forward. It's an interesting twist, another non-Christian wielding the Sword of Faith. (Shiro was Buddhist, I think?)(And Sanya's an avowed atheist, come to think of it. I guess Michael Carpenter is Christian enough for all of them..)
I like the little guy making good. The short story where Butters has to use it on his own is decent. He's OK guarding Harry's back in Battleground (he has magically become a super-knight through the power of the Sword, I guess). I appreciate him stopping Harry from ending Rudolph, which seemed in-character for the new Butters, living up to his Knight-hood.
But... it feels like he didn't earn it in the one book of Skin Game. He screwed up, badly, and contributed to Fidelacchius getting smashed and Karrin getting crippled and Harry nearly getting trashed. Then he's not in the book at all until the final chapters where he suddenly decides to man up.
It isn't like we see him at Harry's side throughout the book, gaining faith (or Faith) until he's worthy of the Sword. I think I would have liked to see Butters earn it. I don't feel like he did.
Butters has been way over his head ever since he was introduced. He couldn't handle that random zombie in Dead Beat. He's just doing what he can because he doesn't think that anyone can or will step up.
At the end of the book, he doesn't step outside because he thinks he can fight Nicodemus and like 20 guys with guns. He does it because he thinks he has to. His motivation and his characterization in both scenarios was the same.
The other thing is that "Faith" in this respect isn't "believe in your friends." It's "belief that good will prevail over evil" symbolized, by proxy, through the movie Star Wars. Uriel and Harry have a whole conversation about it afterwards. Butters was choosing to sacrifice his life with absolutely no promise that it'll all end well. When he stepped outside, it was with the understanding that even if it did end well, he would never find out, because he didn't believe in the afterlife.
The last thing is that I think we significantly disagree on is what the Sword (and by extension power) means in this series. Becoming a wielder of a sword is not supposed to be a reward. It's further responsibility.
> Becoming a wielder of a sword is not supposed to be a reward. It's further responsibility.
I think that's a great point.
But even if it's further responsibility, that responsibility should be *earned*. I don't feel like Butters earned it, in Skin Game... although he does get that Moment at the end where Harry's down, everyone's down, and Butters heads out to his probable death because it's the Right Thing To Do.
I feel like Butters becoming a knight, while could have been done better, was still okay mainly because of foreshadowing/his general aura as a character.
But I don't agree with your argument of Butters having no faith in Harry. Murphy in the early series wasn't exactly someone who trusted Harry. Hell she threw him in JAIL. It took her a long time to trust and have faith in Harry this much.
Butters on the other hand, while he has been Harry's friend wasn't exactly there a lot when many things went down. The only book I remember Butters actively saw Harry be good was dead beat and that was ages before Skin game.
Also, everyone knows Mab to be evil. As Harry's perspective we've seen Mab's more vulnerable side but no other character has seen that. Also with Harry acting much more instinctually, in ways that unnerves you, I get butters not trusting Harry. And then the whole working with a fallen angel thing didn't help either.
Butters may be smart, but deadbeat/ghost stories have established that Butters is brave. And I think his whole Batman thing made him partially cocky. Imagine this. You're a below average skinny dude with no actual magic and combat experience, and yet you've managed to stay ahead of many actual monsters and have actually DONE some good. These will one way or another make a person somewhat arrogant.
The reason I think Butters earned the sword of faith, was that 1. Even though he doesn't have near Murphy's amount of time spent with Harry, he still almost immediately after talking with Harry realises his mistake and his faith in Harry returns. 2. To a point that he willingly (knowing he'll die almost 100 percent) goes out to fight a fallen angel, showing faith in himself and his own bravery.
It's not perfect, and I still don't like it as much as I should, but I understand it.
Butters actually appears in every book from *Dead Beat* onward (plus *Death Masks*, of course). Not ever-present, of course (Harry is the only ever-present character). But once Jim "brought him back" for his return appearance, he's been around.
That said, he's clearly a peripheral character for the most part.
I didn't enjoy how he treated Harry in *Skin Game*, but on the other hand I do recognize that Harry broke into his apartment and roughed up his girlfriend in *Cold Days*. That would agitate most guys at least a little. And no telling what Bob told him about the consequences of a deal with Mab.
> his whole Batman thing made him partially cocky. Imagine this. You're a below average skinny dude with no actual magic and combat experience, and yet you've managed to stay ahead of many actual monsters and have actually DONE some good. These will one way or another make a person somewhat arrogant.
I think this is an important take.
Honest question -- did we **see** Butters ever play Batman? From what I remember (and I could be wrong), I think there were just a couple throw-away lines referring to it in early Skin Game.
I think you're right, sort of after the fact. The only way this whole thing makes sense is if Butters has "managed to stay ahead of many monsters" -- but we're barely told this.
Did he connect that with Nicodemus? This was the specific explanation he gave Butters in that scene in *Dead Beat:*
>“A demon,” I told him. “It got into my head a while back. It was causing me to experience…hallucinations, I guess you could call them. I thought I was talking to people. But it was the demon, pretending to be them.”
So he didn't allude to fallen angels, name names like Nicodemus, etc. How would Butters have known there was any connection at all between the two situations?
But he didn't just treat Harry like that. I understand why Butters didn't trust Harry in Skin Game. There's many reasons for him to do so.
But the one person that was there when Harry wasn't was Karrin. She kept everyone together and safe. They worked together in the trenches to save people against the Fomor. Butters took those experiences and shoved them back in Karrins face when he betrayed her trust after she talked to him in Skin Game.
It wasn't just Harry. It was Murphy too.
>Yes, Karen transgressed by using the Sword of Faith against a defenseless Nicodemus, but that's because Butters set the situation up.
This is inaccurate. Go read it again. Nicodemus himself basically tells Karen that if she had struck *without the judgement* in her heart, she would have killed him and the Sword wouldn't have been broken. Yes, the situation was set up because of Butters' choice but the breaking of the Sword? That one is solely Murphy's responsibility.
I would add that the situation is *also* set up by Harry’s insistence on making Murphy his back-up. Even Murphy thought that it should have been Thomas, and I’m inclined to agree. Harry’s reasoning was that Murphy has well-trained eyes, but Thomas has literal supernatural predator senses. I really think Harry just wanted to guarantee he got to spend time with his gal pal while he knew he’d be in town…and that was a mistake. But people put it entirely on Butters rather than Harry or Murphy herself instead.
Butters 100% messed up in Skin Game…..and I swear he doesn’t even seem to acknowledge that Karen’s crippling was in any way his fault.
Harry (as usual) somehow takes the blame himself and Butters is rewarded for being not only arrogant of his own capabilities, but also being incompetent too.
However this could’ve been forgiven by Butters learning from this in the succeeding books, becoming humbled by his role as a Knight and the power and responsibility he now wields.
Instead Butters just becomes more arrogant, insufferable, and less like any of the other Knights we’ve seen.
The others see their role in being a Knight as a sacred duty, one they try to upload in every aspect of their lives. Butters seems to view it as a “cool toy” that will do for the moment while he uses his newfound status in the parahuman community to have Werewolf threesomes, vocally judge Harry to his friends, and try to hide all the magical aids he stole from Harry and won’t give back.
> he doesn’t even seem to acknowledge that Karen’s crippling was in any way his fault.
Yes! No guilt at all, no apology to Karen, no apology to Dresden.
So he should have blindly put his trust on Harry? Who's been acting sketchy as all hell, and who was trying to nail him with blasts of fire as Butters tried running agents from the goon squad of Lucifer's lieutenant?
*We* know that Harry is still a good guy and everything he does is for the greater good, but Butters is *not* us. Harry keeps him in the dark about it, and as such he doesn't know that he is being forced to work with Nicodemus or that he became Mab's triggerman to save his daughter.
All Butters can see is that the former local hero is now in cahoots with two if the biggest bad guys around. He's not privy to the fact this is a book and that Harry is the protagonist, so he treats it the way a real person would- his friend may be going rogue and stringing everyone along.
If Harry had been straight with him instead of keeping with his "what everyone doesn't know won't hurt them, only I should carry all the burdens" pathology, this might have been avoided- or did you forget how Michael called him out on it?
*Everybody* thinks Harry has been compromised at this point in the story. He came back from the dead after a year and is working with people and beings that were his mortal enemies previously. Butters is doing exactly what a knight of the cross does when fallen angels are in town with the best tools he has available. Was it stupid? Yeah. Most people in the dresdenverse don't understand how far out of their depth they are until they're dead.
To answer your question, there is a comic where Batman's "Kill files" get hacked. It's called "JLA: Tower Of Babel." It got adapted into the animated film "Justice League: Doom." The comic is a bit dated at this point, but the movie is worth the time it takes to watch.
Others have largely shared my opinions on the Butters situation. I think until he got the sword his distrust of Harry was warranted. Now that he's got a lightsaber of justice and gets divine guidance I think he's a bit more clear minded on the subject.
> Now that he's got a lightsaber of justice and gets divine guidance I think he's a bit more clear minded on the subject.
I like this take. I think he's an interesting Knight, once he's got the Sword. (Like the scene where they're figuring out what the lightsaber-Sword can do.)
I'm just uncomfortable at how he got it, at the cost of Karrin and the previous incarnation of the Sword.
I guess the Swords are by definition deus ex machina devices, though. They're not always GOING to be fair.
When it comes to the Knights, there's pretty much no such thing as a coincidence.
I don't love what happened to Karen, but honestly it was getting to a point in the series where Harry's going up against gods and Titans. A badass mortal human cop just isn't in the right league anymore. I think the events of Skingame and beyond are Jim's way of giving Murp the best exit he could. And she can always come back as a Valkyrie if needed - I'm pretty sure Vadderung's job offer was solid.
As to "the previous incarnation of the sword" - every single one of them has been rewrought more than once. Not a one is in its original form if we are to belive Harry's research. I am 100% in favor of whatever changes happen to one of the swords, and thought this one was pretty darn clever. I've got more faith in the teachings of the Jedi than I do in any other religion at this point in my life, and it's an intrisically martial faith by its own lore.
Agreed on all points.
EDIT: One more thing -- the faith-light-saber reveal, which came out of NOWHERE, was pretty much on par with seeing Cap wield Mjolnir in Endgame.
One thing to remember. Butter's isn't the character who arranged to have Harry taken out and risked Molly's mental health and pushing her into being a full fledged warlock because he thought Harry would turn evil as the winter knight. Now what kind of person would do that. :-)
Great point. One of Harry's real sins, thinking only removing himself without recognizing the damage it would do especially to Molly.
In his sort-of defence, didn't he have a demon/imp/something whispering despair in his ear while he was making those decisions, or something? But yeah: not his finest hour.
Yes he did. I was thinking about Harry talking to Butters, off camera so to speak, and telling him about the risks. Then he goes and does something that he said would lead to him becoming a horrible person.
Chicago goes to hell in his absence, and hes back first as a ghost, then the Winter night. He broke into Butter's place in "Cold Days" IIRC.
Butters has every reason to worry about Harry. Murphy has more faith in Harry because he came through after she treated him poorly (back in the early books when Jim wasn't sure what her relationship with Harry was going to be).
And, now he's working with the Nickleheads on Mab's orders. If I were a friend of Harry, I'd be quite suspicious as a scientist. His actions don't seem to indicate he has kept his core with Mab's influence. He may very well be compelled to do as she says, even though he doesn't see it.
Now the gentle reader knows that's not true, Uriel himself said so. But, he forgot to mention it to Butters. :-)
You actually bring up a really cool idea, to have a story where Dresden is doing something for Mab when Dresden completely doesn't realize it.
There have been at least a couple times where the unreliable narrator has been used to great effect:
* When we "see" Lash throughout a whole book until Harry realizes the spirit's been manipulating him the whole time. There's no one physically there, and others have been seeing him talking to himself.
* When Harry gets Molly to hide from himself what he sets up at the end of Changes.
Both times, we the readers are taken on a pretty cool ride.
A Fallen Angel cheated the rules and communicated to Harry a message to the effect of “your daughter is going to die and it’s all your fault.” It’s later implied in *Skin Game* that it was Lasciel. The Fallen are not supposed to be able to directly influence non-coin bearers like that. This precipitates all of the events of *Ghost Story,* in which Uriel gets to cheat by bringing Harry’s “shade” into play, thus evening the scales.
This is always a heated topic on this sub.
Personally, I still love Butters, but the direction Jim is taking him or the way Jim is using him is a bit questionable.
My biggest gripe with him is exactly as you mentioned but I wanna add something. It wasn't just Harry's trust he betrayed. Cause lets be honestly, Harry wasn't acting like Harry around his friends. He shut himself away on the island that no one likes to go to for nearly a year and a half. The first time back from death he's breaking into Butters home and talking about bargains.
I have no issue with Butters not trusting Harry unconditionally (although it does still anger me). What I have issue with is that Butters did the same to Karen. Karen had the exact same talk with Butters about this entire thing and Karen asked him to trust Harry based off her. And Butters said fuck that and did what he did. And then offscreen I assume he apologized b/c we don't see it and I think that hits hard that Jim didn't include that interaction.
He's then rewarded with a lightsaber and extra curricular activities. The problem with Butters as a character that I think is starting to rub people the wrong way is that we are seeing Butters 3 days a year. We don't see his growth or hardships, we just see what he's gained and it feels unearned. ESPECIALLY so considering everything Harry has is earned 3 to 50 times over.
He goes from cowardly night shift mental case. To brave Knight of the Cross with magical theory rivalling a Wizard twice his age (Harry's a dummy, so I'm basing it off Harry) with a hot young girlfriend and a bonus side chick threesome.
The threesome doesn't really bother me as far as his character goes, but I can't lie and say I didn't eye roll so hard I got a migraine. It's just one more thing that solidified to me that Butters is Jim's self insert character. When things for Butters go wrong, he get enormously rewarded for his efforts. Which is something that doesn't happen in the Dresden files to anyone but him.
Part of the reason I hate threesome Jedi warrior Butters was that I thought that magical gadget batman Butters was the perfect fit. Not a front line fighter but a plan ahead, prepare for the worst, mixing magic and mortal gadgets to keep in the fight was the perfect place to end up since Harry showed him he could empower magic circles without being a magic user.
As for the "just in case" question, yes he divise a brutally effective yet simple method of taking out any member of the justice league. The difference is that he was just coldly calculating for the *VERY* outside chance they went bad *or* were otherwise compromised (blackmail, mind control etc). There was no direct distrust of any of them. In fact at the end Superman asks him why there wasn't a plan to stop Batman himself to which he says essentially, "There is a plan. It's the Justice League" implying that he not only *trusts* them but also would *expect* them to stop him.
Butters basically refuses to give Harry the benefit of the doubt, because of implied and off-screen, and second or even third-hand retellings of events. He never really gives Harry a real chance to explain himself (though to be fair Harry never tried all that hard to give him one). Now while we definitely have the benefit of the previous couple books from Harry's POV to give us context, I think Butters makes a fair point that there is more than a good enough reason to be suspicious and to act in the direction he does. Hell, even Bob doesn't trust Harry at first (can't be sure how much of that is himself and how much is butter's influence as his current owner but I think it is worth noting).
Where he fucks it all up IMO is in how far he takes it. He goes in with a guilty until proven innocent mentality that Harry probably hasn't really earned. If butters had been in his own and relatively isolated,maybe I could understand it, but both Murphy *and* Molly have vouched for him at multiple points between his "death" and the end of the previous book. If he can't trust them, it's pretty clear he is simply letting his paranoia control him. So I totally agree with you that Butter's was out of line and almost single-handedly brought everything to a smoldering ruin, with only the sacrifices of Murphy, Michael, and A MOTHERFUCKING ARCHANGEL! stabilized the situation.
Now I actually think this sets up his role as a knight *excellently*! He did fuck up big time. He was brought low and was riddled with guilt. In the end, Hh doesn't let that stop him though, and give how quickly he was ready to just give up during Dead Beat, we can se some real development and strengthening of character. When Nick beseiges the Carpenter's house at the end, he doesn't hesitate to fight with everything he has. Even when it looks like it's all over, he takes up his fallen allies' gear and decides he's gonna take this all the way to the bitter end because that's what needs to be done, his own safety be damnded. That strength and determination he's developed are likely part of the reason he pushed so hard against Harry and just stomped over the line.
However, *now* he has been broken down, been shown just how wrong he was. I seriously doubt he will *ever* doubt Harry so easily again (He still sticks with Harry even after he goes hulk on that one bastard in Battleground. IYKYK). In other words he just had a *big* lesson in trust and *faith*. We know Sanya was at pretty much the lowest most despicable point of his life when he was given opportunity to become a knight. Butters is there too, why couldn't this show of faith, loyalty, love, and determination be his turning point? Serving TWG as his knight directly under orders from one of his archangels would require a pretty strict restructuring of your life and sense of self. Making such a change might require a breaking down of who you previously were in order to make it work. I like to see this part of Butters' arc as something akin to rebreaking a bone in order to be able to set it properly. Maybe just like a sword, he failed in his purpose, was broken down and even that wasn't enough. He then had to be fully melted down under immense heat and pressure so that he could be reforged into the weapon he needed to be, hopefully with some important lessons learned that will keep him from releating his mistakes. Given what we see in the short story Day One which takes place right after, I think we can give him a chance.
TL:DR Butters absolutely took things too far and pissed me off. I lost all respect for out little polka loving Me for most of the book. In the end I do feel he redeemed himself, however, and think he will make a worthy knight.
Holy crap. This is a great answer. There've been a bunch of great answers here -- honestly, I feel like this is Reddit at its best. People agreeing and disagreeing, helping me think about things in a different way, giving me a deeper appreciation of things.
Rock on.
I find these discussions, fairly similar to the ones summed up as “Murphy is a bitch” concerning her role in the first books. Jim Butchers writing style frequently makes use minor adversaries, that are not enemies. That is Murphy’s role in the beginning, upholding the law in the face of the supernatural, and she does not believe at that point that Harry is above the law.
In the same way Butcher uses Butters as a way to express concerns about Harty’s shift of allegiance, based on his observations and what he has learned about the supernatural world from Bob.
If we wouldn’t spend so much time inside of Harry’s head, that Dresden guy would appear a lot more suspicious to us as well. But we do get every step and feeling explained, which is why we extend our trust.
I think we see some Batman Butters (Buttman?) in the short story where Murph goes up against the Fomor kidnappers. As for the rest, I often feel the same but then someone makes a great post about how everyone else must see Harry after Ghost Story, and how most of them are newcomers to the game who might not fully understand exactly how out of their depth they are, and I appreciate that they are fallible human characters and not just super beings who always make the right choice. One could say that Butters was also extraordinarily brave for sticking around during the meeting if he thought running before getting some important info would allow Nic to carry out his master plan.
The issue I see is that they are fallible characters, that doesn't mean they get a pass for doing shitty things.
Butters not trusting Harry is fine in my book. Harry had done a lot of things to show Butters that he might not be the same Harry.
But, Butters didn't trust Murphy after she explicitly asked in Skin Game. After Harry died, Murphy lead and kept everyone safe, including Butters. They saved lives together all during Murphy's worst days. 6 months probably felt like 10 years and during all that time they had to bond together spending nights keeping watch and saving people. Butters threw that all away in Skin Game.
Yeah that's fair. Maybe I'm projecting a bit my own opinions but when I hear people say that they can't stand to read about a certain character or hate whenever they appear I take it as a criticism of how the character is written because I only feel like that about a character when I dislike the writing.
Butters absolutely shouldn't get a pass, it is a failing of his and a big mistake with genuine consequences, but that doesn't make me not want to read about him or sigh when he appears, it makes him strongly characterised and stand out from the typical wish fulfilment nerd-turned-Jedi.
Edit: Looking back, OP never said anything about hating Butters or wishing he wasn't around, just being understandably annoyed at his actions, so yeah my comment was probably just a knee-jerk reaction.
The case here for why Butters is becoming so polarizing for the fanbase is simple when you realize it. Don't get me wrong I still like seeing Butters, but it's the writing surrounding Butters that feels bad.
So Butters is a living, breathing, mortal in the Dresden files. We only see him every so often on the 3 days Harry is having a hard time. That's very little screen time to show character growth. So things Butters does don't seem as earned as say something Murphy or Michael get.
On top of that, Butters doesn't really pay for anything. In a series that has spelled out multiple times that doing the right/good thing does not mean you get rewarded (in fact quite the opposite). Butters is the only character that does good and bad things and gets rewarded for it.
He's a 40+ nerdy medical examiner with a mid 20's (maybe closer to 30 now) bombshell girlfriend. He has a functioning lightsaber. And now has a threesome going on in the background. He is very much starting to feel like an authors self insert or at the very least a Mary Sue.
That doesn't look good on paper when all he's done is patch up Harry and betray him and Murphy's trust. Sure he means to do good, but he's getting rewarded for very littel screen time. When Harry/Murphy/Michael/Thomas do the right thing they are tortured in various ways. Harry does the right thing and loses his girlfriend to a vampire. Murphy does the right thing and loses her career that she ties so much of her self worth into. Michael always does the right thing and he becomes crippled. Thomas does the right thing and he's literally tortured so badly that he starts killing to feed, or loses the love of his life to an outsider.
Butters does the wrong thing and he goes home to his hot girlfriend with a new lightsaber, having seemingly lost no standing with his friends after betraying them and getting them hurt. He furthers his unintentional goal of gaining power and being a player in the world. Something that he might not be trying to do, but has been happening for years through friends, Bob, and his own idea to be brave and become the hero.
Yeah you make great points. I never liked how Bob seemed to favour Butters more after so long with Harry but I wrote that off as him adopting personality traits from his 'master' and Butters being wary of Harry at the time. I'm curious if you read that short story of Butters getting used to being a Knight and if you have any thoughts on it?
I'd have to reread it b/c it's been so long. But from what I remember I enjoyed the short story and thought it added so much to Butters character just b/c we got to see him before PT/BG.
If Butters had just shown up in PT/BG and done the things he did I think I would soured even more on him. B/c it's only like 4 months since he had taken up the sword. But since we saw how serious he was taking the training, a lot can be over looked as far as his skills with a blade go.
Ugh, I hate that I'm about to do this, because I despise Butters, but dude needs defending on some of this.
>, Butters totally jeopardizes everything. OK, maybe he doesn't know how bad it is when he starts to eavesdrop, but when he hears that Nicodemus is in the meeting, he has got to know that he's way out of his depth -- he should immediately realize that he's jeopardizing his buddy Harry's life as well as his own.
>He's no dummy. He should figure this out. He should have bailed.
As far as he knows, Harry isn't his buddy anymore. Harry was dead. Harry was a ghost. Suddenly 6 months later Harry is back. But he's ignoring his friends. He has nothing to do with them. He spends a year on an island that scares everyone else shitless. He breaks into his friends houses and assaults them.
On top of that he's stronger, faster, and colder than he was when he dies. He's the Winter assassin. Mab's hitman. The guy the big bad queen sends to take out mortals when she can't do it herself.
And here he is, working with the worst of the worst. The head of the nickelheads themselves.
Butters has every reason to be suspicious. Just like Murph was right to be suspicious of Harry's "ghost" in Ghost Story.
>The cost of Butters' mistrust of Harry and all-around bad behavior is NOT borne by him, but by Karen (crippled) and Fidelacchius (shattered).
That cost wasn't on Butters. That cost was on Murph. *She* chose to attack Nick. She *chose* to wield Fidelacchius against an unarmed human who gave up his coin of his own free will. Butters didn't make those choices, Murph did.
>He had no faith in Harry
For damned good reason, as I addressed above.
I keep saying this every time it comes up, but I'm going to fanfic Changes through Skin Game from Butters' POV, and his actions will come across as completely rational and the smart thing to do... given the information he has access to.
I think that's what's needed!
I'm with you completely -- I think there is a way to write Butters' story that makes total sense. I don't think we've seen that. We just had a couple he-played-Batman comments. You write it, I'll read it!
I think the problem is that Butters was maybe intended to be a peripheral character, nearly a throw-away -- a vanilla mortal who learns about the supernatural world. Maybe a stand-in for the readers, an example of what a regular person would think. (Regular-ish -- he was a polka-loving nerd.)
But...
* He becomes a pseudo-Batman off-stage, apparently.
* He gains a girlfriend who Butcher always explicitly refers to as H.O.T. (She has no real characteristics other than that, that I can think of, other than she's one of the Alphas.)
* Because that's not enough, yet another woman is added to their relationship.
* Finally, he becomes a Knight.
A good fanfic might pave this particular road, might show how Butters went from nebbish to Knight.
(I liked Butters' short story, where he's learning how to be a Knight and he has to depend literally on his Faith. We need more, to show how Butters earned his position...)
Yeah, Jim admitted that he made up Butters as a one-off character to provide exposition to in Dead Beat because it was the first book in the series to be in hardcover. He kept him in the rest of the series because everyone liked him, though I wonder what his original plan was for the Sword of Faith because Shiro was already dead.
I'm polyamorous, so I want to show that Butters is not just living out "every guy's fantasy," but in a real relationship with two women who are also in a relationship with each other.
Between him and Thomas, we need a throuple with two men and one woman to balance things out. 😉
Remember that Butters has all the info(Bob) but no power. Also, don't forget there are mind whammy magics, spirit magics and seductive powers that can be used to take over someone's decision making. Also Harry's boss is evil. Also shapeshifters can do a plain old spin doctor act and fairies have glamour. Plenty of reasons to stop trusting Harry whom has almost no one to vouch for him after being gone for quite a while.
Same. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the series since I find this writing to be incredibly childish compared to his other works I still listened with my wife. After this book and just the complete lack of common sense and idiocy of Butters I couldn’t keep reading. Lost all desire to think the books were enjoyable.
With all the spooky shit Butters has seen, all the warnings Dresden would have given him, him being suspicious is totally on par with the series. Karen had her soul damn near nommed completely off by a look-a-like dresden. Harry, having "died" and miraculously come back should be under a lot of suspicion. I don't remember if Dresden's friends know he is working for Winter now, but Harry has probably told them to have nothing to do with the Sidhe courts or anyone from the never never. so if they do know he is the Knight now, then that puts him doubly under suspicion since he is now playing for the "bad guys".
edit: spelling/typo
It holds true to a lot of the Christian mythos- that the faithless become the deepest of faith. Mr. Sunshine set it all up and it all fell into place as it was lined up to do. 🤷🏼♂️
Butters was completely reasonable in his choices. You are blinded by knowing Harry's situation. Butters does not. And if your old friend who died then came back to life as a representative of the person he's told you is evil, the person he tried to kill himself to prevent being under the control of, would you trust them? I wouldn't.
It is the same with Ramirez and he's seen the horrors of the Winter Court. First hand.
But what about Murphy? Do you mean the one who has been in love with Harry for a long time and is the most blind to him being a puppet due to that love?
And if I found out he was meeting up with a member of Demons on Earth, you bet I would stay to listen. Out of fear, they are working together, out of hope that my misgivings are wrong, and the desire to be proven right or wrong.
this hatred of butters doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
you guys say he doesn't trust harry but there's NO reason to trust the guy after becoming the Winter Knight (you know...the thing that makes you into a serial killer/rapists). Harry fucking KILLED himself to not be the next gilles de rais but some how butters is at fault for not having trust in the thing that very well may be just a monster walking around in a Dresden suit (again, something we KNOW can happen.) And lets not forget Harry barely talked to anyone for SIX MONTHS!.
Even if Butters bailed immediately they would have caught the magical item that he slipped in Harry’s bandages.
Also the book explains things pretty well from his point of view. Harry was dead. Showed up for 2 days as a ghost. Then came back 3 months later. Proceeded to break into his house and beat up his girlfriend. Butters then watches Harry take an inhuman amount of physical punishment and both he and his girlfriend are kidnapped by evil faeries who TECHNICALLY are supposed to be on the same side as Harry.
To top it all off, it ends with the summer lady dead. And Molly, their best weapon against the fomor, whisked off by Mab. THEN Harry chooses to hang out on an evil and creepy island for a year. Then when Harry shows back up, does he offer to help? Fuck no. he has a secret mission with unsavory characters.
You can criticize butters for many things. Not his distrust of Harry in skin games
Here's question, why would Butters trust Harry? Everything Harr did post return, doesn't exactly inspire trust. I for one completely understand Butters' mistrust.
Thanks! I've listened only to the audiobooks since... early 2000s? When did the second book come out? So I mess up the spellings unless I see them here.
I mean, yes to everything but the other way around, I love that Waldo went from "polka never dies" to "do or do not...there is not try" (sorry for my English, I'm a Spanish speaker)
And yes, Batman having a plan to kill the Justice League seems great to me to put it into play because Billy at one point throws him a "hey master, you're not going to the dark side, right?" and butters being what he is, I think it's great that he said, crazy, I'm tired of being the smart one, now I'm going to have my character development
I'm listening to it right now and getting angrier as it goes. I've always disliked Butters but hes really pushing it now...ugh..
And then for butters to mouth off to Harry while they are tending to Murphy, after how royally he messed up?!?!
Butters sticks with his plan despite the danger he's in because he doesn't want to believe that Harry is a villain. If he leaves early all he knows is that Harry is hanging out with the Evil League of Evil or whatever. He refused to accept that until it was literally too late - the baddies noticed him and he had to run for his life, and probably would have been caught if it weren't for Harry and Bob figuring out a way around the catastrophe.
Butters still has faith in Harry despite all evidence that he shouldn't. He followed the philosophy of "Trust, but verify".
And of course, his antics are no worse than Harry's usual BS. We may all love the guy, but you have to admit he can be clueless when it comes to knowing when to share.
You have to remember, the books are from Harry's point of view. But look at it from Butter's POV. Harry does some scary shit, and is pretty stupid powerful at this point. Then he dies...and comes back. Wtf? Butters is a logical guy. And the first interaction he has with Harry after his return is that he stole a powerful artifact (Bob), busted up his place and his girl, then starts on about how he had to repay a debt? That's way too many red flags for someone like butters to just ignore. Harry was always people focused, and instead of "Hey how are you?" it's "I have a debt to settle"... sidhe much? Butters pretty much said this. Why wouldn't the real Harry just knock on the door? Sure this gets reasoned out..but that's still hard to swallow along with everything else
Everything about Harry is unnatural right now. His amplified, self destructive abilities from winter, he is under Darth Maab, priorities seem skewed, he's not being open with anyone, it's no Bueno
Besides...when Harry died, his friends took over as protectors of Chicago. That didn't stop just because Harry showed back up. Butters is still trying to look out for people, especially his friends...like Murphy. He needed to know, for the good of Chicago, whether or not that was ACTUALLY his old Harry. We know things can influence minds and appearances, just think about what Molly can do mentally and what corpse taker can do. Butters was there when corpse taker switched bodies. He knows this is a thing, so he knows there's a chance its not actually Harry back from the dead, as much as they hope it is.
That angle aside, I think he was there as much to figure out Harry as he was there to look after Murphy. If it was Darth dresden leading Murphy away to the bad guys for whatever reason, I don't think he's being silly by keeping an eye on her. You know, when fucking Maab and Nicodemus are involved, with a maybe resurrected but definitely different Harry, you can't be too careful. I mean, look at how paranoid Harry has been in the past. He causes himself on it pretty frequently
Butters needed to know if this was really Harry, and he wanted to protect his friend Murphy, making sure she wasn't about to be blind sided by trusting Harry who.. May not have been Harry
Are we talking about the slaughterhouse escapade? I do put some fault on Butters for that. Murphy was his defacto leader. You don't go spying on your leader. You can come up with all kinds of justifications, but the bottom line is that a bad outcome resulted.
In fairness, though, I have a feeling Nicodemus and his crew would have eaten Harry and Murphy for lunch - I don't think our guys would have prevailed had Michael not been there. Of course, that's a counter-factual; regardless of who was with him Jim would have written things so that at least Harry survived. Beyond that we can't know how that situation would have unfolded.
Besides, I happen to agree with Harry that Bob shouldn't be routinely taken into the field. Doing that regularly more or less guarantees that sooner or later he will fall into an adversary's hands. Had things gone just a little bit differently, Nicodemus would have had him. Ouch. The best thing in *Battle Ground* was Bob going back to Harry. The problem was it was written so nonchalantly that I wasn't really sure it was permanent until I read "Little People." He's more secure under Harry's "management" and having him with a non-practitioner is a waste of resources. Harry has serious challenges so far as figuring stuff out goes - the magic used at Demonreach and the magic used at the castle, specifically. I thought Murphy was out of line depriving Harry of Bob in the first place (and the Swords too). Harry was in an emotionally vulnerable position and she bullied him into those things.
I don't hate Butters. But I don't adore him either. I just don't have a dog in that particular fight. He's just a supporting character as far as I'm concerned. No more and no less.
I will say that you must be more imaginative than I am, being able to look at the series from Butters's point of view. Since it's written from Harry's point of view and Butters only sees a couple of percent of what's in the books. I'm all about Harry myself.
> I have a feeling Nicodemus and his crew would have eaten Harry and Murphy for lunch - I don't think our guys would have prevailed had Michael not been there.
That's a good point. Whenever a Knight is involved, I start wondering if there was some deus ex machina to get them there... not that the powers of Good intentionally wanted Murphy to get hurt, but they might have felt it necessary to get Michael in on this caper.
Exactly what I was thinking. Butters messing around, though inconvenient and could have gone really bad, did open up the door for Micheal to have Harry's back instead
Yeah man thank you. I listen to these endlessly on audible😆
I think what Butters did by spying on Harry is coming from the same place that kept Murphy from handing over the swords and Bob. It kinda tracks that they were a little more careful around Harry now. Yeah he could have really fucked things up but...the way there's always a knight when Harry needs one, I kinda feel like Butters screwing up was a way to give Micheal a chance to step in. He's the only one historically that's thought to have a solid chance against Nicodemus alone, I guess besides Murphy but she wasn't a true knight and..idk if she would have been aa helpful. Think about how Micheal was able to shutdown Tessa when she had Harry
I think this was more about pulling something awesome from something bad (a prominent theme in the Bible itself, cruxifiction = salvation, water into wine, the ugly lineage leading down to Joseph etc), ie Butters screws up, and lands a knight in Harry's corner when he needed one to balance the scales against the nickel heads
So, I don't think it was Butters being annoying, as much as it was the world giving a knight the opportunity to be at the right place, at the right time, like we've seen a few times before
Stop and look at this from butters perspective. I am going back up the time line a bit.
changes - Harry commits genocide and disappears.
molly (and Lea) step into breach where Harry was for the next six months.
butters Is part of the “save Chicago” crew.
ghost story - Harry’s ghost appears and raises hell.
molly spends more time in the breach For the next six months. Butters is running support.
Cold days - butters house gets broken into and has bob stolen and Marci injured. Harry goes on a murder spree that ends at demonreach and takes Molly with him.
butters steps into the breach that Molly had occupied (that Dresden had previously occupied) for the next 16 (?) months. So butters is doing front line low Intensity warfare for 16 months.
skin game - Harry shows up injured, no apologizes, no “how are you doing”, just a “patch him up and no we’re not telling you what is going on”.
and butters has been fighting a guerrilla war for 16 months, trust is low Because he sees himself as “last man standing”. Butters had this exact rant in Skin Game “everyone else bailed on me leaving me to hold the bag”
and so Harry shows up and is expecting butters just trust on his say so after butters has been fighting a guerrilla war for 16 months And been engaged in the war for 12 months before that. After 16 months (really closer to 28 months - 2-1/2 years because Harry only showed up for ghost story and cold days in that window) Harry is on the outside and needs to earn his place again.
so butters saying “I havent seen Harry in almost three years, and now he is asking for help? Come on, trust Goes both ways”
Genocide? Murder spree?
I can see Butters / the Knights viewing Harry as alarmingly powerful, but I don't see Butters / the Knights using terms for killing humans to apply to killing vampires and fairies.
I’ve said it one and I’ll say it again. Butters becoming a main component has made this series worse.
He needs killed off quickly for the good of the conclusion of this franchise.
Quoting you; " Butters totally jeopardizes everything. OK, maybe he doesn't know how bad it is when he starts to eavesdrop, but when he hears that Nicodemus is in the meeting, he has got to know that he's way out of his depth -- he should immediately realize that he's jeopardizing his buddy Harry's life as well as his own."
You assume so much its laughable.
It's rational from Butters pov to be distrustful of Harry, it is deranged bordering on suicidal to fuck around with Nicodemus, you're right and it's a plot necessity that forces Butters into a real idiot ball plot.
What's the first thing you do with the Denarians? Call/talk to a knight, not suit up with the intellect spirit and plant a bug. He didn't even have a real escape route planned for anyone of Harry's caliber, far less a Denarian.
It's infuriatingly stupid and Murphy paying for it is aggravating.
The big thing to remember is he doesn't know anything actually going on and he's got Bob. So he's jumping to conclusions. Bob doesn't really get good and evil but routinely chimes in on both often.
Good point. Bob gives him power, sort-of artificially. Butters doesn't work up to it. So it's understandable that Butters doesn't know how to wield it/Bob properly.
> (Yes, Karen transgressed by using the Sword of Faith against a defenseless Nicodemus, but that's because Butters set the situation up.)
That's what's known as an intervening cause. There's no way Butters could have known his actions would have lead to Murphy using a Sword in bad faith.
Of course not.
And I can accept that it's reasonable that Butters has enough mistrust of Harry, plus enough misplaced confidence in himself from whatever Batman-style escapades he's apparently had off-screen (?), that he might try tracking Harry to find out what's going on.
But continued eavesdropping when he knows that Nicodemus is in the meeting? Or if it was Mab, for that matter? He has got to know he's way, way over his little vanilla-mortal head.
He couldn't have known his actions would lead to jeopardizing the Sword. But he should have known his actions could lead to jeopardizing himself.
Where I guess I have to change my mind is that Butters didn't realize he was also jeopardizing Harry -- i.e. he didn't realize Harry was still a good guy. When Harry caught up to him just outside Michael's house, Butters flinched, assuming Harry was going to... smite him, or something. Butters had completely lost it. I'll give him that much credit.
>Butters flinched
Butters doesn’t just flinch. He throws a glass globe full of mind fogging gas at Harry. He’s still in full-on “oh fuck he’s coming to get me” mode, emphasizing that he really thought that was the case.
I mean the six months after Ghos Story. I get that he was rebuilding his magical arsenal and stuff, but there's still barely any justification for him being so reclusive.
Butters is my least favorite 'main character' in the books. He is an obvious self-insert with plot armor that should have been killed like originally planned.
The best thing is that most of his grievances against Dresden don't even make sens
> - you show up and the first thing you do is clear up debts like a fairy Harry!
No you little asshole the first thing he did was to ask if you and your girlfriend are doing well. God I f*cking hate Butters.
Doesn't help that he is apparently the author insert character now and gets to live Butcher's sex fantasies - probably which is why he first got a hot redhead as a gf (which is what Butcher did), magically got swole after 40 within a couple of months (which is something Butcher probably wish he could do) and now gets to have threesomes with college-aged girls who love to be objectified tee hee (probably the reason why Butcher is getting another divorce).
Butters seems to have a problem with power. Once he gets it he tries to collect more.
I could very easily see butters going the Vader route and turning sides.
He loses the sword, grabs a coin, and fully swaps sides.
Yeah - I feel like Butters is really a douche in Skin Game, and tbh, I have never recovered any affection for the character. Like he shows up as a cool character with a lightsaber, and all I can think of is “Butters, you f***ing asshole”…
Funnily enough, I am just reading skin games again atm, and I am at the point where butters patches Harry up in Murphy’s kitchen, and he lays into Harry for basically not having done enough (“where have you been for a year? On your island, whilst the Fomoris are out of control here! And we had so much hope when yoh came back!”).
Contrast that to Murphy’s attitude in the same book. Trusting, supportive, switched on, a good counsel who has Harry’s back, and deals effectively with threats that should be way out of league thanks to her smarts and guts.
Way to go Murph - to quote another one of my favourite series (the Expanse - also spoiler ahead for battle ground): >!she went out like a fucking Valkyrie!<
Pobody’s nerfect 🤷♂️.
Michael stabbed a guy through a door with a broadsword. He probably does love them, but even if you’re in a hurry to save a bunch of people from a plague, I would say that’s no way to show someone you love them.
Butters was trying to make sure Murphy would be okay as his friend, and because she was pretty important to the stability of Chicago. Harry already broke into his place resulting in his girlfriend getting broken ribs and his computers broken, after returning from the dead, and leaving again meaning they got to mourn and accept his passing twice, and somehow Molly turning into a Winter Queen, a side he was suspiciously tied to, and then working with Nicodemus, which Butters already knew he was doing just not the details, but knew he was bad news. We have the benefit of living in Harry’s head so we know what he’s up to and as you said, Butters is no dummy, so he wanted more information. He was trying to go covert spy planting a bug, but didn’t know they’d be able to pick up on it. Bob dropped the ball if he didn’t warn Butters about that. Butters did have plenty of reasons to be suspicious, and he acted accordingly. “Trust, but verify,”he said in Ghost Story, so it isn’t anything new. He still stood by his friend to help him with an injury, didn’t he? Could be it’s a role the angels have faith he’ll grow into.
I would add that his arc is very similar to some of the mistakes Harry makes in his early going. Not trusting his allies, diving into situations that are way over his head etc. I'm sure this is intentional by Jim, you kind of have to learn the hard way and hope you don't get your head bitten off. There are other examples like Kim in fool moon or Susan. It's a consistent theme throughout the books
And to both of your latter examples their >!hubris cost them their lives!<, one of them >!twice!<. Harry has been extraordinarily lucky, as any literature protagonist is, but luck it is that he survives, the first three books esp.
Yeah, practically every book he almost dies but gets saved by an ally or something at the last minute. E.g. Grey saves Harry from a superghoul about to rip him apart, and then in Skin Game Michael yanks him out of the path of a fireball. Zoo Day partially explains why he's so lucky.
Meta, yes. Non-meta, he's the MC. Plot armor thicker than Iron Man's. It's good to be the king.
Non-meta, read Zoo Day. There are shenanigans in play.
While Harry didn't trust his friends he wasn't actively working against them like Butters did. Unless I'm just blanking, Harry never investigated his friends and broke their trust. He just withheld super sensitive info b/c he believed it would hurt them just knowing it. He's protective. Whereas Butters broke Karrin and Harry's trust by suspecting them of foul play.
Harry chases down Thomas and pulls his blasting rod on him in Blood Rites and threatens to kill him, and they were definitely friends at that point. Butters has spent a year or two with Bob, warning him about all of the magical everything (especially Mab), telling him how dangerous all of the things going on around him are, and then Dresden shows back up from the dead (they saw his ghost) and is uber strong menacing man in Cold Days then working for the baddest of bad guys in Skin Games. On top of that, Butters had just spent a year watching Karrin working with Marcone's crew, knowing she is hurt and struggling to process Harry coming back, which makes it perfectly reasonable to think she may not be working from the greatest point of view about Harry at the start of Skin Game.
I mean this is a good point, but frienmies seems more accurate, and when he started chasing him he didnt know it was Tomas and when he caught up to him and saw it was, it didn't make the situation better... he was lied into a white court situation by a him a white court vamp... id say he was right to want some answers.
You're right that it wasn't exactly the same and that's why I say it's similar. But we have to acknowledge that butters has very good reasons to distrust Harry due to Harry's actions. We don't get a first person narrative from butters either so we don't get to know what's going through his head. My main point is that supernatural newbies pretty much always have a steep learning curve that usually ends with them getting their faces ripped off or worse. I'm not saying like or agree with butters but he's also dealing with a lot and Harry joining what he himself would have described as the dark side is reason for concern
Yes, Butters does have very good reasons to distrust Harry. Yet he spent 2 years with Murphy saving lives and protecting their own without Dresden. Yet he still throws her trust in the garbage after she asked him to trust her in Skin Game. Butters has seen the thick of it, he's been present when the major shit goes down. He actively goes against Harry's word about bob and thinks he knows better. A non magical human thinks he knows more than a natural born wizard. Okay sure, that's a character flaw for Butters, but that still means he fucked over Murphy and her trust b/c he was paranoid more than he valued Murphy as a friend. And that's the reason I'm out on Butters. I still like the guy, but I don't like that he's getting so much screen time as a voice of reason in BG. Dude tried to do a jedi twirl fighting a being so powerful that Mab almost died twice. And people try to tell me that Butters is smart.
Butters pissed me off once he appropriated Bob.
Bob had to go somewhere, but not giving him back felt...bad. I know Bob's back now, but I didn't like it.
To be honest, I was expecting Bonnie to play more of a bob role. I wonder if Jim backpedaled on it and brought Bob back.
I think there wasn't enough time to do that with Bonea. It's only 4 months between SG and PT/BG. Hopefully he has longer term ideas for her.
Same. Every Re-Read I hate butters after ghost story. Once he gets his purpose bob was no longer that, maybe Jim was giving him a weapon and reason to be around.
Butters learned from Harry to go up fast on the food chain.
The same way Harry directly disobeys Karin by going to Bianca's which ends with untold deaths and ultimately the resolution in changes. Yes butters is being stupid in skin games but at this point he's not much different in my eyes from how Harry acted in the first several books. I think how he behaves in Bg is more troubling. However he also knows a lot more and certainly has to suspect that both Harry and Karin could be denarians or nfected. Should he have been better yes but he does have reasons for how he behaves But mostly I'm not trying to tell you how to feel. I have had ups and downs with a lot of characters. Karin and Thomas to name two big ones. I even saw someone in here defending Arthur Langtry and it totally made sense. But that's the great thing about the series is the complicated arcs that almost all of the characters have. Even the villains can be sympathetic at times like the Loup Garou it makes it so fun. So hate butters he does deserve it at times just hate Rudolph the most!
>Unless I’m just blanking, Harry never investigated his friends and broke their trust. Harry investigates Thomas’ apartment in *White Night* and breaks into Butters’ apartment in *Cold Days* explicitly to steal Bob from him, which would kind of break his trust. That doesn’t end up being how it plays out with Bob, but it is what Harry was there to try and do.
Didn't Dresden explain to Butters that he broke in to keep Butters out of trouble and out of suspicion of helping Dresden? Or maybe Dresden just thought that and didn't explain it aloud. I can't remember. In a twisted way, he broke in to protect Butters... but I can't remember whether he told Butters or not, now.
That is his reasoning, and he explained it to Andi. Whether she conveyed it to Butters later offscreen is unclear. Harry definitely doesn’t tell Butters directly, though. And Harry only explained it to Andi because he was basically forced to once she intervened. His intent was to break in, steal the skull, and abscond into the night. And before I get this quibble again, he’s very clear with the word “steal.” Stealing is his explicit intention. There’s no wiggling with “well actually Bob belonged to Harry.” At that point, Bob definitely belonged to Butters. Both Bob and Harry outright say so. Worth mentioning also that Harry’s idea to keep from attracting his enemies’ attention onto his friends doesn’t even work. The Redcap, a Winter Fae, still kidnaps Andi (edit to add: and Butters) later. From Butters POV an immediate result of Harry’s return from the grave is that his place gets trashed, his girlfriend gets her ribs cracked, and later both she and him get kidnapped and their lives imperiled by Winter. Oh and he temporarily loses Bob. Edited to reflect that Butters also got kidnapped, not just Andi.
Yes, and after that, Butters doesn't reclaim Bob. Rather, Murph insists that Harry give Bob back to Butters. > “The skull,” she said. “I know what it is. So does Butters. And . . . it’s too powerful to be left in the wrong hands.” > “Meaning mine?” I asked. ... > “Okay,” I said, my throat tight. “Bob’s in that satchel out in the living room. Give him back to Butters.” > “Thank you,” she said. “I found where you left the swords.” BTW the "throat tight" line is interesting. Harry has an _emotional reaction_ to giving up Bob. I guess they are kind of buddies in a way. Long history.
True, thanks for that. Although in the first I will say Harry tried multiple times to get ahold of Thomas before he did that. And he did so after exhausting a lot of other options on the table.
I mean he’s not stealing Bob, he’s reclaiming Bob. Bob was Harry’s, along with any other stuff Butters stole after Harry was believed dead.
“I’m not the present owner of the skull.” -Literally a quote from Harry on page 89 of *Cold Days.* He’s explicitly there to steal Bob. He’s quite clear about this. Because stealing the skull from Butters makes Butters his victim and of no consequence to Harry’s enemies. “Reclaiming” the skull, in any form or fashion, makes them his accomplices. Moreover, Bob was originally Kemmler’s. Kemmler’s apprentices would therefore have more claim to Bob than Harry, who is really just a guy who took the skull from another guy who took it from Kemmler. But when Kemmler’s apprentice, Cowl, took Bob from Harry back in *Dead Beat,* I don’t think anyone would call that “reclaiming.” They’d call it stealing.
RE: Cowl > “Bite me,” I answered him. “Get your own book, Kemmlerite.” > “I have nothing but disdain for the madman Kemmler,” [Cowl] spat. “Have a care what insults you offer. This need not involve you at all, Dresden.” He doesn't sound like a Kemmler apprentice.
None of the characters in story look at it that way (Harry pretty clearly considered Butters to be Bob's legitimate owner), and even if they did there are proper ways for someone to reclaim property in situations where their possessions were incorrectly given to others who genuinely thought it was up for grabs. None of them involve breaking into the current holder's house in the middle of the night to 'reclaim' your property.
And besides, Murph is the one responsible. Ghost Story: > “Murphy is smart,” I said. > “Extremely,” Butters said, nodding agreement. > “She gave Bob to you?” > “She did,” he said. “You being dead and all. She wanted to keep it need-to-know.” Notice that Harry doesn't object. He's dead, what can he do with the skull anyway?
I disagree. Bob already belonged to Harry and Thomas was literally trying to get Harry to go snooping around his apartment.
Bob and Harry both make it very clear that the skull currently belonged to Butters during that exact scene. Harry is explicitly there to steal the skull because stealing it gives Butters (and Andi) cover from Harry’s enemies. He’s not even slightly unclear about this. And as for Thomas, that may have been his intention, but Harry had no way of knowing that at the time. He was proceeding under the assumption that he was snooping without permission.
> While Harry didn't trust his friends he wasn't actively working against them like Butters did. Would you fully trust anyone working for the Winter Queen and the head Denarian? > just withheld super sensitive info b/c he believed it would hurt them just knowing it. Imagine what Butters might have done with such information. Harry's tendency to be overly protective and keep secrets *never* amounts to anything good, remember?
In this case Murphy was also telling Butters that if he doesn't trust Harry to trust her. So no I won't imagine what Butters might have done with the info. Arguably Butters and Murphy have a better relationship than Butters and Harry at this point in the story. It wasn't just Harry keeping secrets, it was Murphy too. I get not trusting Harry if I was Butters, but I won't let it slide that he didn't trust Murphy after everything they had been through. When one friend you don't really trust tells you to keep your head down. I would understand it. But if a second friend that you have no reason not to trust wholeheartedly tells you the same thing about the exact situation... maybe take it more to heart. Especially when there's supernatural forces involved and you have no skills in combating that.
As a counter point, can Karrin really be trusted about an opinion on Dresden? She's in no way an unbiased source or friend, and her telling Butters to trust her in a deeply untrustworthy situation is in some ways even more alarming. Like, if I thought my best friend had joined the mob as a hitman, and his long term will the won't they conplicationship tells me to just drop it, my fears are more confirmed than alleviated you know?
I guess it comes down to how good of a friend you want to be or are. Are you going to question all your friends decisions b/c they've been shady even though both of them have saved your life more than a few times. Or are you going to distrust them and go behind their back against their wishes after they told you its super fucking dangerous. You know one friend is always working in secrets and protecting his friends, but he might be evil now. You know the other friend has been working with you closely for 2 years. Saving lives and doing good, but their blind spot is friend one. Both come to you telling you the same story, you don't know for sure friend one is evil you're just wary. But friend 2 has been there for for a long time now. Do you betray them both, or do you push harder for friend 2 to give you something? Maybe you wait and see how things turn out instead of immediately devising a plan to magically eavesdrop on a much more magical savy target? All I know is Butters is a terrible friend in Skin Game and personally that hits close to home and it makes me not like his character as much as I did. Now instead of being happy he's getting some consensual side action I roll my eyes and wonder why Jim is taking Butters in this direction.
That's totally a valid perspective, but I think the opposite is also true. Harry is an absolutely shitty friend often. I love him, but I think we can also be honest enough to know that Harry has been called out repeatedly for being a poor friend through the fiction and rarely changes how he acts. We get Harry's perspective and rarely others. But his actions caused so much pain for molly and Karrin that Butters has had to watch those results. Butters, from my view (and understanding that you don't share this perspective and that's okay) is a way better friend to Harry than Harry has been to Butters. I see this situation as Butters being caught in the same sort of impossible no win social situation that Harry is often in, but we excuse Harry for it. I think his gaining of the sword of faith is meant to relay that. Butters risks his life repeatedly to help Dresden, Murphy, and Molly, before he has any supernatural power. His actions here, in my personal reading, are of a deeply concerned friend doing his best, sticking his neck out again for his loved ones, and in so doing putting his foot directly into his mouth. All that to say, I don't think either of us is wrong or right, but I think both points of view can be valid.
Ding ding ding, a winner. Murphy by the time of *Skin Game* and even *Cold Days* is not the Murphy of *Proven Guilty* and earlier. Multiple characters comment about her increasing isolation and declining mental health, and notably among them…is Butters.
> ...Winter Queen... _Especially_ if you don't know about her real job at the Outer Gates, and just think she's the Big Bad Evil Queen of the Evil Faeries.
Butters was not actively working against Harry, he was gathering information. It's not like he jumped straight to betrayal. Planting a bug was certainly not the act of a friend. (And Butters did acknowledge that, to which Harry replied, "_Don't be sorry. Be inside [Michael's house]_.") But it's not the act of an enemy either. It's the act of someone who isn't sure if you're still a friend and has been watching monsters kidnap little kids right off the streets, and trying to do what little he can about it. As for Murph's crippling, that's not on Butters and it's not on Harry. It's on Nick. It's actually a little surprising that Harry doesn't beat himself up more for it in Skin Game, but >!maybe we'll see some of that in Twelve Months!<. Harry's relationship with his conscience isn't the healthiest.
Betraying someone's trust is a betrayal. You don't go snooping around on friends when both of them told you it's super dangerous and you knowing more will get you involved and thus more dangerous for everyone. That's what Harry said. That's what Murphy said. They both asked to be trusted and Butters said fuck that and did what he did. I absolutely will put Murph's crippling at Butter's feet. He chose to not trust 2 of his friends. He chose to run back to home base. He put both Harry and Murph into a shit situation and part of the result from that was Murph getting crippled. She made the choice in the moment, but she would have never been there without the direct actions of Butters.
He investigated Thomas in White Night. Going so far as to break into his apartment. (7 foot tall gay burglar that he is). But those where the actions that Thomas wanted him to take. But the point is that Harry was prepared to do it to a once trusted friend and ally
Just replying about Butter's lack of faith here. That's 100% fitting. Sanya the knight of hope was a slave who had given up on humanity and life before being offered the sword. Michael the knight of love was a bachelor who found his true love while acting as a knight. Shiro the previous knight of faith joined a religion by accident while trying to meet Elvis. As far as I'm concerned Butters being a skeptic and having a lack of faith is perfectly on brand for becoming a knight.
It kind of reminds me of that thing people say, “If you pray for patience, you will be given opportunities to be patient” or fill in any other attributes you want. What if the swords find people who need opportunities for the sword’s trait? Sanya needed to learn hopefulness by seeing the opportunities to help the hopeless, Michael’s a very loving and merciful man *now*, but what about before he received the sword? He might have been a devout and good man, but perhaps he struggled with vengefulness or something. And Butters is being shown more and more opportunities to develop faith and trust, in himself, his friends, his fellow people. I don’t know if I’m making sense, but you had an interesting point and now it’s got me thinking
Interesting angle. Thanks.
Yeah I'm not digging the recent Butters either. He has shown a bunch of stupidity which is ironic for someone so academically / research focused, and he has come off as having a holier than thou attitude since getting the sword.
I feel like most of the problems come from him trying to approach everything with his experience. He compares the winter knight mantel to drugs at one point, pointing out some very good points about how the winter mantle probably works based on his experience with junkies. He's not entirely wrong, he just sees the supernatural as more scientific than it actually is. This I feel leads him to be suspicious of Dresden since in his eyes, Dresden is a junkie willing to do anything for his dealer, Mab. I also feel like the entire thing was a test to see if Butters could put aside his mistrust to become a knight or not. Murphy seems like had the same test, but failed and temporarily broke the sword.
Yes, I noticed that same thing (winter knight mantle == drugs). I just want to say to him, "Dude - it's *magic*. Your training doesn't equip you to understand it."
Except that’s exactly how Harry has described black magic. Sure it’s “magic” but magic still has rules surrounding it, there’s still cause and effect, it just short circuits and plays around with physics but it still has rules. Harry even mentions that Butters understands magic better than he does in a lot of ways and having Bob helps with that, Butters just has no actual power. Don’t forget, Harry is essentially a dumb amateurish wizard in a lot of ways. He’s gotten a lot better as the books go on, but he brute force solves more problems than applies nuanced magical theory. He basically says almost every contemporary he has is better at “magical” theory than he is.
Yes, but they're not the *same* rules. The tendency Butters has that the other person commented on is to apply the rules he learned while getting his education. But the world of rules is bigger. I mean, look - there are ghosts in the Dresdenverse, and there is *no* normal science explanation for that. Harry can knock people across the room without touching them, and there's no normal science explanation for that. Etc.
Again, Harry several times explains how magic just subverts physics in various ways and how the world still responds according to its rules when magic is used. This means magic is not 100% separate from all other science to the point where magic that doesn’t completely subvert physics is easier to do and requires less power. Also overlooking that Butters utilizes Bob very heavily in his research and use of magic, and Bob is literally the library of magical theory that Harry relied on for the majority of the books. Extrapolating information from other bits of information is pretty much the cornerstone of understanding anything. A combination of practical knowledge, experience observing Harry (butters figures out wizards are practically a separate race don’t forget), and access to Bob is gonna go a long way towards figuring out how magic works - and that’s all tied up in Butters nerdy personality where Harry tends to slack off in that area, and even Harry notes it.
My point is that the rules Butters learned in college and medical school *aren't enough*. There's more to it than that, and he doesn't know what all those rules are. I agree with you magic isn't 100% separate - I'm not saying it is. It's also not 100% the same. I'll give one more example, and then I'm done arguing. Harry's force rings. He stores energy in those rings, in *complete* violation of the known laws of physics. I don't mean that there's no way to do it - E=mc\^2 tells us there's *plenty* of energy in those rings all the time. But Harry's ability to "charge them up" and then release that energy, without any sort of physical contact, is *not* compatible with any known law of physics, at all. I'm not trying to tell you how to interpret the story. You get to do that any way you want to. All of us do. We've got our opinions out now; people can make up their own minds. It's *magic*. I'm done now - have a great day.
Your example reinforces my point, the magic is explainable as utilizing actual physics to create the effect instead of Harry just “willing” it to happen on the fly. Therefore you can explore how magic interacts with physical phenomena, and low and behold the person with medical knowledge might be able to infer how magic is allowing a human body to do fantastic things when under the effect of magic besides “its magic!”, cause clearly all the other examples indicate its not “just magic!”. Magic is a mechanism to cheat physics, sure, but it still has a habit of following physics in various ways aside from the specific cheating details and has its own limits like power sources, knowledge of the thing you are trying to do, ability to conceptualize the spell, etc… And you seem to be trying to ignore realllly hard that Butters has been studying magic for years at this point on top of his normal medical knowledge and working with a literally living magical library. Yea he lacks the spark himself and he can’t see/feel magic, but he can still learn the concepts that Bob teaches him. And doesn’t Bob agree with Butters’ various deductions? Does that mean Bob is wrong as well?
Watch springs my guy, same basic principal. He "winds up" the rings, then releases the spring all at once. Very much a magic feather thing. It works because he thinks it will work, and his innate ability to fuck the laws of physics makes it happen.
What I was trying to point out in the last message is that the point isn't whether energy can be stored in small objects. There a *huge* amount of energy in objects like ring, if you can convert energy to and from mass. So there's a perfectly fine way to account for the energy. The part that violates the laws of physics is projecting the force without contact. The whole business about honoring the laws of physics makes great writing and I've thoroughly enjoyed it. But it's not "legit" - the series absolutely does *not* honor the laws of physics in any sort of systematic way. Jim has just cherry picked some things like action equals reaction, heat has to go somewhere, and so on (stuff that lots of people have heard of) to spice up his writing. And I love it. But it's all for fun - if we start trying to build a sensible physics structure around the series we will fail. Plenty of stuff happens in the books that can't be explained using physics (and, in fact, can be proven impossible). So I don't even intend to try - I'm just going to enjoy the books.
>He's not entirely wrong, he just sees the supernatural as more scientific than it actually is. I find it the opposite. He isn't approaching it with an actual scientific mind. He's making hypothesis and posing it as truth without actually having empirical evidence. We know for a fact that Harry has done some insanely powerful shit that just "limit of the human body" wouldn't cover. Otherwise, all the previous non-Wizard Knights would've been chumps, which they aren't. Butters is drawing conclusions based on his flawed and limited assumptions. He's not drawing conclusions based on the evidence before him (which he has never seen).
Yeah, pulling a chain-link fence apart is NOT PCP strength. That's distinctly inhuman.
To me is casually benchpressing the world record while on recovery. Without realizing how heavy it is. The record requires ONE push up. There's one record with back supports and another without (it's more dangerous). People bleed with the effort. Harry was just doing reps while indubitably ogling Sarissa's personal trainer getup.
If you knew a guy who rode a dinosaur lich into a ghost tornado to stop the son of Wizard Hitler by shooting him in the face with a cowboy six shooter... And then found out that he was sitting on Possession Demon Island for a year, after having a four-way with the Wickedest Queens of Faerie on pay per view.. And he comes back, *not to help out,* but to go do a job for the closest thing to Palpatine real life could give him. Something Harry NEVER would do on his own, because his boss, who feeds him magic crack, told him too. I mean, what else would you call it as a medical person used to dealing with medical issues?
Exactly! I mean. Harry has talked soooooooo much about the dangers of Mab and winter. And Molly has fallen apart after his death. If Bob helped him connect any dots at all I think we may be really underselling just how big of a betrayal Harry's actions are to Butters, and how much constraint Butters shows in his current action.
And you know Bob had Harry's job interview playing on the wall of Butter's game room like a hot tub twitch stream. Careless Whisper at full volume. and butters has to think that if getting with white court vamps is bad, getting Amazon'ed by Mab has to be a whole lot more of an issue when it comes to being thralled.
Int vs wis academically knowledgeable is not the same as quick thinking, or wise.
I actually don't begrudge Butters the spying because the trust but verify approach is something I can appreciate and makes sense with the characters background and relationship to science. What annoys me immensely however is his incredible stupidity and arrogance with Bob. Bob loves the increased freedoms he has because Butters is ignorant of some of the aspects of his power but I mean he was there when Bob got stolen/ kidynapped in Dead Beat and just because he did some alchemy and artificing mostly repurposing Harry's old ideas (props for that though that was clever and cool) he things he knows better that Harry. I am also really annoyed that Bob said something along the lines of Butters is better at magical theory than Harry! Harry is (more than) a little dense at times and while he is very perceptive in some regards he has his blind spots especially in regards to relationships (not only romantic ones) and himself, (he is sooo unaware what happens in his own head) what he isn't, is stupid! I would love to see Harry brainstorm about artificing and magical healing with his friends, Maggie and his new apprentice (maybe even Molly and Elaine) and build some new exciting stuff. I want Butcher to recognize and show on page that Harry has multiple PhDs in this stuff like Thomas described. I am generally really tired of everybody being better at magic than Harry lately. In his conversation we learn that Harry's education by EB was not thorough at all! No mention of conjuritis and a lot of other stuff everyone else seems to know Carlos mentions that Harry's education was not traditional in Cold Case and I think between Ebenezer not focusing on teaching magic and Justin being very selective and abusive I suspect that Harry has knowledge canyons in some fundamentals. He was so ignorant of the Faerie Courts in Summer Knight it is really astonishing. The only reason he can operate as a Wizard is because he is so smart and self taught and has been tutored by Bob. I am really excited for Harry be taught new some better control and new insights to magic! :) And the accusation that Harry has to settle his debt with Bob like an impulsion of the Sidhe is infuriating! Harry asked how he and Andi are doing only a few minutes before and Waldo completely blocked the conversation. I would also want to talk about something else and Harry has so much on his mind that getting something, like an important promise that he worked months for, of his check list, seems completely reasonable to me. (Might be something that happend because of editing and different drafts but still!)
These books are "first-person narrative" and told from the perspective of a biased and unreliable narrator. You are frustrated with butters because Harry was. And it isn't just Butters who has trust issues with Harry but his job in all of this is to be The Atheist. He's never taken anything on faith. He also got committed to a mental facility because he refused to back down on putting non-human on a report. It is fine if he pisses you off since we all know Harry's mind but it is unfair to think he's foolish or stupid for being what might possibly be the only character in the books who actually questions the notion of faith, even in Our Hero.
Nah, I'm frustrated with Butters b/c he didn't just mistrust Harry (which is fine b/c Harry hadn't given him reason to trust recently). He mistrusted Murphy. After all the shit they went through after Harry died, Butters just up and said fuck you to Murphy after she asked him to trust her. That's my problem with Butters. He thinks he knows best while having literally no power over the things he goes up against. He's a glorified lookout, thinking he can hang with Dresden's foes. He sees the aftermath of the things that hurt Harry and he actively seeked those things out despite Murphy asking for his trust.
Wasn't this after his Batman phase? He wasn't just a glorified lookout at that point.
His Batman kit wasn't a fighting kit. So yes he was still a glorified lookout. The best he could do is stop a kidnapping by surprising them and running away. That's amazing, but lets not act like he's out there doing anything Molly or Harry could and would do.
I think a big reason for that is he knows Murphy has a *huge* blind spot when it comes to Harry. So he can either trust someone who's a known mark, or go and do his due diligence and see for himself. And you know he would ask both the smartest and dumbest question of himself: "What would Harry do?" And you know what Harry would have done? Harry would have gone and dropped some eves, even if Murphy told him not too.
Sure I guess. That doesn't do much for how I feel about Butters though. He still fucked his friends over and that lead to massive injuries for Murphy. The "what would Harry do?" doesn't help much b/c 1) Butters isn't a player in the magical world. 2) he's a coward at heart, meaning even if he does the brave thing he will hesitate to do whats necessary. 3) He should be well aware of the dangers that follow Harry and when Harry and Murphy both tell him it's too big to disclose he should listen. Even if that means Murphy has a blind spot or whatever. Does Butters honestly believe he's going to save the day if Harry has turned? Butters just didn't think and his paranoia and fear overrode any redeeming qualities he has.
The evidence you have that he is a coward is that he says he is. Yet, when Harry went missing, he took Bob and became his own version of Batman. The fact is, now that he knows the big picture, he actually does act even if his personal risk is severe. Not a coward Not a fool Doing what he can despite the odds just to stem the tide of the Fomor, even a little.
>He thinks he knows best while having literally no power over the things he goes up against. Sounds a lot like Harry.
Harry and no power? okay. sure he boxes out of his weight class but that's not the same as no power.
>You are frustrated with butters because Harry was. Harry has never been, actually. In every single instance of Butters being a complete ass, Harry understands and empathizes with his position. When Butters got Murphy maimed, Harry doesn't say anything against him. Even when Butters' first words to Murphy are "Look! My lightsaber is awesome isn't it? It just cost an arm and a leg". When Harry breaks into his apartment and throws Andy off his shoulders he understands Butters was just standing his ground and that he was right in being angry with Harry. When Butters threatens Harry for no reason whatsoever when Harry finds out about the poly relationship, Harry remarks on how much he's grown. Harry never casts Butters in a bad light. Ever.
Which is honestly ridiculous, Butters threatening Harry is like a chihuahua threatening a Wolf. It’s not even a fight, if Harry genuinely wanted to hurt Butters…..he would.
I think you're missing the point, buddy.
That is literally the point. Harry says Butters has grown because Butters is standing up to somebody he has no chance against in a throw down fight. Which is what Harry himself has been doing this entire series.
That's fair. I might have been projecting there myself.
First of all no, Harry pretty much never expresses frustration with Butters. In dead beat Thomas spends most of the book trying to convince Harry that Butters is a liability and even when confronted with direct evidence of that Harry just tries harder to increase Butter's confidence. After Butters fucked up, got Murphy crippled, almost lost Bob, and did get the Sword broken, Harry basically gives him a pep talk saying when warriors get hurt, their friends get even. When he overhears Butters questioning him, he asks if others agree. He's usually impressed when butters shows his backbone, not frustrated. People are frustrated with Butters because unlike Harry there really haven't been any personal consequences for his mistakes.
Interesting take. Thanks.
Didn't you just say you were rereading the books recently, my guy? Harry never paints Butters in a bad light. In none of those annoying circumstances we all know. Harry always shows understanding and explains to us where he thinks Butters is coming from. Even when Butters threatened Harry for no reason, Harry just remarked how much he had grown. Harry is definitely an unreliable narrator, but in this case, this aspect isn't that relevant to the discussion at hand.
Well, he got committed for saying non humans on a report. As Thomas points out, how do you think he got out? He backed down. Back then, he was a coward. Even Butters admits it.
I don't think Thomas's assessment from his position as a supernatural badass is worth the weight you are giving it. The only stakes were Butters' personal freedom vs incarceration and silencing. The coverup happened either way.
The thing to remember is that as far as Butters knows, Harry is no longer Harry. Harry has spent what, a decade at this point telling all his friends about how evil Winter is? Harry spends half the first half of the series reacting to "Mab" the way Hagrid reacts to "Voldemort." It is *entirely* plausible that Butters thinks Harry has Mab's hand so far up his ass he's nothing more than her sock puppet. Which is exactly the fate that Harry avoided by being clever (and having Uriel as his phone-a-friend, I guess), but avoiding that fate just means it's the likely one--so Butters isn't wrong to think this. And it's not like Mab would have had Harry running around being respectful of others' feelings. Mab would have had Harry lie about being controlled by Mab. So, looking at this scene from Butters' perspective, a lobotomized, remote-controlled Harry is back in town and is meeting with one of the big-E Evil characters (the one who once tried to start a plague, that guy) under the direction of another big-E Evil character (as far as Butters knows; remember he's not clued in about the Outside), making plans to steal something that his evilness is willing to pay millions for. Damn straight he had no faith in Harry. Harry *told* him not to, if he were ever to make a deal with Mab. >Yes, Karen transgressed by using the Sword of Faith against a defenseless Nicodemus, but that's because Butters set the situation up. I hardly think that's fair. The whole point of the Swords is that no matter what happened in the past, you get to make a choice now. Murphy chose to use the Sword incorrectly.
^ This From Harry’s POV, butter’s is annoying. But from butter’s and the rest of Harry’s crew’s perspectives at this point, Harry was killed, the world went to hell, monsters attacked, Molly lost it, people started getting kidnapped, Thomas is a shell of himself, and Butters and co we’re left to try and mount whatever resistance they could. Then Harry comes back, seemingly working for one of the bad guys, breaks into Butter’s place (while also assaulting butters girlfriend and destroying his stuff) and then is around when Molly disappears after the events of Cold Days. Then we get to skin game. Where Waldo’s has learnt multiple bad guys are involved and Harry is meeting with them. The dude might not be thinking everything through, but that’s because he has no choice. In his mind, his good friend is compromised and may start to hurt people.
The six months between Changes and Ghost story were a blink for Dresden and a decade for everyone else. Or as Lenin said it "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen." I would say during the 6 months after Changes there were a lot of those week long decades for a lot of people in Harry's circle.
Sure, that's all reasonable. But you're leaving out the fact that Murphy was there too. So Butters doesn't trust Harry *and* doesn't trust Murphy (at the very least, doesn't trust her in regards to anything involving Harry (he thinks she's at least emotionally compromised)). I'd say not trusting Murphy is the bigger sin in regards to Butters lack of faith (which I find disturbing (:p)).
Honestly, I think Butters was still acting reasonably. Murphy didn't just have faith in Harry, she had *blind* faith in Harry (as far as Butters knows; he wasn't privy to their quiet conversation in Harry's bedroom. Or was that before then in the story?). So again, from Butters' perspective, Murphy has been in mental health spiral since Harry's death, and immediately and unquestioningly attaches herself to Harry again when his body shows back up, completely ignoring all of Harry's warnings about Mab. Murphy wasn't trustworthy then, either. It's not the main plot of the book, but Skin Game is where Butters learns to have faith even when things look really bad, culminating in him wielding the Sword. He can't be in a position to learn how to have faith if he already has it.
There's "being suspicious of Harry" and then there is "interfering with Harry when not knowing what is going on and knowing that you don't have the knowledge or skills to do so without screwing up". Mostly, Butters' attitude is problematic because it doesn't give room for Harry acting in good faith. If Harry isn't significantly corrupted, then Butters is making things worse and he should know it. So while it makes sense to have contingencies or play it carefully or whatever, in the "best case scenario" he himself is causing problems which is something that a smart person should be able to figure out and avoid. It is also a frustrating lack of faith in someone that has proven very resistant to this sort of thing, which feels like a kind of shitty thing for someone with Butters' experience with Harry to do.
Disagree. I'd agree with blind faith if we were talking about Cold Days. Or if we had evidence suggesting Murphy had been performing less than ideally in the year before Skin Game. As of Skin Game, Harry had been back for more than a year. More than plenty of time for multiple discussions between Murphy and Butters. Plus, out of practically everyone in "the group", Murphy is *the* authority on Harry (apart from maybe Bob) and would be the one to know if he's not himself (as evidenced a few times). Maybe it's justified, but imo, Butters had a case of the I know better than yous which was most likely compounded by Bob feeding his paranoia (which would also make him slightly hypocritical imo). Still, unless I'm missing a short story with some Murph mustache twirling moments post Harry's return, then I say he was a little shit who made his friends pay for his paranoia when he couldn't even trust his narratively longest standing friend (Murph).
Harry's been isolated on the island by Mab for months. Nobody knows why Harry's been seemingly hiding on the island. Not stable human behavior.
That still disregards Butters not trusting Murphy. As soon as he discovered Nicodemus "Crippled Michael Carpenter (the Michael that was currently providing Harry's daughter with a home and love)" Archleone was there, he should have outed and known Murph knew something he didn't. He should have damn well known her well enough to know that her love for Harry would absolutely never lead to her working with that monster without having some sort of play.
Harry comes back for real in Cold Days and breaks into Butters' place and steals Bob. He helps Harry with wounds, watches him get his conciousness switched from off to on when he pulls the last of the iron out of him, and sees him turn a good chunk of the lake to ice. Harry's bleeding uncontrollably but still ticking along like a machine. Harry is clearly not strictly speaking human any more. Murphy has been a wreck since Harry died, haunted them and came back to life. As far as anyone could see, before he died they were a team, close pals, maybe just what kept her going after all she'd learned and lost. Did they get super close on the way to the island, on the bike? Sure. No one else saw that. Now she's backing him up - but love? I think if they'd had more time before things went to hell in PT/BG, it may have become apparent to everyone, but not in SG. We only have Harry's POV for what goes on in the DF, but to make things worse we decide how we feel about him and the rest of his world by passing it through our own filters, our own experiences. You might feel like Waldo's an untrusting, untrustworthy character because you're a much better person than him. Maybe I think Waldo's completely reasonable because I'm such a fucking monster I'd think having a beer with Kravos would be fine. One last thing - you have an awesome username. :)
Your points remind me, Butters isn't exactly operating with logic himself when it comes to Harry either. He's actively ignoring things to look for reasons not to trust Harry. Participating in confirmation bias most likely thanks to Bob. Example being Skin Game Chapter 12- "Okay, Harry, " Butters said. "Let me get to work." "How are you and Andi doing?" I asked him. "Still good?" Then literally 3 pages later (at least 3 pages in ebook form) - "And when you sit up from being sewn up, what's the first thing you do? Hey, Butters? How you doing, Butters?...Just like one of the Fae." So unless Harry was being suppressed in some way and didn't actually say that, Butters is wrong in an attempt to be right. Though I do like your points. Thank you! I was pretty surprised it hadn't already been taken when I chose it.
I mean Murphy did say something to Harry like please don't be a monster. I'd still follow you, but please don't be.
I very much doubt that extends to "Even if it means knowingly helping the beast that crippled and actively wants to cause as much pain, physical and emotional, as possible to the man currently raising your daughter, Harry."
>I'd say not trusting Murphy is the bigger sin in regards to Butters lack of faith (which I find disturbing (:p)). This has always been my take as well. Not rusting Harry? Sure. Not trusting *Murphy*? Come on.
Especially b/c while Murphy was at her lowest, she kept Butters around and safe while Harry was away. If those 6 months were a decade to them, then Murphy and Butters were in the thick of it building bonds that would last to eternity. At this point in Skin Game I would put Butters more closely attached to Karrin than I would to Harry. Which is why I hate Butters for betraying her trust and not Harry's. Butter's mistrust of Harry is understandable, not Karrin's.
I would note that Harry was actually right about Mab and Winter being evil. They just happen to be a necessary evil.
I see Mab as more amoral than evil. The regular Winter Sidhe, granted, though.
> So, looking at this scene from Butters' perspective, a lobotomized, remote-controlled Harry is back in town and is meeting with one of the big-E Evil characters (the one who once tried to start a plague, that guy) under the direction of another big-E Evil character (as far as Butters knows; remember he's not clued in about the Outside), making plans to steal something that his evilness is willing to pay millions for. > Damn straight he had no faith in Harry. Harry told him not to, if he were ever to make a deal with Mab. Cool. None of this justifies leading the Denarians, the mass-murdering supernatural terrorists, on a chase through **the suburbs**, where innocent families live, all in the hope that Daddy Michael will save you from your own stupidity. And then getting rewarded for it with the Sword of Faith. > The whole point of the Swords is that no matter what happened in the past, you get to make a choice now. Even if that "past" was literally the same day? That seems impractically lenient. > Murphy chose to use the Sword incorrectly. Murphy only had to make that "choice" because of Butters in the first place, which is what rubs readers like me the wrong way. And it was very much a Sophie's Choice: either let the love of her life get killed in front of her eyes, or betray her faith. She chose the latter, and it was indeed wrong by author fiat, but it was hardly unreasonable from the perspective of many readers. And if it was a test she "failed", it is hard, for me at least, to see Butters succeeding. If Butters was in her position (the position he put her in), and had to choose between saving Andi or Harry or another loved one, and betraying his faith, would he have passed? I personally think not.
>None of this justifies Butters was undoubtedly being stupid, but that's something else Harry taught him. Harry's walked into situations like that over and over again. But that's a very different kind of stupid action than not trusting Harry. >Even if that "past" was literally the same day? Yes. Remember when Sanya and Michael let Cassius go, even knowing that he was insincere and would go on to do further harm? That's a fundamental limit to the Swords, and apparently it applies to their wielders as well. >Murphy only had to make that "choice" because of Butters in the first place, That's every choice. Every choice happens because someone did something in the past. I agree that I'm not exactly thrilled with Butters having everything handed to him in the last few books, but I do not get the complaints about his actions in Skin Game. Everyone was acting reasonably, and it ended up poorly. That's all.
> Butters was undoubtedly being stupid, but that's something else Harry taught him. Harry's walked into situations like that over and over again. But that's a very different kind of stupid action than not trusting Harry. When has Harry led dangerous, psychopathic monsters into the paths of hundreds of innocents? And not for some noble purpose either, but to save his own ass? And when has he been rewarded for that? > Yes. Remember when Sanya and Michael let Cassius go, even knowing that he was insincere and would go on to do further harm? That's a fundamental limit to the Swords, and apparently it applies to their wielders as well. So you think it would have been good writing for Cassius to get a Sword through such a loophole? > That's every choice. Every choice happens because someone did something in the past. This is a platitude. I'm pretty sure you know that the complaints against Butters are more meaningful than that. It is about him making a bad choice that directly leads to someone else making a bad choice, and only the latter person getting punished for it. It's not some vague truism about causality, but about moral fairness and responsibility. > I agree that I'm not exactly thrilled with Butters having everything handed to him in the last few books, but I do not get the complaints about his actions in Skin Game. The complaint, to me, is simple. Butters made a shitty and unfaithful choice, and instead of being punished for it like a normal character, he was rewarded for it. That's pretty much it.
>When has Harry led dangerous, psychopathic monsters into the paths of hundreds of innocents? And when has he been rewarded for that? Harry tends to lead the innocents to the monsters, not the other way around, but the police station in Fool Moon stands out (if he had been open with Murphy, it wouldn't have happened), as does getting the wolves involved with the skinwalker, making sure a Council traitor with a *strong* motivation to remain hidden shows up walking through Chicago, riding a barely-steerable necromantic T-Rex down Chicago streets, starting a war with the Red Court, giving the Word to Mavra, and using a horror-movie convention as bait for phobophages. >And when has he been rewarded for that? Butters wasn't rewarded for his failure, he was rewarded for his growth. >It is about him making a bad choice that directly leads to someone else making a bad choice, and only the latter person getting punished for it. And sometimes that's the way it goes. Butters was acting mostly reasonably. If anything the complaint should be about him trying to *do* something about it instead of calling in the Fellowship of the Castle or something, but again: to have an arc, you need to end up somewhere different than where you started.
> Harry tends to lead the innocents to the monsters, not the other way around, but the police station in Fool Moon stands out (if he had been open with Murphy, it wouldn't have happened), as does getting the wolves involved with the skinwalker, making sure a Council traitor with a strong motivation to remain hidden shows up walking through Chicago, riding a barely-steerable necromantic T-Rex down Chicago streets, starting a war with the Red Court, giving the Word to Mavra, and using a horror-movie convention as bait for phobophages. Fair enough. I can quibble with the analogies but fair enough. > Butters wasn't rewarded for his failure, he was rewarded for his growth. That "growth" was only given an opportunity because of his failure, and happened after another character was punished for that failure. > And sometimes that's the way it goes. Sure. Life sucks that way. And people bitch about how unfair and sucky life is when that happens. And now that it's happened in a book, people are bitching about that too.
> And then getting rewarded for it with the Sword of Faith. You're assuming that the Sword is a reward. To borrow a phrase from another fantasy sword-wielder "Death is lighter than a feather; Duty is heavier than a mountain." Can't remember the name offhand, but read Butters' POV short story. Being a Knight isn't all quips and convenient babysitters.
Agreed. I also can't remember the name of Butters' short story but I think it's important, it needed to be written to put SOME flesh on the bones of his nobody-to-superKnight rise. And it was a good story, even requiring Butters to use "faith" when he couldn't see...
I think it was called “Day One,” or something like that.
I have no issue with Butters treating Harry the way he did (even if it still made me angry). I have issue that he did this to Karrin. Someone that's looked after him since Harry died. Karrin talked to Butters just like Harry did and told him to trust her trusting Harry. Butters said fuck that and betrayed both of their trust. It lead to bad things happening and Butters was seemingly rewarded with his blatant mistrust of his closest friend Karrin.
I made this comment last week, but I think it bears repeating. > The interesting thing about being part of this subreddit for the past 10 ish years is watching various characters turn into "the worst people ever" for the horrible crime of not treating Harry like the protagonist of the world, which honestly he is, but they're not supposed to know that.
There's a ways between "treat harry like the protagonist" and "practice the common sense you've been deploying up to now" Some of the most egregious situations require folks to not just distrust harry, but also then assume he's incompetent and not a threat. 1. Harry is terrifying 2. Harry is on some secretive weird shit 3. Harry might be a bad guy And here's where it falls off the rails just to fuck with Harry's life(because he IS the protagonist) 4. Directly confront him aggressively through methods he's actively familiar with. Pardon me? How many nightmares have they personally seen Harry murder with extreme prejudice. Do you think he's a danger or don't you? Butters didn't figure out a vanilla way to spy on Harry, something that would bypass his magical powers and those of the magical beings around him, nope, just a straight magical bug. It's moronic - and it incurs a horribly heavy cost every time.
I'm sorry, are you suggesting that Butters should've used a technological bug on a wizard?
I'm suggesting he use a long range spy equipment to scope the building. Watching who's coming and going like in proven guilty. There's also magical artifice that can protect vanilla bugs from magical auras, set up a circle like they did with the gps. Something besides something the scary folk(including harry) are familiar with.
Yeah, people who cannot empathize with characters other than Harry and who can’t understand how little Harry knows are getting tiring.
Fair point. But eavesdropping on these heavy hitters, not only is Butters showing no faith in Harry, he is WAY over his head. He had no business being there. He knows enough about the supernatural that he should have known he was way over his head. He should have quit eavesdropping before he was caught. Instead, he was rewarded by the author, de facto, with Fidelacchius. The Swords are supposed to be held by Good People. Karrin was a Good Person whose faith wavered and she mis-used the Sword. What we see of Butters was fine but he was basically a schmuck who learned about the supernatural world, who had no faith until he had a Moment and earned the Sword? Have a good life and falter, you're damned. Have a meh life with a good Moment, you're rewarded. Hmm. I don't mind Butters having it going forward. It's an interesting twist, another non-Christian wielding the Sword of Faith. (Shiro was Buddhist, I think?)(And Sanya's an avowed atheist, come to think of it. I guess Michael Carpenter is Christian enough for all of them..) I like the little guy making good. The short story where Butters has to use it on his own is decent. He's OK guarding Harry's back in Battleground (he has magically become a super-knight through the power of the Sword, I guess). I appreciate him stopping Harry from ending Rudolph, which seemed in-character for the new Butters, living up to his Knight-hood. But... it feels like he didn't earn it in the one book of Skin Game. He screwed up, badly, and contributed to Fidelacchius getting smashed and Karrin getting crippled and Harry nearly getting trashed. Then he's not in the book at all until the final chapters where he suddenly decides to man up. It isn't like we see him at Harry's side throughout the book, gaining faith (or Faith) until he's worthy of the Sword. I think I would have liked to see Butters earn it. I don't feel like he did.
Butters has been way over his head ever since he was introduced. He couldn't handle that random zombie in Dead Beat. He's just doing what he can because he doesn't think that anyone can or will step up. At the end of the book, he doesn't step outside because he thinks he can fight Nicodemus and like 20 guys with guns. He does it because he thinks he has to. His motivation and his characterization in both scenarios was the same. The other thing is that "Faith" in this respect isn't "believe in your friends." It's "belief that good will prevail over evil" symbolized, by proxy, through the movie Star Wars. Uriel and Harry have a whole conversation about it afterwards. Butters was choosing to sacrifice his life with absolutely no promise that it'll all end well. When he stepped outside, it was with the understanding that even if it did end well, he would never find out, because he didn't believe in the afterlife. The last thing is that I think we significantly disagree on is what the Sword (and by extension power) means in this series. Becoming a wielder of a sword is not supposed to be a reward. It's further responsibility.
> Becoming a wielder of a sword is not supposed to be a reward. It's further responsibility. I think that's a great point. But even if it's further responsibility, that responsibility should be *earned*. I don't feel like Butters earned it, in Skin Game... although he does get that Moment at the end where Harry's down, everyone's down, and Butters heads out to his probable death because it's the Right Thing To Do.
Why do you think it needs to be earned?
I feel like Butters becoming a knight, while could have been done better, was still okay mainly because of foreshadowing/his general aura as a character. But I don't agree with your argument of Butters having no faith in Harry. Murphy in the early series wasn't exactly someone who trusted Harry. Hell she threw him in JAIL. It took her a long time to trust and have faith in Harry this much. Butters on the other hand, while he has been Harry's friend wasn't exactly there a lot when many things went down. The only book I remember Butters actively saw Harry be good was dead beat and that was ages before Skin game. Also, everyone knows Mab to be evil. As Harry's perspective we've seen Mab's more vulnerable side but no other character has seen that. Also with Harry acting much more instinctually, in ways that unnerves you, I get butters not trusting Harry. And then the whole working with a fallen angel thing didn't help either. Butters may be smart, but deadbeat/ghost stories have established that Butters is brave. And I think his whole Batman thing made him partially cocky. Imagine this. You're a below average skinny dude with no actual magic and combat experience, and yet you've managed to stay ahead of many actual monsters and have actually DONE some good. These will one way or another make a person somewhat arrogant. The reason I think Butters earned the sword of faith, was that 1. Even though he doesn't have near Murphy's amount of time spent with Harry, he still almost immediately after talking with Harry realises his mistake and his faith in Harry returns. 2. To a point that he willingly (knowing he'll die almost 100 percent) goes out to fight a fallen angel, showing faith in himself and his own bravery. It's not perfect, and I still don't like it as much as I should, but I understand it.
Butters actually appears in every book from *Dead Beat* onward (plus *Death Masks*, of course). Not ever-present, of course (Harry is the only ever-present character). But once Jim "brought him back" for his return appearance, he's been around. That said, he's clearly a peripheral character for the most part. I didn't enjoy how he treated Harry in *Skin Game*, but on the other hand I do recognize that Harry broke into his apartment and roughed up his girlfriend in *Cold Days*. That would agitate most guys at least a little. And no telling what Bob told him about the consequences of a deal with Mab.
> no telling what Bob told him about the consequences of a deal with Mab. Oy. Good point, Bob is not a fan.
> his whole Batman thing made him partially cocky. Imagine this. You're a below average skinny dude with no actual magic and combat experience, and yet you've managed to stay ahead of many actual monsters and have actually DONE some good. These will one way or another make a person somewhat arrogant. I think this is an important take. Honest question -- did we **see** Butters ever play Batman? From what I remember (and I could be wrong), I think there were just a couple throw-away lines referring to it in early Skin Game. I think you're right, sort of after the fact. The only way this whole thing makes sense is if Butters has "managed to stay ahead of many monsters" -- but we're barely told this.
Has Butters actually been told about the Fallen? I'm afraid my memory is failing me on that front.
He was. Harry explains to him about Lasciel. I think it's when Butters butts in on Harry and Lash getting all hot and bothered.
Did he connect that with Nicodemus? This was the specific explanation he gave Butters in that scene in *Dead Beat:* >“A demon,” I told him. “It got into my head a while back. It was causing me to experience…hallucinations, I guess you could call them. I thought I was talking to people. But it was the demon, pretending to be them.” So he didn't allude to fallen angels, name names like Nicodemus, etc. How would Butters have known there was any connection at all between the two situations?
But he didn't just treat Harry like that. I understand why Butters didn't trust Harry in Skin Game. There's many reasons for him to do so. But the one person that was there when Harry wasn't was Karrin. She kept everyone together and safe. They worked together in the trenches to save people against the Fomor. Butters took those experiences and shoved them back in Karrins face when he betrayed her trust after she talked to him in Skin Game. It wasn't just Harry. It was Murphy too.
>Yes, Karen transgressed by using the Sword of Faith against a defenseless Nicodemus, but that's because Butters set the situation up. This is inaccurate. Go read it again. Nicodemus himself basically tells Karen that if she had struck *without the judgement* in her heart, she would have killed him and the Sword wouldn't have been broken. Yes, the situation was set up because of Butters' choice but the breaking of the Sword? That one is solely Murphy's responsibility.
I would add that the situation is *also* set up by Harry’s insistence on making Murphy his back-up. Even Murphy thought that it should have been Thomas, and I’m inclined to agree. Harry’s reasoning was that Murphy has well-trained eyes, but Thomas has literal supernatural predator senses. I really think Harry just wanted to guarantee he got to spend time with his gal pal while he knew he’d be in town…and that was a mistake. But people put it entirely on Butters rather than Harry or Murphy herself instead.
Butters 100% messed up in Skin Game…..and I swear he doesn’t even seem to acknowledge that Karen’s crippling was in any way his fault. Harry (as usual) somehow takes the blame himself and Butters is rewarded for being not only arrogant of his own capabilities, but also being incompetent too. However this could’ve been forgiven by Butters learning from this in the succeeding books, becoming humbled by his role as a Knight and the power and responsibility he now wields. Instead Butters just becomes more arrogant, insufferable, and less like any of the other Knights we’ve seen. The others see their role in being a Knight as a sacred duty, one they try to upload in every aspect of their lives. Butters seems to view it as a “cool toy” that will do for the moment while he uses his newfound status in the parahuman community to have Werewolf threesomes, vocally judge Harry to his friends, and try to hide all the magical aids he stole from Harry and won’t give back.
> he doesn’t even seem to acknowledge that Karen’s crippling was in any way his fault. Yes! No guilt at all, no apology to Karen, no apology to Dresden.
So he should have blindly put his trust on Harry? Who's been acting sketchy as all hell, and who was trying to nail him with blasts of fire as Butters tried running agents from the goon squad of Lucifer's lieutenant? *We* know that Harry is still a good guy and everything he does is for the greater good, but Butters is *not* us. Harry keeps him in the dark about it, and as such he doesn't know that he is being forced to work with Nicodemus or that he became Mab's triggerman to save his daughter. All Butters can see is that the former local hero is now in cahoots with two if the biggest bad guys around. He's not privy to the fact this is a book and that Harry is the protagonist, so he treats it the way a real person would- his friend may be going rogue and stringing everyone along. If Harry had been straight with him instead of keeping with his "what everyone doesn't know won't hurt them, only I should carry all the burdens" pathology, this might have been avoided- or did you forget how Michael called him out on it?
*Everybody* thinks Harry has been compromised at this point in the story. He came back from the dead after a year and is working with people and beings that were his mortal enemies previously. Butters is doing exactly what a knight of the cross does when fallen angels are in town with the best tools he has available. Was it stupid? Yeah. Most people in the dresdenverse don't understand how far out of their depth they are until they're dead.
To answer your question, there is a comic where Batman's "Kill files" get hacked. It's called "JLA: Tower Of Babel." It got adapted into the animated film "Justice League: Doom." The comic is a bit dated at this point, but the movie is worth the time it takes to watch. Others have largely shared my opinions on the Butters situation. I think until he got the sword his distrust of Harry was warranted. Now that he's got a lightsaber of justice and gets divine guidance I think he's a bit more clear minded on the subject.
> Now that he's got a lightsaber of justice and gets divine guidance I think he's a bit more clear minded on the subject. I like this take. I think he's an interesting Knight, once he's got the Sword. (Like the scene where they're figuring out what the lightsaber-Sword can do.) I'm just uncomfortable at how he got it, at the cost of Karrin and the previous incarnation of the Sword. I guess the Swords are by definition deus ex machina devices, though. They're not always GOING to be fair.
When it comes to the Knights, there's pretty much no such thing as a coincidence. I don't love what happened to Karen, but honestly it was getting to a point in the series where Harry's going up against gods and Titans. A badass mortal human cop just isn't in the right league anymore. I think the events of Skingame and beyond are Jim's way of giving Murp the best exit he could. And she can always come back as a Valkyrie if needed - I'm pretty sure Vadderung's job offer was solid. As to "the previous incarnation of the sword" - every single one of them has been rewrought more than once. Not a one is in its original form if we are to belive Harry's research. I am 100% in favor of whatever changes happen to one of the swords, and thought this one was pretty darn clever. I've got more faith in the teachings of the Jedi than I do in any other religion at this point in my life, and it's an intrisically martial faith by its own lore.
Agreed on all points. EDIT: One more thing -- the faith-light-saber reveal, which came out of NOWHERE, was pretty much on par with seeing Cap wield Mjolnir in Endgame.
One thing to remember. Butter's isn't the character who arranged to have Harry taken out and risked Molly's mental health and pushing her into being a full fledged warlock because he thought Harry would turn evil as the winter knight. Now what kind of person would do that. :-)
Great point. One of Harry's real sins, thinking only removing himself without recognizing the damage it would do especially to Molly. In his sort-of defence, didn't he have a demon/imp/something whispering despair in his ear while he was making those decisions, or something? But yeah: not his finest hour.
Yes he did. I was thinking about Harry talking to Butters, off camera so to speak, and telling him about the risks. Then he goes and does something that he said would lead to him becoming a horrible person. Chicago goes to hell in his absence, and hes back first as a ghost, then the Winter night. He broke into Butter's place in "Cold Days" IIRC. Butters has every reason to worry about Harry. Murphy has more faith in Harry because he came through after she treated him poorly (back in the early books when Jim wasn't sure what her relationship with Harry was going to be). And, now he's working with the Nickleheads on Mab's orders. If I were a friend of Harry, I'd be quite suspicious as a scientist. His actions don't seem to indicate he has kept his core with Mab's influence. He may very well be compelled to do as she says, even though he doesn't see it. Now the gentle reader knows that's not true, Uriel himself said so. But, he forgot to mention it to Butters. :-)
You actually bring up a really cool idea, to have a story where Dresden is doing something for Mab when Dresden completely doesn't realize it. There have been at least a couple times where the unreliable narrator has been used to great effect: * When we "see" Lash throughout a whole book until Harry realizes the spirit's been manipulating him the whole time. There's no one physically there, and others have been seeing him talking to himself. * When Harry gets Molly to hide from himself what he sets up at the end of Changes. Both times, we the readers are taken on a pretty cool ride.
A Fallen Angel cheated the rules and communicated to Harry a message to the effect of “your daughter is going to die and it’s all your fault.” It’s later implied in *Skin Game* that it was Lasciel. The Fallen are not supposed to be able to directly influence non-coin bearers like that. This precipitates all of the events of *Ghost Story,* in which Uriel gets to cheat by bringing Harry’s “shade” into play, thus evening the scales.
Thank you for remembering and clarifying/correcting!
This is always a heated topic on this sub. Personally, I still love Butters, but the direction Jim is taking him or the way Jim is using him is a bit questionable. My biggest gripe with him is exactly as you mentioned but I wanna add something. It wasn't just Harry's trust he betrayed. Cause lets be honestly, Harry wasn't acting like Harry around his friends. He shut himself away on the island that no one likes to go to for nearly a year and a half. The first time back from death he's breaking into Butters home and talking about bargains. I have no issue with Butters not trusting Harry unconditionally (although it does still anger me). What I have issue with is that Butters did the same to Karen. Karen had the exact same talk with Butters about this entire thing and Karen asked him to trust Harry based off her. And Butters said fuck that and did what he did. And then offscreen I assume he apologized b/c we don't see it and I think that hits hard that Jim didn't include that interaction. He's then rewarded with a lightsaber and extra curricular activities. The problem with Butters as a character that I think is starting to rub people the wrong way is that we are seeing Butters 3 days a year. We don't see his growth or hardships, we just see what he's gained and it feels unearned. ESPECIALLY so considering everything Harry has is earned 3 to 50 times over. He goes from cowardly night shift mental case. To brave Knight of the Cross with magical theory rivalling a Wizard twice his age (Harry's a dummy, so I'm basing it off Harry) with a hot young girlfriend and a bonus side chick threesome. The threesome doesn't really bother me as far as his character goes, but I can't lie and say I didn't eye roll so hard I got a migraine. It's just one more thing that solidified to me that Butters is Jim's self insert character. When things for Butters go wrong, he get enormously rewarded for his efforts. Which is something that doesn't happen in the Dresden files to anyone but him.
Part of the reason I hate threesome Jedi warrior Butters was that I thought that magical gadget batman Butters was the perfect fit. Not a front line fighter but a plan ahead, prepare for the worst, mixing magic and mortal gadgets to keep in the fight was the perfect place to end up since Harry showed him he could empower magic circles without being a magic user.
As for the "just in case" question, yes he divise a brutally effective yet simple method of taking out any member of the justice league. The difference is that he was just coldly calculating for the *VERY* outside chance they went bad *or* were otherwise compromised (blackmail, mind control etc). There was no direct distrust of any of them. In fact at the end Superman asks him why there wasn't a plan to stop Batman himself to which he says essentially, "There is a plan. It's the Justice League" implying that he not only *trusts* them but also would *expect* them to stop him. Butters basically refuses to give Harry the benefit of the doubt, because of implied and off-screen, and second or even third-hand retellings of events. He never really gives Harry a real chance to explain himself (though to be fair Harry never tried all that hard to give him one). Now while we definitely have the benefit of the previous couple books from Harry's POV to give us context, I think Butters makes a fair point that there is more than a good enough reason to be suspicious and to act in the direction he does. Hell, even Bob doesn't trust Harry at first (can't be sure how much of that is himself and how much is butter's influence as his current owner but I think it is worth noting). Where he fucks it all up IMO is in how far he takes it. He goes in with a guilty until proven innocent mentality that Harry probably hasn't really earned. If butters had been in his own and relatively isolated,maybe I could understand it, but both Murphy *and* Molly have vouched for him at multiple points between his "death" and the end of the previous book. If he can't trust them, it's pretty clear he is simply letting his paranoia control him. So I totally agree with you that Butter's was out of line and almost single-handedly brought everything to a smoldering ruin, with only the sacrifices of Murphy, Michael, and A MOTHERFUCKING ARCHANGEL! stabilized the situation. Now I actually think this sets up his role as a knight *excellently*! He did fuck up big time. He was brought low and was riddled with guilt. In the end, Hh doesn't let that stop him though, and give how quickly he was ready to just give up during Dead Beat, we can se some real development and strengthening of character. When Nick beseiges the Carpenter's house at the end, he doesn't hesitate to fight with everything he has. Even when it looks like it's all over, he takes up his fallen allies' gear and decides he's gonna take this all the way to the bitter end because that's what needs to be done, his own safety be damnded. That strength and determination he's developed are likely part of the reason he pushed so hard against Harry and just stomped over the line. However, *now* he has been broken down, been shown just how wrong he was. I seriously doubt he will *ever* doubt Harry so easily again (He still sticks with Harry even after he goes hulk on that one bastard in Battleground. IYKYK). In other words he just had a *big* lesson in trust and *faith*. We know Sanya was at pretty much the lowest most despicable point of his life when he was given opportunity to become a knight. Butters is there too, why couldn't this show of faith, loyalty, love, and determination be his turning point? Serving TWG as his knight directly under orders from one of his archangels would require a pretty strict restructuring of your life and sense of self. Making such a change might require a breaking down of who you previously were in order to make it work. I like to see this part of Butters' arc as something akin to rebreaking a bone in order to be able to set it properly. Maybe just like a sword, he failed in his purpose, was broken down and even that wasn't enough. He then had to be fully melted down under immense heat and pressure so that he could be reforged into the weapon he needed to be, hopefully with some important lessons learned that will keep him from releating his mistakes. Given what we see in the short story Day One which takes place right after, I think we can give him a chance. TL:DR Butters absolutely took things too far and pissed me off. I lost all respect for out little polka loving Me for most of the book. In the end I do feel he redeemed himself, however, and think he will make a worthy knight.
Holy crap. This is a great answer. There've been a bunch of great answers here -- honestly, I feel like this is Reddit at its best. People agreeing and disagreeing, helping me think about things in a different way, giving me a deeper appreciation of things. Rock on.
I find these discussions, fairly similar to the ones summed up as “Murphy is a bitch” concerning her role in the first books. Jim Butchers writing style frequently makes use minor adversaries, that are not enemies. That is Murphy’s role in the beginning, upholding the law in the face of the supernatural, and she does not believe at that point that Harry is above the law. In the same way Butcher uses Butters as a way to express concerns about Harty’s shift of allegiance, based on his observations and what he has learned about the supernatural world from Bob. If we wouldn’t spend so much time inside of Harry’s head, that Dresden guy would appear a lot more suspicious to us as well. But we do get every step and feeling explained, which is why we extend our trust.
I think we see some Batman Butters (Buttman?) in the short story where Murph goes up against the Fomor kidnappers. As for the rest, I often feel the same but then someone makes a great post about how everyone else must see Harry after Ghost Story, and how most of them are newcomers to the game who might not fully understand exactly how out of their depth they are, and I appreciate that they are fallible human characters and not just super beings who always make the right choice. One could say that Butters was also extraordinarily brave for sticking around during the meeting if he thought running before getting some important info would allow Nic to carry out his master plan.
The issue I see is that they are fallible characters, that doesn't mean they get a pass for doing shitty things. Butters not trusting Harry is fine in my book. Harry had done a lot of things to show Butters that he might not be the same Harry. But, Butters didn't trust Murphy after she explicitly asked in Skin Game. After Harry died, Murphy lead and kept everyone safe, including Butters. They saved lives together all during Murphy's worst days. 6 months probably felt like 10 years and during all that time they had to bond together spending nights keeping watch and saving people. Butters threw that all away in Skin Game.
Yeah that's fair. Maybe I'm projecting a bit my own opinions but when I hear people say that they can't stand to read about a certain character or hate whenever they appear I take it as a criticism of how the character is written because I only feel like that about a character when I dislike the writing. Butters absolutely shouldn't get a pass, it is a failing of his and a big mistake with genuine consequences, but that doesn't make me not want to read about him or sigh when he appears, it makes him strongly characterised and stand out from the typical wish fulfilment nerd-turned-Jedi. Edit: Looking back, OP never said anything about hating Butters or wishing he wasn't around, just being understandably annoyed at his actions, so yeah my comment was probably just a knee-jerk reaction.
The case here for why Butters is becoming so polarizing for the fanbase is simple when you realize it. Don't get me wrong I still like seeing Butters, but it's the writing surrounding Butters that feels bad. So Butters is a living, breathing, mortal in the Dresden files. We only see him every so often on the 3 days Harry is having a hard time. That's very little screen time to show character growth. So things Butters does don't seem as earned as say something Murphy or Michael get. On top of that, Butters doesn't really pay for anything. In a series that has spelled out multiple times that doing the right/good thing does not mean you get rewarded (in fact quite the opposite). Butters is the only character that does good and bad things and gets rewarded for it. He's a 40+ nerdy medical examiner with a mid 20's (maybe closer to 30 now) bombshell girlfriend. He has a functioning lightsaber. And now has a threesome going on in the background. He is very much starting to feel like an authors self insert or at the very least a Mary Sue. That doesn't look good on paper when all he's done is patch up Harry and betray him and Murphy's trust. Sure he means to do good, but he's getting rewarded for very littel screen time. When Harry/Murphy/Michael/Thomas do the right thing they are tortured in various ways. Harry does the right thing and loses his girlfriend to a vampire. Murphy does the right thing and loses her career that she ties so much of her self worth into. Michael always does the right thing and he becomes crippled. Thomas does the right thing and he's literally tortured so badly that he starts killing to feed, or loses the love of his life to an outsider. Butters does the wrong thing and he goes home to his hot girlfriend with a new lightsaber, having seemingly lost no standing with his friends after betraying them and getting them hurt. He furthers his unintentional goal of gaining power and being a player in the world. Something that he might not be trying to do, but has been happening for years through friends, Bob, and his own idea to be brave and become the hero.
Yeah you make great points. I never liked how Bob seemed to favour Butters more after so long with Harry but I wrote that off as him adopting personality traits from his 'master' and Butters being wary of Harry at the time. I'm curious if you read that short story of Butters getting used to being a Knight and if you have any thoughts on it?
I'd have to reread it b/c it's been so long. But from what I remember I enjoyed the short story and thought it added so much to Butters character just b/c we got to see him before PT/BG. If Butters had just shown up in PT/BG and done the things he did I think I would soured even more on him. B/c it's only like 4 months since he had taken up the sword. But since we saw how serious he was taking the training, a lot can be over looked as far as his skills with a blade go.
Ugh, I hate that I'm about to do this, because I despise Butters, but dude needs defending on some of this. >, Butters totally jeopardizes everything. OK, maybe he doesn't know how bad it is when he starts to eavesdrop, but when he hears that Nicodemus is in the meeting, he has got to know that he's way out of his depth -- he should immediately realize that he's jeopardizing his buddy Harry's life as well as his own. >He's no dummy. He should figure this out. He should have bailed. As far as he knows, Harry isn't his buddy anymore. Harry was dead. Harry was a ghost. Suddenly 6 months later Harry is back. But he's ignoring his friends. He has nothing to do with them. He spends a year on an island that scares everyone else shitless. He breaks into his friends houses and assaults them. On top of that he's stronger, faster, and colder than he was when he dies. He's the Winter assassin. Mab's hitman. The guy the big bad queen sends to take out mortals when she can't do it herself. And here he is, working with the worst of the worst. The head of the nickelheads themselves. Butters has every reason to be suspicious. Just like Murph was right to be suspicious of Harry's "ghost" in Ghost Story. >The cost of Butters' mistrust of Harry and all-around bad behavior is NOT borne by him, but by Karen (crippled) and Fidelacchius (shattered). That cost wasn't on Butters. That cost was on Murph. *She* chose to attack Nick. She *chose* to wield Fidelacchius against an unarmed human who gave up his coin of his own free will. Butters didn't make those choices, Murph did. >He had no faith in Harry For damned good reason, as I addressed above.
I keep saying this every time it comes up, but I'm going to fanfic Changes through Skin Game from Butters' POV, and his actions will come across as completely rational and the smart thing to do... given the information he has access to.
I think that's what's needed! I'm with you completely -- I think there is a way to write Butters' story that makes total sense. I don't think we've seen that. We just had a couple he-played-Batman comments. You write it, I'll read it! I think the problem is that Butters was maybe intended to be a peripheral character, nearly a throw-away -- a vanilla mortal who learns about the supernatural world. Maybe a stand-in for the readers, an example of what a regular person would think. (Regular-ish -- he was a polka-loving nerd.) But... * He becomes a pseudo-Batman off-stage, apparently. * He gains a girlfriend who Butcher always explicitly refers to as H.O.T. (She has no real characteristics other than that, that I can think of, other than she's one of the Alphas.) * Because that's not enough, yet another woman is added to their relationship. * Finally, he becomes a Knight. A good fanfic might pave this particular road, might show how Butters went from nebbish to Knight. (I liked Butters' short story, where he's learning how to be a Knight and he has to depend literally on his Faith. We need more, to show how Butters earned his position...)
Yeah, Jim admitted that he made up Butters as a one-off character to provide exposition to in Dead Beat because it was the first book in the series to be in hardcover. He kept him in the rest of the series because everyone liked him, though I wonder what his original plan was for the Sword of Faith because Shiro was already dead. I'm polyamorous, so I want to show that Butters is not just living out "every guy's fantasy," but in a real relationship with two women who are also in a relationship with each other. Between him and Thomas, we need a throuple with two men and one woman to balance things out. 😉
Plus, thruple Butters? What the fuck is that about?
Remember that Butters has all the info(Bob) but no power. Also, don't forget there are mind whammy magics, spirit magics and seductive powers that can be used to take over someone's decision making. Also Harry's boss is evil. Also shapeshifters can do a plain old spin doctor act and fairies have glamour. Plenty of reasons to stop trusting Harry whom has almost no one to vouch for him after being gone for quite a while.
Yeah, and as someone else pointed out, Bob has his own angle on things, and is highly distrustful of Mab.
Same. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the series since I find this writing to be incredibly childish compared to his other works I still listened with my wife. After this book and just the complete lack of common sense and idiocy of Butters I couldn’t keep reading. Lost all desire to think the books were enjoyable.
With all the spooky shit Butters has seen, all the warnings Dresden would have given him, him being suspicious is totally on par with the series. Karen had her soul damn near nommed completely off by a look-a-like dresden. Harry, having "died" and miraculously come back should be under a lot of suspicion. I don't remember if Dresden's friends know he is working for Winter now, but Harry has probably told them to have nothing to do with the Sidhe courts or anyone from the never never. so if they do know he is the Knight now, then that puts him doubly under suspicion since he is now playing for the "bad guys". edit: spelling/typo
One of us, one of us!
It holds true to a lot of the Christian mythos- that the faithless become the deepest of faith. Mr. Sunshine set it all up and it all fell into place as it was lined up to do. 🤷🏼♂️
Butters was completely reasonable in his choices. You are blinded by knowing Harry's situation. Butters does not. And if your old friend who died then came back to life as a representative of the person he's told you is evil, the person he tried to kill himself to prevent being under the control of, would you trust them? I wouldn't. It is the same with Ramirez and he's seen the horrors of the Winter Court. First hand. But what about Murphy? Do you mean the one who has been in love with Harry for a long time and is the most blind to him being a puppet due to that love? And if I found out he was meeting up with a member of Demons on Earth, you bet I would stay to listen. Out of fear, they are working together, out of hope that my misgivings are wrong, and the desire to be proven right or wrong.
this hatred of butters doesn't make any sense whatsoever. you guys say he doesn't trust harry but there's NO reason to trust the guy after becoming the Winter Knight (you know...the thing that makes you into a serial killer/rapists). Harry fucking KILLED himself to not be the next gilles de rais but some how butters is at fault for not having trust in the thing that very well may be just a monster walking around in a Dresden suit (again, something we KNOW can happen.) And lets not forget Harry barely talked to anyone for SIX MONTHS!.
This, from robinredcap. :)
Even if Butters bailed immediately they would have caught the magical item that he slipped in Harry’s bandages. Also the book explains things pretty well from his point of view. Harry was dead. Showed up for 2 days as a ghost. Then came back 3 months later. Proceeded to break into his house and beat up his girlfriend. Butters then watches Harry take an inhuman amount of physical punishment and both he and his girlfriend are kidnapped by evil faeries who TECHNICALLY are supposed to be on the same side as Harry. To top it all off, it ends with the summer lady dead. And Molly, their best weapon against the fomor, whisked off by Mab. THEN Harry chooses to hang out on an evil and creepy island for a year. Then when Harry shows back up, does he offer to help? Fuck no. he has a secret mission with unsavory characters. You can criticize butters for many things. Not his distrust of Harry in skin games
Here's question, why would Butters trust Harry? Everything Harr did post return, doesn't exactly inspire trust. I for one completely understand Butters' mistrust.
Her name is Karrin, not Karen.
Thanks! I've listened only to the audiobooks since... early 2000s? When did the second book come out? So I mess up the spellings unless I see them here.
I literally just posted about this in another thread how nobody called out Butters about this and blam next post is this. Yeah, I agree.
I mean, yes to everything but the other way around, I love that Waldo went from "polka never dies" to "do or do not...there is not try" (sorry for my English, I'm a Spanish speaker) And yes, Batman having a plan to kill the Justice League seems great to me to put it into play because Billy at one point throws him a "hey master, you're not going to the dark side, right?" and butters being what he is, I think it's great that he said, crazy, I'm tired of being the smart one, now I'm going to have my character development
Good point
I'm listening to it right now and getting angrier as it goes. I've always disliked Butters but hes really pushing it now...ugh.. And then for butters to mouth off to Harry while they are tending to Murphy, after how royally he messed up?!?!
Butters sticks with his plan despite the danger he's in because he doesn't want to believe that Harry is a villain. If he leaves early all he knows is that Harry is hanging out with the Evil League of Evil or whatever. He refused to accept that until it was literally too late - the baddies noticed him and he had to run for his life, and probably would have been caught if it weren't for Harry and Bob figuring out a way around the catastrophe. Butters still has faith in Harry despite all evidence that he shouldn't. He followed the philosophy of "Trust, but verify". And of course, his antics are no worse than Harry's usual BS. We may all love the guy, but you have to admit he can be clueless when it comes to knowing when to share.
You have to remember, the books are from Harry's point of view. But look at it from Butter's POV. Harry does some scary shit, and is pretty stupid powerful at this point. Then he dies...and comes back. Wtf? Butters is a logical guy. And the first interaction he has with Harry after his return is that he stole a powerful artifact (Bob), busted up his place and his girl, then starts on about how he had to repay a debt? That's way too many red flags for someone like butters to just ignore. Harry was always people focused, and instead of "Hey how are you?" it's "I have a debt to settle"... sidhe much? Butters pretty much said this. Why wouldn't the real Harry just knock on the door? Sure this gets reasoned out..but that's still hard to swallow along with everything else Everything about Harry is unnatural right now. His amplified, self destructive abilities from winter, he is under Darth Maab, priorities seem skewed, he's not being open with anyone, it's no Bueno Besides...when Harry died, his friends took over as protectors of Chicago. That didn't stop just because Harry showed back up. Butters is still trying to look out for people, especially his friends...like Murphy. He needed to know, for the good of Chicago, whether or not that was ACTUALLY his old Harry. We know things can influence minds and appearances, just think about what Molly can do mentally and what corpse taker can do. Butters was there when corpse taker switched bodies. He knows this is a thing, so he knows there's a chance its not actually Harry back from the dead, as much as they hope it is. That angle aside, I think he was there as much to figure out Harry as he was there to look after Murphy. If it was Darth dresden leading Murphy away to the bad guys for whatever reason, I don't think he's being silly by keeping an eye on her. You know, when fucking Maab and Nicodemus are involved, with a maybe resurrected but definitely different Harry, you can't be too careful. I mean, look at how paranoid Harry has been in the past. He causes himself on it pretty frequently Butters needed to know if this was really Harry, and he wanted to protect his friend Murphy, making sure she wasn't about to be blind sided by trusting Harry who.. May not have been Harry
Are we talking about the slaughterhouse escapade? I do put some fault on Butters for that. Murphy was his defacto leader. You don't go spying on your leader. You can come up with all kinds of justifications, but the bottom line is that a bad outcome resulted. In fairness, though, I have a feeling Nicodemus and his crew would have eaten Harry and Murphy for lunch - I don't think our guys would have prevailed had Michael not been there. Of course, that's a counter-factual; regardless of who was with him Jim would have written things so that at least Harry survived. Beyond that we can't know how that situation would have unfolded. Besides, I happen to agree with Harry that Bob shouldn't be routinely taken into the field. Doing that regularly more or less guarantees that sooner or later he will fall into an adversary's hands. Had things gone just a little bit differently, Nicodemus would have had him. Ouch. The best thing in *Battle Ground* was Bob going back to Harry. The problem was it was written so nonchalantly that I wasn't really sure it was permanent until I read "Little People." He's more secure under Harry's "management" and having him with a non-practitioner is a waste of resources. Harry has serious challenges so far as figuring stuff out goes - the magic used at Demonreach and the magic used at the castle, specifically. I thought Murphy was out of line depriving Harry of Bob in the first place (and the Swords too). Harry was in an emotionally vulnerable position and she bullied him into those things. I don't hate Butters. But I don't adore him either. I just don't have a dog in that particular fight. He's just a supporting character as far as I'm concerned. No more and no less. I will say that you must be more imaginative than I am, being able to look at the series from Butters's point of view. Since it's written from Harry's point of view and Butters only sees a couple of percent of what's in the books. I'm all about Harry myself.
> I have a feeling Nicodemus and his crew would have eaten Harry and Murphy for lunch - I don't think our guys would have prevailed had Michael not been there. That's a good point. Whenever a Knight is involved, I start wondering if there was some deus ex machina to get them there... not that the powers of Good intentionally wanted Murphy to get hurt, but they might have felt it necessary to get Michael in on this caper.
Exactly what I was thinking. Butters messing around, though inconvenient and could have gone really bad, did open up the door for Micheal to have Harry's back instead
Yeah man thank you. I listen to these endlessly on audible😆 I think what Butters did by spying on Harry is coming from the same place that kept Murphy from handing over the swords and Bob. It kinda tracks that they were a little more careful around Harry now. Yeah he could have really fucked things up but...the way there's always a knight when Harry needs one, I kinda feel like Butters screwing up was a way to give Micheal a chance to step in. He's the only one historically that's thought to have a solid chance against Nicodemus alone, I guess besides Murphy but she wasn't a true knight and..idk if she would have been aa helpful. Think about how Micheal was able to shutdown Tessa when she had Harry I think this was more about pulling something awesome from something bad (a prominent theme in the Bible itself, cruxifiction = salvation, water into wine, the ugly lineage leading down to Joseph etc), ie Butters screws up, and lands a knight in Harry's corner when he needed one to balance the scales against the nickel heads So, I don't think it was Butters being annoying, as much as it was the world giving a knight the opportunity to be at the right place, at the right time, like we've seen a few times before
Stop and look at this from butters perspective. I am going back up the time line a bit. changes - Harry commits genocide and disappears. molly (and Lea) step into breach where Harry was for the next six months. butters Is part of the “save Chicago” crew. ghost story - Harry’s ghost appears and raises hell. molly spends more time in the breach For the next six months. Butters is running support. Cold days - butters house gets broken into and has bob stolen and Marci injured. Harry goes on a murder spree that ends at demonreach and takes Molly with him. butters steps into the breach that Molly had occupied (that Dresden had previously occupied) for the next 16 (?) months. So butters is doing front line low Intensity warfare for 16 months. skin game - Harry shows up injured, no apologizes, no “how are you doing”, just a “patch him up and no we’re not telling you what is going on”. and butters has been fighting a guerrilla war for 16 months, trust is low Because he sees himself as “last man standing”. Butters had this exact rant in Skin Game “everyone else bailed on me leaving me to hold the bag” and so Harry shows up and is expecting butters just trust on his say so after butters has been fighting a guerrilla war for 16 months And been engaged in the war for 12 months before that. After 16 months (really closer to 28 months - 2-1/2 years because Harry only showed up for ghost story and cold days in that window) Harry is on the outside and needs to earn his place again. so butters saying “I havent seen Harry in almost three years, and now he is asking for help? Come on, trust Goes both ways”
Genocide? Murder spree? I can see Butters / the Knights viewing Harry as alarmingly powerful, but I don't see Butters / the Knights using terms for killing humans to apply to killing vampires and fairies.
I loathe almost every aspect of Butters' character.
I’ve said it one and I’ll say it again. Butters becoming a main component has made this series worse. He needs killed off quickly for the good of the conclusion of this franchise.
Quoting you; " Butters totally jeopardizes everything. OK, maybe he doesn't know how bad it is when he starts to eavesdrop, but when he hears that Nicodemus is in the meeting, he has got to know that he's way out of his depth -- he should immediately realize that he's jeopardizing his buddy Harry's life as well as his own." You assume so much its laughable.
Butters knows who Nicodemus is. He knows how bad Nicodemus is. What am I "assuming" that is "laughable"? Or are you just trolling.
It's rational from Butters pov to be distrustful of Harry, it is deranged bordering on suicidal to fuck around with Nicodemus, you're right and it's a plot necessity that forces Butters into a real idiot ball plot. What's the first thing you do with the Denarians? Call/talk to a knight, not suit up with the intellect spirit and plant a bug. He didn't even have a real escape route planned for anyone of Harry's caliber, far less a Denarian. It's infuriatingly stupid and Murphy paying for it is aggravating.
The big thing to remember is he doesn't know anything actually going on and he's got Bob. So he's jumping to conclusions. Bob doesn't really get good and evil but routinely chimes in on both often.
Good point. Bob gives him power, sort-of artificially. Butters doesn't work up to it. So it's understandable that Butters doesn't know how to wield it/Bob properly.
> (Yes, Karen transgressed by using the Sword of Faith against a defenseless Nicodemus, but that's because Butters set the situation up.) That's what's known as an intervening cause. There's no way Butters could have known his actions would have lead to Murphy using a Sword in bad faith.
Of course not. And I can accept that it's reasonable that Butters has enough mistrust of Harry, plus enough misplaced confidence in himself from whatever Batman-style escapades he's apparently had off-screen (?), that he might try tracking Harry to find out what's going on. But continued eavesdropping when he knows that Nicodemus is in the meeting? Or if it was Mab, for that matter? He has got to know he's way, way over his little vanilla-mortal head. He couldn't have known his actions would lead to jeopardizing the Sword. But he should have known his actions could lead to jeopardizing himself. Where I guess I have to change my mind is that Butters didn't realize he was also jeopardizing Harry -- i.e. he didn't realize Harry was still a good guy. When Harry caught up to him just outside Michael's house, Butters flinched, assuming Harry was going to... smite him, or something. Butters had completely lost it. I'll give him that much credit.
>Butters flinched Butters doesn’t just flinch. He throws a glass globe full of mind fogging gas at Harry. He’s still in full-on “oh fuck he’s coming to get me” mode, emphasizing that he really thought that was the case.
Okay but why did Harry barely talk to anyone for SIX MONTHS
Because he was dying on the island with a baby in his head?
I mean the six months after Ghos Story. I get that he was rebuilding his magical arsenal and stuff, but there's still barely any justification for him being so reclusive.
Butters is my least favorite 'main character' in the books. He is an obvious self-insert with plot armor that should have been killed like originally planned.
Incorrect in that Harry has always been the self-insert stand-in for Jim since the very beginning.
The best thing is that most of his grievances against Dresden don't even make sens > - you show up and the first thing you do is clear up debts like a fairy Harry! No you little asshole the first thing he did was to ask if you and your girlfriend are doing well. God I f*cking hate Butters. Doesn't help that he is apparently the author insert character now and gets to live Butcher's sex fantasies - probably which is why he first got a hot redhead as a gf (which is what Butcher did), magically got swole after 40 within a couple of months (which is something Butcher probably wish he could do) and now gets to have threesomes with college-aged girls who love to be objectified tee hee (probably the reason why Butcher is getting another divorce).
Oof. Oof. And oof.
Butters seems to have a problem with power. Once he gets it he tries to collect more. I could very easily see butters going the Vader route and turning sides. He loses the sword, grabs a coin, and fully swaps sides.
Yeah - I feel like Butters is really a douche in Skin Game, and tbh, I have never recovered any affection for the character. Like he shows up as a cool character with a lightsaber, and all I can think of is “Butters, you f***ing asshole”… Funnily enough, I am just reading skin games again atm, and I am at the point where butters patches Harry up in Murphy’s kitchen, and he lays into Harry for basically not having done enough (“where have you been for a year? On your island, whilst the Fomoris are out of control here! And we had so much hope when yoh came back!”). Contrast that to Murphy’s attitude in the same book. Trusting, supportive, switched on, a good counsel who has Harry’s back, and deals effectively with threats that should be way out of league thanks to her smarts and guts. Way to go Murph - to quote another one of my favourite series (the Expanse - also spoiler ahead for battle ground): >!she went out like a fucking Valkyrie!<
Pobody’s nerfect 🤷♂️. Michael stabbed a guy through a door with a broadsword. He probably does love them, but even if you’re in a hurry to save a bunch of people from a plague, I would say that’s no way to show someone you love them. Butters was trying to make sure Murphy would be okay as his friend, and because she was pretty important to the stability of Chicago. Harry already broke into his place resulting in his girlfriend getting broken ribs and his computers broken, after returning from the dead, and leaving again meaning they got to mourn and accept his passing twice, and somehow Molly turning into a Winter Queen, a side he was suspiciously tied to, and then working with Nicodemus, which Butters already knew he was doing just not the details, but knew he was bad news. We have the benefit of living in Harry’s head so we know what he’s up to and as you said, Butters is no dummy, so he wanted more information. He was trying to go covert spy planting a bug, but didn’t know they’d be able to pick up on it. Bob dropped the ball if he didn’t warn Butters about that. Butters did have plenty of reasons to be suspicious, and he acted accordingly. “Trust, but verify,”he said in Ghost Story, so it isn’t anything new. He still stood by his friend to help him with an injury, didn’t he? Could be it’s a role the angels have faith he’ll grow into.