So Taure started a plot bunny thread for the HP fics, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to start one for Dresden. I've only got a couple and they're both based on things we know happened in Dresden-verse canon.



1. Not really a bunny, but something I've wanted to see for a long time now. Has anyone thought to write a fic portraying the fights with He Who Walks Behind, Dumorne, or both?

We know Dresden made a deal with Lea for more power, and that he doesn't remember much of the fights. If a talented enough writer picked it up, it could be really fun to read.



2. A what if fic based on the Aurora/Dresden conversation where she offers to let him rest/heal, way back when. What might have happened differently if he'd taken the offer?


Anyway, that's what I've got for now. What would you like to see in Dresden fanfiction?

 

An Ice Age would have occurred, and Mab may or may not have killed Harry because of it.

 

3) A fic where Harry accepts the offer to be the Winter Knight.

4) KotC!Dresden (Knight of the Cross)

All I can think of right now.

 

This has been bouncing around my head for a while...

A crossover with Bones. Booth and Bones are on working on a serial case that leaves the victims nice and skeletal but with some spookiness to it. I figure we make the killer some run-of-the-mill warlock who strips his/her victims of their flesh and assimilates it for power or something. Latest body is in Chicago. Murphy is investigating due to weirdness. Dresden is called in. Booth and Brennan are very skeptical. Murphy and Dresden aren't liking the feds being involved since Fool Moon. Lots of lulz and angst until everyone saves everybody else's ass and the feds see Dresden waste some supernatural baddy summoned by the above mentioned warlock.

Brennan gets mindfucked upon seeing that magic and whatnot is real, but manages to shift her world schema. Handle this as you wish.

This can happen between any of the books, but preferably sometime after Fool Moon for extra tension, and after Dead Beat

Spoiler

so that Harry's Warden status will give him some legitimacy with his involvement.

 

Harry after killing his adopted father is blasted into the Never Never where he has to survive there. If he returns to the real world the White council will kill him because he didn't show up for a trial.

 

Dresden takes Marcone's offer in Fool Moon. I think that one at least would be good for a one shot. It gets rid of Murphy and brings in Gard. In other words, Harry trades up.

Susan bites Harry while he's screwing her in Death Masks.

Harry gets a Warden Sword.

A one shot detailing "When Luccio met Bob"

Kincaid is killed and Ivy has nowhere to hide that comes with definite safety other then with Harry.

Ivy decides to start taking pleasure in embarassing others and begins reciting people's diaries to them.

 

Yeah, all the join the Dark Side 'offers' that Harry received over the years are probably good starting points. Let's see:

1) What would have happened if he used the energy around Victor's house?
2) What would have happened if Susan didn't appear in time and Harry killed as a wolf?
3) Marcone's offer - as already mentioned.
4) Harry accepts the Winter Knight position. Here we have at least five starting points for a story. Summer Knight after the battle, the offer in Dead Beat, offering mercy to Slate in Proven Guilty, the offer in Small Favor and Harry thinking of taking up the mantle in Turn Coat. As well as any other time when Harry can whistle up Mab.
5) Harry accepts the Denarian coin. Plenty of possible starting points since Harry can summon the coin at any time from Dead Beat(when he first used Hellfire consciously) until he gets rid of it sometime around Small Favor.
6) He becomes a RC vampire when Ortega offers it to him.
7) He accepts Grevane's offer to join him as a lieutenant. That's admittedly pretty thin.
8 )Harry sucks in the Darkhallow vortex of energy. Would require a massive, massive justification as well as incredible skill to pull this off realistically.

That's all I can think off the top of my head.

 

Perhaps not so hard. He has Lash, by Lash he knows the Word of Kemmler. Surprise Cowl, push him out the way, take his place. Yum yum lots of power.

Though it'd take a while for Harry to learn to utilise it properly, rather than just using the same old fire spells supercharged.

I guess this would be most convincing if you combined it with a "Harry accepts Laciel's coin" scenario. Desperation, plus the lure of godlike power, plus an extra push of temptation effort of Lash's part as she sees the potential to gain massive power.

 

But there's a major problem here. Jim Butcher himself has said that if the Darkhallow had succeeded, Cowl would have been on par with Mab, who is, herself, on par with every member of the White Council Combined.

As such, this happening would like one of those Heir of the Founder's HP fics, or those over the summer Super Harry fics, and would literally be an Insta!God fic.

It would erase almost all forms of conflict, leaving behind people like Mab as the only real forms of conflict. And Harry would be crushed by them, as they have armies of billions of creatures behind them. Ie. it would erase conflict from the story, as all opponents would be either to weak or to strong.

One might think that if the lower levels planned well, they could be a challenge, but that's incorrect. If Cowl had succeeded, he would have been able to resurrect the dead, some there goes character death and mystery. Someone die, and you want to know who? Resurrect the dead guy.

Harry would also be able to bend time at his leisure. Which speaks for itself.

The White Council might oppose Harry if he did so, but remember, Harry would, at that point, be strong enough to take on every one of them. At the same time.

 

Not sure about that. Sure, he'd have the raw power to do so. But the Darkhallow would not have gifted him with any new knowledge, or any new spells, or any greater control. Nor would it make his body less vulnerable. Nor would it mean he needed less sleep, or could not be surprised.

He's still human. He's still a wizard. He just has an insane amount of raw power at his disposal. Raw power that might actually prevent him from doing any magic at all in the short term, in that he may accidentally power his spells so much that they end up destroying a good chunk of Chicago. Knowing this and fearing it, Harry might not use magic until, say, he was stranded in the middle of a desert.

So the first part of any story like this would be Harry gaining control over himself. Cowl may have rivalled Mab after the Darkhallow, but Cowl is a much better wizard than Harry.

Even after that, there's still plenty of conflict, in my opinion. After all, Mab has all that power yet isn't running around getting everything she wants.

As Jim Butcher said, beings which have power such as Mab's are pretty much walking nukes and theoretically can defeat each other. But it'd be pretty much mutually assured destruction. And it's not like the DF universe has a shortage of these beings.

Harry would be roughly in the same position as a dragon: powerful and mostly independent (whereas Mab is powerful but bound by her position and the balance of Winter and Summer). Notice that Ferrovax doesn't rule the universe.

Harry having this power would put him pretty much past all of his old enemies, yeah (which would be a fun lighthearted start to the story, before he got in too deep and had to end up being all political). Once he'd learnt to control it. But it'd open up a whole new section of the DFverse with new enemies in. The Nevernever is vast, much larger than the Earth. Who knows what unknown beings of power lurk in its depths? Old Gods, Angels Fallen and otherwise, Demon Demi-Gods, rogue Sidhe (anyone else wondering where the Faerie Kings are?), dragons, and all manner of mythological beings.

I've always liked the idea that the Nevernever is even bigger than Harry thinks it is, and there are actually alternate Earths that border far (from Harry's perspective) reaches of it. Which opens the door for crossovers or AU tales too.

 

While we're on the Darkhallow idea, let's not forget that for Harry to take Cowl's place and pull it off, he'd be sucking in the life of every living person around him. Butters, Ramirez, the other Wardens anyone else. I can't really see Dresden accepting this, even if he had taken up Lasciel's coin. Just my two cents.

 

I meant this ^ when I said it would require a massive justification.

I just can't picture how you could create a story where Harry snuffs out millions of lives as a sacrifice for his own personal power. And among those lives you'd find the lives of the Alphas and Thomas - people that Harry cares about.

That's where I'm not sure.

See, if Harry couldn't (TC Spoiler)

Spoiler

couldn't call upon Demonreach's power without being altered by it, then he certainly couldn't perform the Darkhallow without doing the same. I think he'd become far less human if he had that kind of power. Considering the kind of power we're talking about, I think he'd become undead - or close to it.

And as Butcher said, supernatural transformations don't really come without giving you some inherent resistance to supernatural powers. That takes care of one vulnerability.

Others vulnerabilities? With time and effort I'm pretty sure Harry could create enchantments unlike anything we've ever see. Like say, a ring that constantly surrounds you in a powerful shield, or ones that give you inhuman reflexes, or one that makes sure you don't need to eat, drink or sleep etc.

Admittedly, that wouldn't happen instantly, but over time? Yeah, it probably would.

Well, he was responsible for overseeing 'the orderly procession of parts of mortal universe'.

Certainly, you can write a story like that but it requires for you to completely reinvent the story. It stops being about a human with funky powers and becomes more about Doctor Manhattan, in a world where there's plenty of other people like him. Making such a story relatable and interesting is a challenge. Not too mention that you'd have to create entire new worlds and plenty of new OC's, which requires quite a bit of skill to pull off.

 

Two immediate possibilities, which don't neccassarily lead to big power ups but are interesting, Murphy accepting God's job offer and so becoming a touch more useful, and at the end of White Night Lara manages to jump through the portal to the Nevernever a second faster, and she and Dresden escape. The later would mean that Lash would remain present in Harry's, by this point as a ally rather than antagonist which would be an incredible advantage, and that Harry wouldn't have pissed Lara off so much.

 

Yeah, you are correct, don't write that. Stick to something simple and basic like homeless or drunk Harry Dresden. It seems to hit close to home.

 

It's kind of ironic but I had the exact opposite idea to this. As time goes on technology becomes more and more sophisticated and (more importantly) more and more delicate, so that when the technology level reaches a certain point magic starts interfering so that it becomes... erratic.

Like say when the US military is testing out a brand new guidance system for a nuclear warhead, but magic interferes slightly and the target is now set to somewhere other than it's meant to go... Like a major city for example.

 

The thing to note about such an occurrence is that no idiot would test out a brand new guidance system for a nuke with a nuke attached. They also wouldn't test such a thing near a city.

 

It is not an insult, but reading it back it sounded like it could be. Sorry if it came out that way. I just wanted to read an even more homeless Dresden fic, he is homeless half the time but I wanted to see him go to begging or something, that came out so wrong.

Why bother with technological weapons in Dresden file stories? It really takes away from all the supernatural magic behind it, this series is all a combination of humor, sex, and violence and I wouldn't trade that for a sci-fi.

On another note you should just type up these ideas and see how far you get on a chapter, who knows, it might be good.

 

I keep thinking of Deadpool, the Merc with the Mouth who just so happens to accidentally be transported into the world of Nevernever....specifically on to the lap of Aurora...

Maybe that's going a bit to far eh? lol