zanderzargarin

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Harry Dresden!

Sometime I feel like I’m not making much progress with my art and then my old posts pop up on here

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The Dresden Files

I went a little crazy with this one!

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It's my 11 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

I feel old

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I stated on coloring this! It’s sort of an experimental thing, just drawing whatever feels fun. It’s been a long time since I’ve just played with color. Anyway, here’s the sneak preview.

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my contribution to the Dresden Files fandom is this art I did of Harry and Karrin in the style of Animal Crossing circa 2021 because that's when I started reading the series and also when I still played New Horizons every single day

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There really isn't anything quite like The Dresden Files because the author (Jim Butcher) is fucking wild. For example:

Meta-jokes in the text that only make sense if you know that the audiobooks are narrated by the guy who played Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (James Marsters)

The author fucking with the Marsters by putting the word "little" in the text a bunch of times in a single page based on a note Marsters gave him (the word "little" is, apparently, hard to enunciate)

The author using the books to take shots at the person who does the covers because they didn't read the first book and made the decision to give Dresden a hat on the cover of the first book (and thus every subsequent book)

A plot-relevant BDSM scene that only exists cuz the author heard someone say that such a thing is impossible and took it as a personal challenge, and

The author spoiling a major plot event to fuck with someone on Twitter

And goddamn if it isn't amazing

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Harry Dresden Doodles for the soul

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One thing I'd note about Karrin is that she's one of the toughest people Harry knows, and he'd say as much given he learned the hard way of crossing her when she chipped one of his teeth. Yet, she is a not wizard or warlock with spell slots like Harry, she cannot transform into a wolf or any animal like the Alphas, does not have a demon to give her enhanced physical abilities like Thomas or Susan or a superpowered Mantle like Molly's, nor does she even so much as have a magic sword like Michael, Butters and Sanya (I know about Fidelacchius but she was never a Knight).

She is a vanilla mortal with no magic whatsoever and combined with her petite appearance (and being a women as she learned in the CPD), most supernatural creatures and people would overlook her. But she manages to hold her own against magically powerful creatures from ghouls and vampires to giants and fae. Her skills are more practical in being a black belt martial artist who broke an einharjar's fingers in a spar, and a markswoman who managed to hit a moving target from a hundred yards away on motorcycle. She also has a good head on her shoulders in assessing situations and coming u with plans with as shown in "Aftermath" with the way she handled the Fomor. She also has a mental toughness and strong will being able to throw off mental attacks from whampires, Fomor and even the Red King and Lords of Outer Night despite having no training in psychic defense.

She is the only mortal besides Harry in the series to kill a faerie queen, and despite having a broken leg in a cast, she managed to fell a Jotun in a single blow (from a bazooka) that gave Winter Knight Harry a run for his money.

She also has demonstrated leadership abilities with The Society of Friends being her idea, and was key in Chicago's defense against the Fomor. She managed to hold the city together while Harry was gone.

If anything, she demonstrates deep down why ones in the supernatural community actually fear vanilla mortals in spite of looking down on them. Harry always respected her since the beginning for her strength, courage, integrity and intelligence, with her being the first person he would go to if he needed help.

If she does come back as a Valkyrie, Vadderung should double his fees.

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susan, murph and marcone

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i'm the punch wizard and i specialize in blunt force traumaturgy

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Grave Peril by Jim Butcher, book 3 in his Dresden Files series. This edition from Grim Oak Press has fantastic artwork by Daniel Govar.

The Dresden Files is an ongoing urban fantasy series featuring Harry Dresden, a wizard living and working in Chicago. It is one of my favorite fantasy series. And if you like audiobooks, James Marsters (from Buffy fame) does an outstanding job narrating this series. Book 18 is due out in January of 2026. It may seem like a big series, but I wish there were more books, honestly.

Plus there is Bob, a talking skull. Check him out below....

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I love urban fantasy so much

Lucifer is eating at Donut World and Harry Dresden the all powerful wizard is wearing his little burger king crown, John Constantine is in the back of a punk hideout getting beaten up by Sid Vicious, there is a naked woman at Atticus the Weird Hippie's occult shop who is quite literally Death in some form, that guy in a trenchcoat running through a busy town square laughing has electric blue angels under his skin, Clyde Hatchett is having lunch at his favorite pizza joint with the god of adventure, your university professor is going to save the world (he was the one to nearly end it). It makes everything just a little bit more colorful I think; to have the grounding of real life

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Tiny, but FIERCE

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No Hats! >:(

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Fantastic!

"No murder without getting the nod first. Got it."

The Dresden Files | Jim Butcher

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big fan of urban fantasy and similar genres because theres nothing funnier to me than a setting where youve got people fighting with enchanted blades and bows and hopping around doing magic tricks but you can also just hit a demon with your car if you feel like it

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While Butcher has been often accused of employing male fantasy tropes in his works, I sometimes think he has a habit of subverting them.

Thomas embodies two tropes: he has women magically drawn to him and being the only son in a billionaire family, is effectively the rich playboy. He would make Dan Bilzerian jealous. He never had to work a day in his life up until moved in with Harry, and he got to spend his time sleeping around, learning martial arts and driving fancy sports cars. His life on paper sounds like a dream come true.

However, for Thomas it's a dream come true in the sense that it's a nightmare. His magical ability is a demon that feeds on his partners. It makes it incredibly difficult for him to hold down a job, instead of filling him with pride, it fills him with self-loathing, and the cherry on top, he can't touch his true love Justine, the one woman he genuinely wants to be with. He has stated more than once that he wished he didn't have it.

Living off the family money also makes him dependent on his toxic family whom he would gladly have cut off otherwise. He never received anything in the way of love from his father, and while I think we could say he does love his siblings to a degree, we never see much in the way of warmth in his relationships with the people in his family. The only one who may have was his mother who left him when he was five, and the exception of his sister Inari. One thing Molly noted when soulgazing him is that he was, deep down, very much lonely. He had money and women, but he preferred his impoverished half-brother and his girlfriend, wanting real relationships over the glamour of his White Court life.

Harry is practically living a male fantasy right now as of Battleground. On paper, he's never been better. He lives in a literal castle as opposed to his old dingy apartment, has a small army of fae (pun intended), money from the haul in Skin Game and an extremely beautiful, superrich fiancé who's supernaturally good in bed. There are plenty of guys who would trade places with him right now in a heart beat. However, it's clear that he is not happy, if anything, he has never been more sad since the beginning of the series.

He has an awful boss with a job he has for life, and his fiancé is someone he can respect but never see as wife material. He lost a friend in Carlos, and his relationship with Eb is now strained. Two of some of the closest people in his life are gone. His brother Thomas has been locked away, and his lifelong friend and girlfriend Karrin is dead. Karrin was literally his true love, certified by Lara, and he was the person he trusted most, the one he trusted with his daughter and the Swords. It left a big hole in him that cannot be satisfied by castles, money or whampire wives. As the adage goes "money can't buy happiness" and neither can magic in the sense that it can't buy real relationships.

Harry was happier when he was still an impoverished PI in a dingy apartment where he had his independence and the authentic relationships with people he cared about. Harry and Thomas live the fantasy, but it's defined by a sense of emptiness. They truly desire connection and wanting to be their own men.

The male fantasy is a fantasy for a reason. It reminds me of the words of the late Summer Lady Lily: “I didn’t want the world. I didn’t want vast riches, or fame, or power. I wanted a husband. Children. Love. A home that we made together."