Oh, elucidate? (My Stephan King is pretty limited.)

 

Heh - yeah. The Hero Trilogy was fun, but it was written before DLP's kind and caring influence steered me right.

All of my fiction, fanfic or otherwise, has benefited from this site.

 

Well, it's been long enough since I read the Hero trilogy that I can't really give many specific examples, but suffice it to say that Joe borrowed broadly from SK's Dark Tower series in particular. In some cases it was the way he arranged his narrative, in some cases it was specific turns of phrase, in some cases it was bits of characterization, and in some cases it was general concepts for a scene, or maybe symbols and themes. Wastelands also has a bit of Dark Tower feel to it, albeit far more subtle.

I don't mean to say that these things soured my enjoyment of the series as I was reading it. The trilogy remains a fun and epic ride, but a lot of the references did make me chuckle. They were obvious.

 

The fight with "Shagnasty" seems to stand out. Something could be said about the power of naming given that conversation with Luccio after Ivy gets taken by the Denarians.

But I do think that's too big of a stretch. It's much more likely applicable to beings without freewill. The Archive, who wasn't a person, was given a Name (capital N) thus allowing her to gain mortal freewill. Making her efficiently more human. Now that scared the hell out of the Senior Council all because she has so much knowledge. Knowledge=power and so on.

When he named the shadow of Lasciel "lash" the less dramatic effect was that it changed her into something not what she was. Sacrificing herself, a quote of "she doesn't deserve you" springs to mind. So just by giving her the name he allowed her to make a choice to separate herself from the one trapped in the coin. (Though to be honest I think the whole idea is much more fanon romance than anything.) This was less of a huge effect because she was in his head and while she had a lot of knowledge couldn't really act on the world.

Now imagine if a being like Uriel had freewill? He could directly act upon the world with tremendous power. Look at what he did through cats paws? He can't do much but given free will to wield his power? It'd be incredible. No wonder it scared him so much. It's a similar situation as Gandalf and the one Ring.

There's probably holes in my theories. Feel free to point them out.

 

Ivy has always been mortal and always had free will. It's the Archive that does not, and Ivy cannot use the Archive without first bending to its limitations. The Senior Council were annoyed with Harry because the more humanity the Archive's host retains the more likely they are to go insane from the thousands of years worth of memories they have stored in their head.

My personal theory is that Cassius' death curse was the thing to redeem Lash, or at least a part of it. Having her own name couldn't have hurt, since it drove a wedge between her and Lasciel.

I've mentioned it on the JB forums, but my take on this is that giving Uriel a nickname like Uri would divest him of being God's agent and insert doubt into his life. He's an eternal being (if the White God is actually God) and has been God's agent for all of that time. He does not experience doubt in doing His work and is always certain that his course of action is the right one... So imagine what having all of that taken away would feel like.

 

Yes, but what I'm saying is the significance of her becoming more than just the Archive, was started by being Named. I was using that more as an example of the point however. Surely the guy who made it foresaw such a thing and that's why Ivy has the limits she does.

I think I know where you're going with this, please elaborate.

True. Another thing to note is the two similar beings Dresden has named (angels of one sort of a another) all he's done is dropped the 'iel' from it. This obviously worked to some degree on Lash, because she changed Harry, and as Harry changed she did as well. Notably, Uriel has been dicking around in Harry's life a lot here lately. Soulfire, appearing to him, giving advice, allowing him to run around as just his soul and go back to his body, and so on. So certainly he's changed Harry. And if Harry names him without the significance of the 'iel' which somehow encompasses all the things you said in the quote above (Uriel mentioned this himself actually), Harry could change him. Not even on purpose. To a being who's been the same for, you know, eternity, that's gotta be fucking scary.

 

I posted this here a while back, but here's a summary.

Cassius' death curse wasn't for Harry to Die Alone in the straight forward sense. It was to make sure Harry didn't die with a Fallen Angel in his head. This is mostly because Cassius himself was obsessed with the Fallen (having been a Denarian for fuck knows how long and is now feeling the effects of it), so when it becomes apparent that he is going to die, he casts his death curse to separate Harry and Lash. Of course he's not powerful enough to do it outright, so he uses a bit of neuromancy to prompt Harry to take actions that would get rid of the Fallen (and possibly do the same for Lash).

Evidence for this includes Cassius' personality (as noted) and Harry's all but immobile, burned, gloved hand reaching out and snatching a Denarius from mid-air without Harry even knowing it was there. People have suggested it could be Uriel interfering, but I see this as a much more elegant solution since Uriel had already acted pretty damn overtly by giving Harry soulfire.

Aside from that, there's also the fact that Harry didn't really Die Alone, except in the physical sense. He was just getting ready to fuck Murphy for Christ's sake!

 

Didn't Uriel imply pretty heavily that that was him too though? In his Jake persona, he showed Dresden a book and it had a line in it about acting through a (damaged?) left hand.

And I thought the Soulfire was pretty overt because Lucifer had been kinda overt by blowing up Marcone's safehouse with hellfire.

 

All Uriel's book (The Two Towers, specifically) was to give the line "The burned hand teaches best", which is an old saying with the basic meaning of "you can only learn through experience." Essentially, Dresden was awarded with Soulfire because he was able to resist the temptation presented by the coin and the power therein.

There was no implication, one way or the other, that Uriel had anything to do with Dresden catching that coin. I'm actually with Aekiel on this one. It was most likely Cassius' death curse.

 

It was Tolkien's The Two Towers and the highlighted line was "The burnt hand teaches best". That seems less like him taking credit for the coin and more saying that the things Harry goes through teach him about himself/God, or indeed, teach him to be stronger from it.