DragonCon 2023 Jim Butcher Panel

The source is here, for anyone curious: https://www.reddit.com/r/dresdenfiles/comments/168bza3/dragoncon_2023_an_hour_with_iim_butcher/

So all the credit goes for the people posting there.

But here are the highlights regarding, well, my only interest in the series really, Murphy:

Do not continue to read if you're not up to date on your reading of the books (meaning read only if you've read Battle Ground)

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Q: Valkyrie code name was foreshadowing in BG, is Booster Gold also doing the same for Dresden swimming against time?

A: Wow, first off props for recognizing Booster Gold. What I can/will say is Murphy's story isn't over. It is and it isn't. Yeah, she'd be a really cute Valkyrie

My commentary: Why Jim? Why? You're going to torture us with Murphy being back but not back, possibly coming back under a disguise? with memory loss? Or are you going to turn her into a sort of Beatrix to Harry's Dante?

Q: What's been the death with the biggest reader outrage?

A: (sarcastic) Let me think… Oh my god, some of the looks I got, especially from my blonde readers!

My commentary: You be happy all you got was angry looks.

Q: Is there a link between Murphy and Persephone?

A: No.

My commentary: This is disappointing, but also, no Jim, you don't understand your own material, obviously.

Q: Any plans to kill off (anyone) in Twelve Months?

A: I'm gonna un-kill someone (gasps) not who you think.

My commentary: Really Jim? You gonna play these games?

Q: Are you playing Fuck Marry Kill with the vampire courts?

A: The evidence speaks for itself.

My commentary: Ugh

Also, this was deleted from the subreddit for some reason, but Jim is engaged to be married (yes, again, apparently he has some things in common with Murph, lol)

It continues to enrage me that he thinks what he did to Murphy is funny and that we're all just oversensitive snowflakes for being so angry. Murphy is one of my anchor characters. As is Harry. As in, I need her and Harry to keep me from ganking myself constantly thanks to what I refer to as my Grab Bag of Mental Illnesses. So for him to have done that to her, it literally destroyed part of my fucking mental health. I had an entire therapy session that was just about Battle Ground and how he fucked me and this fandom in the ass and thinks there's nothing wrong with it. I didn't really intend to read this post, but my eyes just started reading before my brain caught up and now I'm seething. OP is 100% correct--you're fucking lucky that all you've gotten is dirty looks.

God, what a fucking scumbag. He doesn't deserve this fandom, or any fandom, and I'm so angry he'll never see a single consequence for ruining one of the best female characters of all time all because he can't take his sorry ass to therapy instead taking his real life frustrations out on a well-written female protagonist. Just like another toxic author in the urban fantasy genre, but I'm not gonna get into that because it's a whole hour long rant, but her last name rhymes with Bamilton. And that's the track he's headed towards--a fully toxic author who has no grip on reality and takes it out on the characters because her life is shit.

Sigh. This is why we can't have nice things.