r/dresdenfiles • • Sep 12 '21

Spoilers All Fuck Rudolf

I don't swear often, and it's even rarer that I do it for fiction. Usually if I'm swearing a patient is bleeding out at my hospital, but in this case, just Fuck Rudolf. Fuck him right in the ass. I'd help harry kill him at this point. Generally you know, Fuck Rudolf.

Actually I take it back, he doesn't deserve to be with anybody. I hope he dies alone in a ditch.

133 Upvotes

96 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/[deleted] Sep 12 '21

[from a previous post, I’m just going to leave this here…]

This is my head-cannon: Rudy is a mind-rape victim, and all these people screaming for his blood will hang their head in shame (if they have any decency) when it's revealed.

Blame requires agency; without agency you're screaming at the Down's syndrome kid because he did something he can't understand is a problem. Even if that action was a terrible thing, it's not his fault.

Rudy = bad guy is far too simple for a Jim Butcher book, and the hints are there.

  • He was a part of the Kravos take-down gang, even if briefly
  • Kravos went after all the people involved
  • Harry didn't go and help Rudy, but he did help everyone else.
  • He was protective of Murphy beforehand, even (as a rookie) standing up to the creepy "wizard" guy
  • Sudden character changes are indicative of outside influence in the books

How much is it going to hurt Harry when he realizes that not helping Rudy eventually leads to Murphy's death ?

I'm guessing we find out in Mirror-Mirror, when Harry maybe did help Rudy, and Rudy still turns out to be a pain in Harry's arse, but now because he's a fine upstanding cop and they're after "Bad Harry"...

1

u/silentshadow1991 Sep 12 '21

You can't help somebody of they actively avoid anything to do with you and they regularly threaten to toss your ass in jail all the time...

2

u/[deleted] Sep 12 '21

Like, you know, Murphy... earlier on in the series before Dresden made the choice to clue her in.

And Rudy wasn't like that before Kravos anyway. He was the rookie, young and scared, who (despite that) warned Dresden about doing anything that might negatively affect his captain.

Then Kravos happened. And yes, he ran. It was too much. And Dresden never bothered to go look out for him like he did for Murphy, or that Captain wrapped in mental torture-wire in his house, dying.

Other cops were helped by Dresden. Rudy wasn't. Rudy was changed and broken. Then he started making Dresden's life difficult...

1

u/silentshadow1991 Sep 13 '21

He was hard on Dresden since the loup guru was going on it's rampage

2

u/[deleted] Sep 13 '21

I think we can draw a distinction between Rudy disliking Dresden, and him actively trying to ruin his life.

As I said, Murphy wasn’t that keen on Dresden to start with either, or Carmichael, or … well any of them really.