The Dresden Files/Ghost Story: Difference between revisions

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* [[All Love Is Unrequited]]: Harry finally realises that {{spoiler|Molly's}} feelings for him go beyond a mere crush. He also feels sorry that he cannot reciprocate them.
* {{spoiler|[[An Astral Projection, Not a Ghost]]}}: Ironically, one of the [[Twist Ending|twists]] of ''Ghost Story''. Maybe. {{spoiler|the things that Harry experienced, such as the "between", were most certainly real, and almost certainly restricted to ghosts.}}
* [[Back Fromfrom the Dead]]: {{spoiler|Thanks to Mab, Demonreach, Uriel, and the efforts of a certain "parasite", Harry is brought back at the end.}}
* [[Badass Normal]]: Daniel Carpenter takes after both of his parents in the badass department, knife fighting with a supernaturally fast warlock.
* [[Battle in the Center of the Mind]]: {{spoiler|Molly engages the Corpsetaker in a mental battle in order to rescue Waldo Butters, whose body Corpsetaker has stolen. Then Corpsetaker tried to steal Molly's body in turn and is almost successful; the battle itself is represented as an actual battlefield, with Molly waging her end of things from a mental copy of the bridge of the [[Star Trek|Enterprise]]. Molly plays a scorched earth policy to delay Corpsetaker, and almost suicides to prevent Corpsetaker from winning - until Harry convinces her to call for help, at which point Mort hits Corpsetaker point-blank with a swarm of ''very'' pissed-off spirits.}}
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* [[Break the Cutie]]: {{spoiler|Molly. Her overt madness is a [[Batman Gambit]] to scare away some of the nastier critters lurking around Chicago, but helping Harry arrange his own murder and then being as sensitive as she is at the battle of Chichen Itza - and close proximity to the spell that wiped out the Red Court - seriously hurt her, which is not being helped by Lea's "Neitzsche and Darwin were Pussies" brand of magical training.}}
* [[Broken Bird]]: Molly.
* [[Cast Fromfrom Hit Points]]: It is revealed that just about every ability a ghost can have (other than simply existing and traveling) is fueled by memory. Ghosts are composed of the memories of the person they were before. Use up all the memories and it is bye-bye. {{spoiler|Harry comes dangerously close to this without realizing it.}}
* [[Cold-Blooded Torture]]: {{spoiler|Corpsetaker does this to Mortimer Lindquist, suspending him over a writhing mass of wraiths and then dipping him in ever so slowly for an ever-increasing amount of time.}}
* [[Creepy Child]]: Inez, the spirit of a little girl in the Graceland cemetery who Harry meets. She is generally friendlier and more polite than most versions of creepy kids, but she is still unsettling, not the least because she died a couple of centuries ago and has an extensive amount of knowledge about spirits and shades, and is convinced by long experience that Harry will become "a monster."
** {{spoiler|It is implied that Inez is actually Mab, talking through a conduit because she couldn't come in person, what with being occupied as part of Harry's life support on Demonreach.}}
** Also the ghost children who love to "play" with living children down by the river.
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* [[Disney Death]]: {{spoiler|Harry, apparently.}}
* [[Enemy Without]]: {{spoiler|Evil Bob}}.
* [[Fun with Acronyms]]: In Ghost Story Harry's friends have formed the [[BFS|Better Future Society]] it could have been a coincidence but then Butters mentions that he wanted to name it the [[BFG|Better Future Group]] for the sake of the [[Fun with Acronyms|Acronym]]
* [[Genre Blindness]]: Played with in ''Ghost Story''. {{spoiler|Harry's ghost is fighting Corpsetaker's ghost, and she keeps trying to gloat at Harry, only for him to keep interrupting her with harder and harder spells. He mocks her for doing so, then he's reminded that as a ghost, his spells are [[Cast Fromfrom Hit Points]], and Corpsetaker has a lot more energy to spare than he does. In addition to her ego, she was simply expecting him to weaken himself attacking her.}}
* [[Ghostapo]]: {{spoiler|Nazi-dressed Evil Bob commands a spirit realm shaped like the Nazi defenses on the beaches of D-Day, patrolled by werewolf Nazi soldiers called hexenwulfen.}}
* [[Girl-On-Girl Is Hot]]: {{spoiler|Justine invokes this in order to get Thomas to feed on her at the end.}}
* [[Guilt Complex]]: Harry also spends ''Ghost Story'' feeling guilty about the mess he's made of the whole world, and particularly the lives of his friends and loved ones, by exterminating the Red Court (which he's not exactly wrong to feel guilty about). He feels particularly guilty about Molly, for not training her well enough to survive on her own, for setting a bad example by crossing the line when he {{spoiler|became the Winter Knight, and especially for exposing her highly tuned psychic senses to the battle at Chichen Izta and the giant curse that ended it. He also feels like crap for making her help him kill himself, once he remembers. And then about Thomas, for not telling him about it.}}
* [[He's Just Hiding]]: {{spoiler|Murphy refused to accept Harry's death, including after she ''met his ghost'', because she had never seen a body. When he shows up as a ghost, she refuses to believe it's really him, even after getting his identity confirmed by Mortimer the ectomancer and Molly's Sight, all because she doesn't want to admit that he's dead.}}
** To be fair, {{spoiler|in the end, Murphy's point about the body was valid as it was snatched up and preserved by Mab and Demonreach. Thus, technically speaking, Harry was never exactly dead in the first place.}}
* [[Heel Realization]]: Midway through the novel, Harry comes to this realization when he considers the consequences of his actions in ''Changes'' and the extent which he went to in order to stop his enemies and save those he loved - and that in doing so, [[He Who Fights Monsters|he became what he fought.]] {{spoiler|But this is inverted later when he rejects Evil Bob's [[We Can Rule Together]] offer, realizing that one bad choice at the end of a lifetime of fighting evil does ''not'' make him evil.}}
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* [[Not Quite Dead]]: {{spoiler|Harry, as it turns out, at the end of ''Ghost Story''. His soul had just been separated from his body while said vessel was being kept alive by Mab, Demonreach, and a certain "parasite".}}
* [[Oh Crap]]: In the first couple chapters of ''Ghost Story'', Harry has a moment where he realizes that, {{spoiler|as a ghost, he has no magic. As he's being attacked by a wraith.}}
** In the last chapter, Harry does it again when {{spoiler|he wakes up, alive... in Mab's lap. But then Uriel passes on his advice...}}
* [[Pound of Flesh Twist]]: Harry ultimately realizes that, although he IS the Winter Knight, Mab still doesn't have any ACTUAL power over him, allowing him to retain his free will and enabling him to determine HOW or even IF he follows Mab's orders.
* [[Schedule Slip]]: ''Ghost Story'' was originally scheduled for release in April 2011, before being delayed until July 2011.
{{quote|Said Jim (paraphrased): “It came down to, readers could either get a half-assed story in April, or a full-assed one in July!”}}
* [[Shut UP, Hannibal]]: There are two significant instances of this: first, {{spoiler|when Harry tells Evil Bob to take his [[We Can Rule Together]] offer and shove it because he will ''never'' belong to the Dark Side}}, and second, {{spoiler|when Harry tells off ''Mab herself'' at the end, vowing that he is ''not'' hers and will decide if, when, and how he carries out her orders}}.
* [[Spot the Thread]]: In ''Ghost Story'', to sneak into the den of a [[The Fagin|sorcerer]] and rescue his [[Oliver Twist|band of thieving street urchins]], {{spoiler|[[Took a Level Inin Badass|Butters]] and Daniel Carpenter disguise themselves as Wardens in order to put the sorcerer off his guard. It very nearly works... until the sorcerer points out that neither of them carries the trademark enchanted swords a Warden usually has. [[Subverted Trope|Subverted]] In that because Luccio is incapable of making new swords none of the Wardens since Harry have swords. But because the swords are so associated with the Wardens [[Bald of Evil|Baldy]] wouldn't have known anyway and Butters big mistake was hesitating when he could have made up a believable story.}}
* [[Spring Is Late]]: Chicago sees regular snowfall well into ''May'' {{spoiler|due to the fact that Queen Mab herself is in the city, keeping Harry's body [[Incredibly Lame Pun|warm]].}}
* [[Stealth Pun]]: Flickum Bicus is actually kinda subtle unless you regularly flick your bic. ''Ghost Story'' outright explains this one, though: {{spoiler|1=when Harry was training under Justin DuMorne, he tried to cheat at a magical fire-lighting test with a lighter, causing Justin to remark "You won't always be able to flick your Bic." When Harry finally does light the candle with magic, he uses "Flickum Bicus" as the invocation as a nod to Justin's lecture.}}
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* [[Terror Hero]]: Molly becomes a Type 4 deliberately to try to impose order in the city.
* [[Thirteen Is Unlucky]]: This is the thirteenth book in the series, and Harry is dead. {{spoiler|Well, until the end. Or, depending on your point of view, he never was dead in the first place}}.
* [[Training Fromfrom Hell]]: How Lea trains {{spoiler|Molly}} after {{spoiler|Harry's death}}. She even calls a pack of mid-level Fomor mooks against an exhausted and mal-nourished {{spoiler|Molly}} and expects her to handle it. Then, when {{spoiler|Harry}} predictably intervenes, she reveals that she used that particular sequence to train them BOTH at the same time. [[The Fair Folk|The Fae]] are NOT to be taken lightly.
** After this episode, {{spoiler|Harry}} begrudgingly admits that she might have a point and that, by going relatively easy, he might not have done the best job of preparing {{spoiler|Molly}} for just what kinds of trauma and hardship she'll naturally be exposed to as a wizard, especially {{spoiler|as a psychic sensitive}}.
* [[Unfinished Business]]: ''Ghost Story''. {{spoiler|Harry finding out who killed him is actually not that important. Saving his friends one last time might not have been that important either; the book's [[Big Bad]] quite possibly would have been stopped without Harry's intervention. However, it ''was'' important to him that he make sure his loved ones were OK and say goodbye properly to Molly. And he had to go through the entire book to put Uriel's scale-balancing advice in the proper context.}}
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