#twelve months

[goooooooose]

Me when Harry comes out the other side kinder, gentler, more understanding, a better father/brother/friend, surrounded by community, wanting to live, doing his best:

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

I am doing a reread of Twelve Months and just realized that Marcone sent Gard to help defend Dresden and his castle. No favors. No strong reason given besides not liking belligerents in his territory and letting his Valkyrie stretch her legs.

I really think Marcone appreciates Dresden and wants him in his city more than Harry realizes, even if he doesn't directly employ him. Marcone has never really taken a swing at Dresden and almost every time he appears in the books, either helps Dresden or lets him get away with things unthinkable by anyone else.

Something I have been thinking after reading Out Law is that Dresden is kinda like a cat to Marcone. An independent, ill-tempered, ill-mannered, outdoor feral cat. He takes care of problems and pests around the area. He certainly would bite or claw if Marcone tried to get close, but otherwise he serves Marcone's purposes quite well.

[drawsdenfiles]

Twelve Months!

[narastories]

Hey. Mr. Author. What. The fuck.

3 minutes in and I'm hurting. Owie. This is going to be fun

"I cried and I screamed into my pillow until my stomach muscles were sore and my throat ached. In the snug, lonely little chamber in the basement of the castle with stone walls a foot thick no one was going to hear me."

😭😭😭

[toweringclam]

Peace Talks and Battle Ground were very obviously written by an author Going Through It. A divorce, a messy move, crippling writer's block...

I think they suffered for that. There was a lot of... discontent behind it. Almost spiteful. There was a meanness to the story that wasn't there even in previous Big Event stories like Changes. There was also a big element of "just finish the fucking story." It was sloppy in a way that Butcher's work has never been.

Twelve Months is clearly written by an author Getting Over It, and coming out the other side. It addresses a lot of criticism, some of them long-standing criticisms of the series. I especially like the more mature perspective Harry shows on the female characters. He has a ways to go but it's like he's finally realizing that women are actual people, not just monsters, warriors, and victims.

I've had to stop at times to cry due to my own experiences with both disaster and loss.

[permanenthistorydamage]

"A wizard is never late. He arrives as soon as he's dealt with his PTSD."

[dominaharper]

Spoilers for Dresden Files Twelve Months without context.

[takerfoxx]

So I'm reading Twelve Months, the latest Dresden Files book, and I do know that part of the reason it took so long to come out is that Jim Butcher was dealing with a lot of shit in his personal life, and boy howdy does it show.

Like, have you ever just been able to tell that a writer was going through it and was using their stories as therapy? Because right now I'm feeling the same energy that I had when writing Home on the Range.

Also, God help me, but I'm actually kind of starting to ship Harry and Lara.