- Location
- Goose Land
Hey @TalonofAnathrax I see you've been quiet about Kathy being able to break reality the way it looks she can. No comments to be had?
After sleeping, the special circumstances make a lot of sense, cover all Time Travel plot holes, and mostly explain why there aren't remnants of Chronomancy all over town.
Kathy is a filthy save scummer.*
Which is to say, Kathy doesn't actually have Major Mojo. She's the entirety of the Trope "Weak but Skilled" and her self description of using magic as a knife is much more literal if we call her a utility knife compared to Dresden's flamberge and Viserys's Hummer.
It's probably more like a shortsword compared to a greatsword compared to a Sedan, but the point is made.
When we think of Chronomancy we generally think of broad effects, time portals, pausing areas, rewinding people, fast forwarding attacks, all that Major Majo pajazz that signifies "Can't Touch This." But what Kathy is able to do is so much "less" than that, if not immensely more versatile.
What Kathy is able to do is literally Bill Murray's "Groundhogs Day."
When pushed to the edge of her power, Kathy is able to send her mind back in time up to a specific limit, possibly as a Death Curse tier spell. Think Steins;Gate for the personal limitation and Re:Zero for "the ability to bring things back from a failure state and likely dying state."
No risk of crossing the streams, no army of Kathys to fight off the invaders.
Just the ability to go back in time to the moment where she's woken up by her parents' murder.
I'm going to assume that "One (1) mind sent back X amount of time" has an immensely low Dark Magic signature that's both anchored to Kathy and very quick to dissipate, because that's basically the only way Dresden wouldn't have noticed the implied semi-regular Dark Magic usage that would have otherwise sank into the locations where Kathy ended up fighting Fomor and Fey.
On that topic, a quick side bar.
Time Travel** is indeed Dark Magic, defined as "Magic that warps the mind of the user and guides them to insanity of one form or another." Too many tragedies have happened to the White Council for it to not need something like The Blackstaff to avert the mental damage of it.
So, assuming one major conflict per season, an average of 20 Resets per major conflict, and no "peace time abuses of power", that's close to 200 instances of Chronomancy that Kathy has done.
That leaves a big question.
How the hell is Kathy so sane looking?
Regular high intensity time travel tends to push people to their breaking points, Dark Magic innately warps the mind, and it's been implied that Kathy has been relying on save scumming to perfect run life and death battles as well as wars for two years.
It's possible that each reset also resets her mental/soul state, but that feels...narratively unsatisfying. It's the "we found the exact one loophole for this to be okay and now we just need to convince everyone of this" route, and it's rarely that easy unless you're introducing a Protagonist or even a Main Character.
Instead, Kathy reads as a war vet who has finally gotten some relief on her hell front, but has a strong sense that what she's needed to do to survive isn't exactly considered "not war crimes" by her country's ethics committee. Now she's got PTSD and needs to figure out how to not get a court marshal and likely execution because the war isn't over yet.
I'm honestly very intrigued about where Snowfire is going to take this case and this arc, and maintain that the shortest solution would be Smoky Bottle followed by research to figure out how to identify if Kathy can actually be set on the road to recovery or if it would be kinder to kill her now.
I'm getting incoherent again and keep making spelling mistakes, so that'll be all for tonight.
So in summary: Kathy is a filtgy save scummer and we have no idea how she is still vaguely sane after two years of regular Dark Magic use. Snowfire has earned sufficient writing credit that this is a cliffhanger to trust in and analyse rather than a big plot hole.
*This is meant as a joke, and for some reason I'm overly concerned about it not being taken as a joke so rather than debate it I'm just being explicit in a post script.
**Defined as swimming against the currents of time. Going to the past is a big no, pushing to the future is a "Warden raises eyebrow", and pausing time is as close to a grey area as one could get imo. You would probably get beheaded.***
***Remember Therapist Psycologist "I Just Want To Help These People" Guy? The vast majority of Wardens would have murdered him and moved on with their lives, and they'd honestly be entirely, uncomfortably, within their right to do so. Generally speaking the risk of a full blown hostile Warlock, let alone a Mental Manipulator who actually has some sense of what they are professionally doing, is enough to go straight to the chopping block, and the only two Law Breakers we see on screen or even in reference who instead get the Doom had White Council Members of Good Standing/Political Influence To Burn thrown in their lot with them. That Harry goes the "this is your only warning" route would be considered exceptionally lenient and entirely in character for Dresden, especially with Epic Social Dragon there to help push him into realising his spiral of warping and break out of it while he still has good intentions.****
****It's like an Inquisitor in 40k stumbling upon a heretic who only turned to Chaos to actually be able to better help the people around him. Chastising the cultist and telling them "don't make me come over here again" would generally be treated as hilariously and tragically naive.
