Catching up:
I feel the danger of police and IRS is massively overstated here for us. The police in Chicago is primarily dangerous to us on account of how corrupt and subverted as an organization it is. Subverted by the White Court and Marcone. Who want to ally with us/are allied with us. They cops won´t go after us and if they do it takes literally one call and they will back off. And the IRS, well, Lara can order warships around. At least for now she is our ally and will protect us, later we will be too powerful to care. Mortal organizations are the White Courts bread and butter. As long as we and Lara aren´t enemies we are fine.
1)There's no suggestion in canon or here that the Chicago police, specifically, are subverted by either the White Court or Marcone.
The real life CPD has a lot of issues, racial and otherwise, which should translate to this setting, but at least in canon, there is no indication of a systematic effort by the White Court or Marcone or a third party to own it.
Individual officers are owned by various factions, but not the organization as a whole.
Also, the FBI are a thing. While Denton's team was compromised by the Black Council back in Fool Moon, there is currently no indication that they are institutionally compromised.
Even if Daedalus appear to be a bunch of asses.
2)The White Court being allies of convenience is not the same thing as their being willing to go to the mat for you.
Dont oversell it.And they probably arent showing their hand on a top-secret subversion plan.
Not that we want to be that deep in bed with them anyway.
I meant selling vs ownership transfer deal
There is a very small pool of people and organizations with both the money to buy a movie studio and the skill and expertise to actually manage it to successfully make money.
A lot of smaller studios and production houses routinely fail after a couple years, and most non-fans or non-industry people dont notice. At most someone picks up rights to their catalog when they shut down.
I mean, did you even know that the makers of the Ice Age movies, Blue Sky Animation, were shut down?
Also, see Alratan's comment, where he does a good job of explaining the issues involved here.
The same arguments could (and were) apply to any and all businesses, diamond crafting included. In fact, I believe I made them at that time. Stuff like safety, electricity, etc, all not holding up to scrutiny. Those were, essentially, handwaved. I think that as long as we devote an AP or two to dealing with legal issues, the issues can be abstracted away. The unions are a thing, yes, and IRS is an issue too, but the transfer on paper is likely to be to Thomas anyway.
No they cant be.
Everything else that has been suggested has been a lowkey method of making money that relies on avoiding drawing public or official attention and breaking no laws.
What isnt lowkey? Movies. Music. The entertainment industry.
Enterprises whose entire business plan relies on drawing mass attention, the more the better. Even cult classics garner tens of thousands of rabid obsessives to throw money, underwear and bodies at franchises and stars and crew. The sort of obsessives who will spend manhours doing detective work about their interests.
And that is? And why does it apply to us?
Why wouldnt it apply to us?
I mean, I know you lean towards the Information Wants To Be Free school of thought, but how many directors and actors and scriptwriters do you think have the emotional and mental stability to handle stuff like that and keep working profitably?
This is not an industry with the best adjusted people around.
We literally had a canon book, Blood Rites, with an A-plot about the entertainment industry(in this case, porn) to give a rough idea of what to expect.
Not to mention?
There are people too stubborn, or too stupid to intimidate to keep their mouths shut, like Dresden himself discovered in the short story The Law. Or just too venal not to attempt to find an angle to exploit.
And unlike the Whampires or the Reds or even Marcone, we cant credibly threaten murder as a solution.
Basically, the value in a small movie company is almost all in the founder-owner's personal skills and network of contacts.
When/if they sell it, the founder would need to agree to a years long lock-in to work for the new owner and a position at the acquirer of it's own me of the majors. I'd be exceptionally surprised if without 'Darby' his old company had any net value whatsoever. It's probably negative value, with obligations much larger than its assets.
This is the same in many fields where the founder is essentially a load bearing boss. Basically all the value is in the human capital of that person. Without the person there's no value. It's like an artist selling their 'business' of painting pictures to another painter. It just doesn't work.
^^^
Better said than I could.
For example, the production company Lightstorm Entertainment isnt valuable of itself, its valuable because its owned and run by James Cameron, who has the most two billion dollar-plus movie returns of any director. If it was on the market without James Cameron or his handpicked collaborators, it would have very little value to a purchaser.
Yeah, most of the information is out there, but it's lost in the noise, so to speak. For every one bit of truth, there are ten or more falsehoods or misconceptions.
Evidence suggests that people who are conscientious about looking, from teenage Charity to the college-age Alphas will at least find a basic run down on the setting.
Some information remains restricted though. Thats a fundamental feature of living in an urban fantasy setting.
Thats not going to change in a setting where cognitohazards are a thing.
We saw Malfeas, presumably in real time, and he wasn't dying.
We saw Theion, not Malfeas.
Theion had nothing to do with the Infernals; only Malfeas did. Careful of your assumptions when dealing with creatures who do not necessarily have a straightforward relationship with linear time.
Also, see BronzeTongue's citations.
Barring explicit word of QM, the Primordials are dead and gone in this setting.
On this note though, we really need some counterbalancing connections to avoid getting cemented as a white court resource.
1)Point of order: Our first major public appearance was when we showed up with Mab at a Winter celebration being held by Maeve and terrified a good segment of Winter nobility, before kicking them out. I guarantee that what happened there has gotten around Faerie by this point, and is probably going to be pretty well known in most supernatural circles by the end of November.
And our most common public associates are the demigoddess Lydia Rhi, our father Michael Carpenter and the Warden commander Harry Dresden.
2) Gard gave us Odin's calling card back during the Kattrin arc, and he still holds a favor or two.
We havent looked him up yet, and we have yet to build his battlebuses.
Not to mention that we havent looked up Lily or Fix since our first meeting, and I suspect we'll hear from the Archive sooner or later.
