Sigh, Dresden Files - why.
Oct. 16th, 2020 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishI recently realized that 2020 gave the world two novels in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher, and since I was three behind, I decided to read some of them, and see if I could get over the elements of the novels that ruined my enjoyment of them.
Answer: not really.
This probably has spoilers for Skin Game but not the books from 2020, since I have not gotten those from the library yet.
It's rare for me to stick with a series that annoys me this much. And I have been trying to find people who are, like me, Dresden Files readers who are aware of some of these shitty elements of the series and are reading in spite of them, and what I am finding is that - either most online spaces have made their peace with the shitty elements of the book and are not friendly to fans who are bothered by them, OR, people bailed early.
So, here I am, reading these books with stupid, superficial elements that could EASILY be removed to make the reading more enjoyable, trudging thru them to get to the actual elements of the story I really do like, and feeling like a fool for making the effort.
In reading Skin Game, I was re-encountering some of the elements of the series that I had forgotten about, one of which is that the narrator, our hero, Harry Dresden, is constantly noticing women's looks. It's just... really unrelenting at times. All of the women who feature in the book for long term are extremely hot, and always in different ways, and by god, the novel never misses a chance to tell you how hot this particular woman is.
I found the worst of it in this one was focusing on Hannah Ascher, who also, apparently is also just intensely skilled at working with magical fire as well, and a super cool criminal. But while that trait is relied upon and mentioned, the book just keeps talking about her breasts. Like, in this coy way of, like, trying to sneak it past the censors, or being "clever" with it. But my experience reading it is that, honestly, it feels like Harry Dresden, who I'm supposed to like, and sympathize with, just literally cannot engage with a woman without constantly thinking about sex with her. The whole world is divided into dangerous, murderous, extremely hot women who Harry Dresden Will Not Fuck (tho they pointedly are attractive AT him), and the beautiful and hot women who Harry Dresden has rescued in some way (and Will Not Fuck because they belong to other men in some fashion.)
And it's one thing to have a character who is like, I am """old fashioned"" and think that """you should treat a lady like a lady""" in book ONE, who encounters both human women and female nonhuman creatures who could easily kill him, and to have him get over that stupid old fashionedness. But we're in book 15 or so now. Harry, the character, is surrounded by women who could murder him, and all he can think about it how smoking hot they all are.
And this is just - Jim Butcher doing this! He can't imagine a queen of ice and darkness who isn't using her magical powers to make herself look impossible hot! Like, if I were queen of a magical realm that I ruled with an iron first, being fuckable would probably slide from my list of things to care about!
Like, I love books where the author is self indulgent, and writes things because they love them, and lean into letting the story be the exact garbage that your raccoon-Id loves to roll around in. I AM HERE FOR YOUR TERRIBLE FANTASIES! But, for the love of god, write that book AND THEN write your urban fantasy detective novel, so I don't have to handle the half assed version of your id-fic while I want to read your interesting detective story!
It gets to be that I just don't like being in the main character's head. Partially because of the unrelenting "fuckable women" focus, AND ALSO, because everyone who is A Good Person in Dresden's world agrees with Dresden and thinks he is a good person. And many, many of those side characters spend a huge amount of the book telling Dresden that, despite of the Deeply Awful Things he's done, he's a good person, and the corrosive evil force in his brain whispering for him to use magic to kill and destroy things will not make him a bad person, Because He Cares So Much.
If you need to spend 10% of the book convincing the audience that your main character is not evil (despite some of the evil things he did) and will not become evil (despite the evil road he's on) - maybe just let your character worry about becoming evil? maybe let the other people around him worry about it? maybe it's actually fine for him to not feel like a moral paragon at the end of the book!
And that I think is the other issue - since we see the whole world THRU HARRY, I feel like I really want the other characters in the book to stand up and support that other views of this world exist. Like, that there are ways of looking at Harry's actions and feeling upset and betrayed and NOT wanting to reconcile with him. That people who listen to him would sometimes say, Fuck you, that was a shitty thing to do! Hell, even the evil characters agree with Harry - they just don't agree on the methods!
There's a point where Harry makes a shitty joke about how the Karen Murphy, the ex-cop non-magical human woman who is coming to help him fight actual monsters and literally walk into hell, is wearing steel toed boots and they are ugly shoes. And then Nicodemus, a literal fallen angel who is several centuries old, makes a petty shitty joke about those shoes to Murphy. Like- why? What was that for? All it does it make it seem like Harry and Nicodemus are thinking the same way, and that's... not great? Why would either a combat wizard or a fallen angel ever notice someone's shoes? It's deeply out of character for *both* of them, and yet, it seems like Butcher kept it in to take a potshot at Murphy, who is the main character's ride or die friend and braver than the main character?
(Sidebar: In attempting to find anyone online who is a) bothered by the shitty sexism and b) still reading these books, I accidentally found a reddit post that was arguing the misogyny in the book was good. In literally that language. The actual misogyny was a plus for the books. And in that post, the person was saying, 'well, also, I know a lot of us don't like Karen Murphy'. And my jaw literally dropped. Because... Karen Murphy is the best character in the books. She is one of very few characters who actually stops Harry when he's doing something that could be reasonably seen as awful, and while she's acting on bad info, she goes up against someone she knows as a friend and who she thinks might be dangerous and tries to stop him from hurting people. That's heroic. She's amazing. She's one of the few women characters in the books that isn't always treated like a sex toy, and she's got a life and family outside of Harry and she's GREAT. It honestly didn't occur to me that anyone could dislike Karen Murphy, much less that a majority of the fandom might dislike her.)
And the thing that is really, really irritating - I really enjoyed the last third of this book.
I was slogging thru the first two thirds of set up, but the last third had an interesting twist that set up very very well, by parts of the story that I didn't see coming, and I really enjoyed it! It felt like actual Character Development, for Harry to have been proactive and set up a secret weapon to aid him at the last minute! The last third of the books felt like re-reading the first few books in the series, where I was really just along for the ride and hadn't gotten so damn tired of the sexism because it felt like maybe it would get fixed. The action felt interesting rather than pro forma, I liked seeing the villains being flawed humans who can be manipulated.
I will probably find things to actually be annoyed about re the ending of this book, later, but, for now, I am mostly annoyed by the fact that I'm probable going to keep having similar experience with this series, because I really want to see how it all ends.
Answer: not really.
This probably has spoilers for Skin Game but not the books from 2020, since I have not gotten those from the library yet.
It's rare for me to stick with a series that annoys me this much. And I have been trying to find people who are, like me, Dresden Files readers who are aware of some of these shitty elements of the series and are reading in spite of them, and what I am finding is that - either most online spaces have made their peace with the shitty elements of the book and are not friendly to fans who are bothered by them, OR, people bailed early.
So, here I am, reading these books with stupid, superficial elements that could EASILY be removed to make the reading more enjoyable, trudging thru them to get to the actual elements of the story I really do like, and feeling like a fool for making the effort.
In reading Skin Game, I was re-encountering some of the elements of the series that I had forgotten about, one of which is that the narrator, our hero, Harry Dresden, is constantly noticing women's looks. It's just... really unrelenting at times. All of the women who feature in the book for long term are extremely hot, and always in different ways, and by god, the novel never misses a chance to tell you how hot this particular woman is.
I found the worst of it in this one was focusing on Hannah Ascher, who also, apparently is also just intensely skilled at working with magical fire as well, and a super cool criminal. But while that trait is relied upon and mentioned, the book just keeps talking about her breasts. Like, in this coy way of, like, trying to sneak it past the censors, or being "clever" with it. But my experience reading it is that, honestly, it feels like Harry Dresden, who I'm supposed to like, and sympathize with, just literally cannot engage with a woman without constantly thinking about sex with her. The whole world is divided into dangerous, murderous, extremely hot women who Harry Dresden Will Not Fuck (tho they pointedly are attractive AT him), and the beautiful and hot women who Harry Dresden has rescued in some way (and Will Not Fuck because they belong to other men in some fashion.)
And it's one thing to have a character who is like, I am """old fashioned"" and think that """you should treat a lady like a lady""" in book ONE, who encounters both human women and female nonhuman creatures who could easily kill him, and to have him get over that stupid old fashionedness. But we're in book 15 or so now. Harry, the character, is surrounded by women who could murder him, and all he can think about it how smoking hot they all are.
And this is just - Jim Butcher doing this! He can't imagine a queen of ice and darkness who isn't using her magical powers to make herself look impossible hot! Like, if I were queen of a magical realm that I ruled with an iron first, being fuckable would probably slide from my list of things to care about!
Like, I love books where the author is self indulgent, and writes things because they love them, and lean into letting the story be the exact garbage that your raccoon-Id loves to roll around in. I AM HERE FOR YOUR TERRIBLE FANTASIES! But, for the love of god, write that book AND THEN write your urban fantasy detective novel, so I don't have to handle the half assed version of your id-fic while I want to read your interesting detective story!
It gets to be that I just don't like being in the main character's head. Partially because of the unrelenting "fuckable women" focus, AND ALSO, because everyone who is A Good Person in Dresden's world agrees with Dresden and thinks he is a good person. And many, many of those side characters spend a huge amount of the book telling Dresden that, despite of the Deeply Awful Things he's done, he's a good person, and the corrosive evil force in his brain whispering for him to use magic to kill and destroy things will not make him a bad person, Because He Cares So Much.
If you need to spend 10% of the book convincing the audience that your main character is not evil (despite some of the evil things he did) and will not become evil (despite the evil road he's on) - maybe just let your character worry about becoming evil? maybe let the other people around him worry about it? maybe it's actually fine for him to not feel like a moral paragon at the end of the book!
And that I think is the other issue - since we see the whole world THRU HARRY, I feel like I really want the other characters in the book to stand up and support that other views of this world exist. Like, that there are ways of looking at Harry's actions and feeling upset and betrayed and NOT wanting to reconcile with him. That people who listen to him would sometimes say, Fuck you, that was a shitty thing to do! Hell, even the evil characters agree with Harry - they just don't agree on the methods!
There's a point where Harry makes a shitty joke about how the Karen Murphy, the ex-cop non-magical human woman who is coming to help him fight actual monsters and literally walk into hell, is wearing steel toed boots and they are ugly shoes. And then Nicodemus, a literal fallen angel who is several centuries old, makes a petty shitty joke about those shoes to Murphy. Like- why? What was that for? All it does it make it seem like Harry and Nicodemus are thinking the same way, and that's... not great? Why would either a combat wizard or a fallen angel ever notice someone's shoes? It's deeply out of character for *both* of them, and yet, it seems like Butcher kept it in to take a potshot at Murphy, who is the main character's ride or die friend and braver than the main character?
(Sidebar: In attempting to find anyone online who is a) bothered by the shitty sexism and b) still reading these books, I accidentally found a reddit post that was arguing the misogyny in the book was good. In literally that language. The actual misogyny was a plus for the books. And in that post, the person was saying, 'well, also, I know a lot of us don't like Karen Murphy'. And my jaw literally dropped. Because... Karen Murphy is the best character in the books. She is one of very few characters who actually stops Harry when he's doing something that could be reasonably seen as awful, and while she's acting on bad info, she goes up against someone she knows as a friend and who she thinks might be dangerous and tries to stop him from hurting people. That's heroic. She's amazing. She's one of the few women characters in the books that isn't always treated like a sex toy, and she's got a life and family outside of Harry and she's GREAT. It honestly didn't occur to me that anyone could dislike Karen Murphy, much less that a majority of the fandom might dislike her.)
And the thing that is really, really irritating - I really enjoyed the last third of this book.
I was slogging thru the first two thirds of set up, but the last third had an interesting twist that set up very very well, by parts of the story that I didn't see coming, and I really enjoyed it! It felt like actual Character Development, for Harry to have been proactive and set up a secret weapon to aid him at the last minute! The last third of the books felt like re-reading the first few books in the series, where I was really just along for the ride and hadn't gotten so damn tired of the sexism because it felt like maybe it would get fixed. The action felt interesting rather than pro forma, I liked seeing the villains being flawed humans who can be manipulated.
I will probably find things to actually be annoyed about re the ending of this book, later, but, for now, I am mostly annoyed by the fact that I'm probable going to keep having similar experience with this series, because I really want to see how it all ends.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-16 05:21 pm (UTC)I too am really annoyed by Harry's sexism, but sufficiently hooked by the plot&world to keep reading just because I want to know what happens next, and also there are large parts of the books that I genuinely do enjoy.
I did read Peace Talks & Battle Grounds already and I suspect that there are some things you'll enjoy a lot, and others you're probably going to hate. ...well that wasn't very helpful, sorry ^^
no subject
Date: 2020-10-16 06:10 pm (UTC)I am looking forward to reading them! and also yelling about them.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-16 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-18 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-18 02:54 pm (UTC)Better a monster that knows, "I'm a monster, and I destroy other monsters." than a Nice Guy with a train of collateral damage widening with every step.
Drop one on the other, you've got a slash sandwich. Garnish with relieved characters who can get back to the plot.
Author might want to look at where his characters are wagging him. He did start this on a double dog dare.
"Is it necromancy if it's yourself you raise?"
no subject
Date: 2020-10-17 04:08 pm (UTC)"Like, if I were queen of a magical realm that I ruled with an iron first, being fuckable would probably slide from my list of things to care about!"
Right?! :D
no subject
Date: 2020-10-18 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-18 05:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-18 03:02 pm (UTC)Marcone, we need you to look upon her and tell us what you see. Bring Hendricks.
After all, Harry doesn't really seem to have a type other than "she was hot". This seems to me a call for help. (Okay, that's me with my slash welding visor down in the ready position. Goggles, I'm way past goggles.)