Link back to the main Dresden Files WoJ compilation
Ivy (And Kincaid) (also includes Oblivion War WoJ)
2009 Kansas City Q&A @51:20
Where did you get the idea for the Archive?
I knew I wanted to do “creepy little girl.” Because creepy little girls are a great character. But then after I figured out what her powers were and how she would behave, I had to start working out the extended consequences of what that character would be like. Originally she was supposed to be “creepy little girl, ok but why does she get any respect. Ok she knows all this stuff, now she’s creepy little girl who knows everything. That’s bad. That’s scary.
But then she was another character that was only supposed to show up for one book, but wound up being interesting enough and having enough of a vibe with Harry and his latent father impulses to be worth showing up again and again. So she’s another one of those characters that sort of out grew what I originally cast her for.
2011 Marscon
Uh, could Ivy…does the Archive read digital? Or is it only print?
Does the archive read digital, or is it only print? No, she gets it all. Uh, and…yeah, and nobody ever planned for the amount of information that has actually shown up in the past 20 years or so. Uh, so yeah, that’s not a good thing to be throwing on the…the little girl, don’t-have-any-insulation-against-everything-Archive. (Jim chuckles evilly) Like, totally bad timing for that, haha. Uh, I think Ivy would punch me in the nose too
2011 Bitten by Books Q&A
Does Kincaid have the ability to “choose” like Faerie changelings (i.e Meryl/Fix/Lily)?”
All scions do, though if they never twig to the fact that they ARE a scion, it’s their actions that make the Choice for them. Kincaid made his Choice a long, long time ago.
Why did you chose Kincaid to be harrys shooter?
Harry chose Kincaid because he needed someone he could trust to get the job done. Not so much because Kincaid is /good/ as because Kincaid is /ruthless/ and reliable. If he said he’d do it, Harry knew he would.
Is Kincaid’s separation from Dracul permanent, or is his working for Ivy just a vacation?
He’s a free agent. He goes where the contract work is. The advantage of working for someone like Drakul is long-term employment stability. The disadvantage is that if you don’t like it, you’ve got to grit your teeth and take it for at least a century until your departure clause kicks in.
Editor’s note: There’s a different 2011 WoJ that obliquely implies Kincaid is also a character in the French and Indian War story
2011 DC signing
Does Ivy know everything Bob knows?
Man, talk about an obscure question. Probably the vast majority of it, yeah, although Ivy’s more oriented toward things that are happening on Earth, and Bob has sources all over. [messing with the microphone] So, I would say it’s more an issue of, they have different fields of information available to them. They don’t, like, have a comparable database.
So Ivy doesn’t get what Bob gets as soon as Bob gets it?
No
I’m pretty sure this will never make it into the actual Dresden Files, since Harry has no idea the Oblivion War is happening, along with everyone else. So I’ll share it here.
The Archive was constructed /for/ the Oblivion War. Specifically.
Yes, the Archive (and Ivy, the two aren’t really divisible) know about these forgotten beings. The Archive is in essence the keeper of the dead, where they are concerned. Once the archive believes one of them has been consigned to oblivion, she holds on to the memory of that being briefly, for another thousand years or so, watching for any mention of that being in print in an effort to make sure that she is the /last/ person alive who remembers whichever hideous entity has been consigned.
And once the safety period has elapsed, and the Archive is confident that no one else remembers, she deletes the memory from the Archive. Bad guy, /gone/.
She also tries to keep track of the enemy players in the Oblivion War via watching for communications and so on. When she finds a trace of them, somewhere, she lets a cell of operatives (like Lara and Thomas) know what’s up, through a blind drop, and sends them off to handle the problem.
The Oblivion War is a huge, /slow/ thing. Stuff happens every few decades, at most. That’s why the Archive was created–to be an immortal awareness, something that could track and intelligently direct responses to the enemy in a war happening on an almost geological scale.
All that other stuff she says the Archive is for? Smoke and mirrors.
Kincaid, by the way, has no idea that the Oblivion War exists. It isn’t like Ivy explains this stuff. She just gives orders.
2012 Reddit AMA:
Dudesan: Related to #1- In the short story Backup, you introduced the oblivion war and the Venatori, who undermine the supernatural beings by making humanity forget about them[2] . They once hoped to try that trick against the fairies, but the narrator of that story remarked that it was judged to be unfeasible. What are the limits of this strategy? Is memory-erasing magic useful to it (or does it have to be “legitimate” forgetting?), and if so, would some enormous blanket memory-erasing ritual similar in principle to the heart-ripping spell at the climax of Changes[3] be a superweapon in this fight? Could this theoretically be attempted against Lucifer or even The Almighty?
Jim: 6) It’s got to be genuine forgetfulness. And for all we know, there’s already been a Lucifer and an Almighty that’s been forgotten. I mean, how would we know, eh? Though I think you could never really truly banish everything. As long as there’s an irrational thought or someone wondering, “Who made this place?” Thank God, so to speak. A world of pure rationality would be desperately dull. And I’d probably have to write English papers.
Morgan
QuoteCare to give us approximate ages for Luccio and Morgan?
You cant forget that Morgan was also the Hero of the Council and a battle leader. He did almost take out the Red King after all. takeing out Morgan was a Huge victory for the WC. Taking down Captian Lucio as well would have started a Civil war which may have been the BC’s pourpose
Yeah, Morgan was not about to win any popularity contests, inside the Council or out of it–but *everyone* knew that he was bad news. He wasn’t *liked* by hardly anyone, but he was *respected* by most of the Council and their allies, and *feared* by most of their enemies.Harry just happened to be in that latter category for the longest time, as far as Morgan was concerned. Morgan scared the bejeezus out of Harry, on several levels. Which was why Harry’s POV toward Morgan was so freaking skewed. Harry /always/ saw him as the Javertesque-persecutor of warlocks and wayward wizards. For everyone else, that was only a part of Morgan’s identity. Mainly, to them, he was the guy from the White Council who was most likely to kick down your door, burn your wicked minions to ash in fire and brimstone, and then divide you into several distinct nonentities with his sword.
The killing-baby-warlocks thing was just his sideline.
Harry does not have Morgan’s experience or expertise in a fight. It doesn’t mean that Harry isn’t also an effective and dangerous opponent, but he has a completely different approach–and he generally has a lot more to learn, still, before he is as formidable as someone like Morgan.
Granted, Ebenezar makes /Morgan/ look like Harry. But hey.
2009 Independence signing:
Where did Morgan get the apron?
He just grabbed from the kitchen in Edinburgh when he was escaping.
Warden info (and some individual wardens)
I wonder if it’s coincidence that a warden’s cloak is grey.
Jim
2009 Independence signing:
Q: Can the skinwalker access the NeverNever and use the Ways? If so, why didn’t it?
A: Yes. All I’ll say now is that it’s important to know that ‘wardens’ wasn’t always plural. (He did add later that there are certain places it can’t cross over, like the island).
2016 DF Reddit podcast Q&A
What kind of magic does Chandler specialize in?
Chandler does a lot of Divination, and a lot of stuff that is involved with time. Which puts him in a very finicky spot, a very high profile spot on the council. It’s one reason why he’s a Warden where they can keep an eye on him. He can actually do things to screw with the flow of time and look back in time and find things out, and occasionally to look forward in time and see things. Although that’s very unreliable because of the whole free will nonsense. He’s an information gatherer for the most part. He’s not as much of a punch you in the face type, but he’s really really useful which is why he has got a lot of status among the young wardens. He’s got access to what the old wizards think is valuable, which is information.
(Jim also says here that Chandler’s hat and bowler look is based off of John Steed of the 1960’s British Avengers show)
Ebenezer & the Blackstaff
If I ever do any major work (IE, novels) from alternate characters, I probably could not set them in the time period of the Dresden Files. I have several neat ideas, and the one that appeals to me the most is writing the French and Indian war years from the viewpoint of a young Ebenezar McCoy and his associates. The first duel between Eb and Listens-to-Wind is pretty epic in my head.
2009 Lexington signing:
Q: Will we ever find out more about the Black Cats, or about Eb’s early years?
A: He’s considered writing a story in the Dresdenverse about the American-Indian war, when Eb and the Merlin were both young punks.
Unconfirmed WoJ posted on the boards:
How long has the White Council had the Blackstaff
Look for Celtic Lore around 1065 ad.
2009 Independence signing:
Q: How old is Eb?
A: Eb is over 300 years old. He and Merlin have known each other for a very long time. They fought on opposite sides in the French & Indian war.
Q: How is Eb protected from black magic?
A: The Blackstaff is a literal black staff. He hasn’t had it when we’ve seen him, but he has it and it protects him.
2010 Lee’s Summit signing:
Q: Can you tell us a little more about the black staff?
A: The staff keeps Eb from going crazy, mostly. Also, the White Council stole it from someone. And they really want it back.
2010 Bitten by Books Q&A:
#58 “Does Eb know about Thomas?”
Harry doesn’t know, one way or the other.
2010 Dragon*Con @ ~1:45
When Eb does his “Laying of the Cattle move” at the major battle near the end of Changes, is that a power of the blackstaff?
The Blackstaff is what keeps that kind of thing from driving him insane and turning him into a giggling villain. Yah you don’t go messing with black magic in the Dresden Files, it’s very very bad for you. At the same time, Magic is something that happens because you truly believe that when you set out to do it that you should be able to do that sort of thing. That says a few things about Eb that really Harry hasn’t run into in any other forum other than right there. Yah Poor guy, He’s got a tough job.
@4:30
Does the blackstaff have any powers that relate to the dead?
Other than making people dead? Really, that’s kind of the point [Crowd Laughs] Really but the staff itself what it really does is it keeps Eb sane while he’s doing insane things. Lucky him, he gets to deal with a hideously guilty conscious and nightmares later, but that’s better than later being like *Muahahahahahahahaha* Which is sort of the other option if your going to go around using magic like that.
2011 Bitten by Books Q&A
Would you tell us how a person gets choosen to be The Blackstaff of the White Council?
Heh. He picks up the Blackstaff with full knowledge of what he’s in for if he does. If you can find someone crazy enough to do that, and reliable enough to be trusted with it, he gets the job.
2013 Wyrdcon Q&A
The Blackstaff is not sentient per se it’s just really, really, really powerful and tapped into like some serious elemental powers in the universe. But basically all it really is is insulation from using those powers.
2016 DF Reddit podcast Q&A
Eb took up the Blackstaff in 1884-1885 somewhere in there. The Blackstaff chooses his successor.
Merlin, both the original and the title
Being an ordinary, occasionally stubborn, normal myself, I can relate. But the Merlin isn’t. He’s one of the most powerful people on the planet, he is responsible for the lives of wizards, wardens and apprentices, not to mention the low-powered folk and normals. What would be a bad character flaw in you or me, in the Merlin becomes disasterous when he can’t tell his friends from his enemies.
If the stakes are higher, the mistakes becomes greater, and you give up the right to say, “Ooops.”
I’m just curious, but–since when is fallibility a /right/? I mean sure, it would be really nice if, whenever anyone took up an office of enormous power they suddenly lost the ability to make mistakes. But I’m fairly sure there’s some empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that it doesn’t work like that.The real irony here is that someone like the Merlin agrees completely with the core of your statement–and the “oops” he’s determined to avoid is Apocalypse Harry.
Jim
2011 Bitten by Books Q&A
The Merlin is referred to as the most powerful wizard on the planet several times in the series. Is this just speculation, or is the Merlin position filled through some sort of test of power and skill?
The Merlin is a wizard who can give an order that probably 80 or 85 percent of the other wizards in the world will follow, including most of the Wardens. He’s also the CEO of the White Council’s financial holdings. He /is/ the most powerful wizard in the world, based on THAT if nothing else.
You don’t get to be the Merlin without also being the guy that the rest of the Senior Council thinks can take them out, if it came down to a conflict–they’re the ones who select a new Merlin from among themselves. Langtry regards direct, open conflict as a failure to use all his other options, when it comes down to it, and when he does fight he does it fast and hard and is utterly without fear–see the end battle with Peabody’s pet in Turn Coat.
2012 Reddit AMA:
zebrake2010: I love the stories of Merlin, and your portrayal of Merlin as a title and role, not just one person, seems perfect[5] . How did you develop this idea?
Jim: 3) Well, in point of fact, there /was/ a specific Merlin in the Dresden Files universe. He was a critical figure, back in the day, so much so that when he disappeared, his shoes /had/ to be filled. So the title of ‘Merlin’ was created. Every new Merlin considers himself Merlin’s heir, so to speak, and most of them think that they’re doing what Merlin would have done based upon everything they know about him. Not many of them are right.
2015 San Francisco signing (Coopersfield Books)
The original Merlin, does he sound British?
He’d probably sound so unintelligibly British that you wouldn’t be able to tell he was speaking English. No, he’s not the guy in Demonreach.
Rashid/Gatekeeper
Twitter
FitzMelech: @longshotauthor Is Rashid the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred?
Jim: @FitzMelech He’s the guy who took /down/ AlHazred.
FitzMelech: @longshotauthor That makes Rashid, if possible, even more badass than I thought!
Jim: @FitzMelech Rashid is, by far, the most dangerous of the Senior Council. Which is not the same thing as most powerful. Smiley
2010 2D6feet interview with Iago @6:31
Iago says that at the 2010 DragonCon, Jim told him:
“You get to the Gatekeeper’s domain by walking across the surface of the moon.”
2012 Reddit AMA
Sarks: You have said that the Gatekeeper took down the Mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred. Is that Gatekeeper the same one we have currently? If yes, is he really that old, or was it time travel?
Jim: 3) He’s really that old. And we’re all time travelers. We just happen to be on the slow boat.
Other Senior Council Members + other significant non wardens
Plenty of the wizards there [in the council] have got precious little gift when it comes to actual combat magic–like Ancient Mai.
Book-version Ancient Mai looks good for her age, but since she’s over 400 that’s not necessarily saying a lot. She’s just kinda remarkably well-preserved for her age, like the chick who played Wonder Woman on TV.
Quote from: GnosisRoadsWhat death curses are able to do? How powerful can they be? Why don’t more wizards just use die as their curse? Its short and kills your killer.
They sometimes do.
Re: Injun Joe: Remember, LTW was one of the people under suspicion, reinforced by the fact that it WAS a badass Native American evil spirit.
And as all the world knows, all Native Americans eat at the same restaurants and know each other and stuff?Guys, LtW is from a Great Lakes nation. Naagloshii are native to the Navajo and other tribes of the Southwest. There are a couple of thousand miles, some truly epic geography, and an infinite number of cultural, religious, and lingual differences between the two.
I mean, that would be like suspecting Luccio of summoning up a killer svartalf, based upon the fact that she’s from Italy and svartalves are Scandanavian, and both Italy and Scandanavia are in Europe.
In point of fact… I’m pretty sure Italy is *closer* to Scandanavia than northern Illinois is to Arizona.
2009 Independence signing:
Q: Given that so many creatures of the NeverNever know stuff about Harry – his mother, that Thomas is his brother, etc. – how can it be that the Senior Council doesn’t know?
A: They know. No one person on the SC knows everything about Harry, but between them all they could put it together. That is a group where having information is a means of power; they each have a lot of information but they don’t necessarily know who knows what.
2010 RAFO interview
All the wizards in The Dresden Files seem to have their own personal motif and way of channelling energy. What’s the oddest and/or most entertaining motif you’ve come up with?
My favorite is probably from an unpublished short story I wrote, set in the Dresden Files universe, but during the Battle of the Bulge. The Nazis had a sorcerer operating out of an old monastery, and the White Council dispatched the Belgian wizard, Klaus the Toymaker. Klaus’s magic is all based around using children’s toys as focii. My favorite moment was when he killed a couple of SS-summoned demons with a windup wooden duck.
What kind of magic does Martha Liberty specialize in?
Thaumaturgy, specifically information-gathering. She’s got legions of contacts in the Nevernever and the mortal world alike.
2015 AMA
Most of the older wizards have got their own crazy background of powerups which they do not advertise. Listens-To-Wind’s shapeshifting isn’t purely a matter of wizardly skill (though his healing abilities are), for example.
But here’s the key thing about people of power in the Dresden universe (and in the real world): the truly dangerous folks do not advertise. Not ever. They have no need to show off, and constantly displaying how scary they are would be counter to their own interests. [/snip]
All the senior wizards have got something up their sleeve, and every single one of them is hiding it from all the others. If they don’t know about it, they can’t plan for it, and the “knowledge is power” wizard crowd is all about planning for things.
But we are coming up on the time when people are going to have their backs to the wall and we’re going to start seeing what they’ve got. And I’ve been looking forward to writing it for nearly twenty years. >
Shecky provided some excellent Jim sourced info about LtW and Ebenezer’s hat quoted below in the “Word of Mod” section
The White Council
Post on the limitations of Wizards
Our biggest issue: why don’t wizards just WIN (in pre-complex tech eras)? I argued for the sliding scale of “born in X, advanced tech shows up in Y” idea… but it’s not satisfying.
They kinda /do/ win. It’s one reason the White Council thinks of itself as something so ohmygodmighty important. But bear in mind a few things:
1) The White Council /exists/ in order to limit the power of wizards. These days, it’s mostly about keeping wizards out of the black magic–but in the past, it was also to keep wizards out of politics. They would show up as advisers, rarely (most “court wizards” were charlatans or underpowered schmucks), but the Council itself was very much against getting involved in things.
That’s mainly because if the Council threw its weight in anywhere, it was all but guaranteeing a civil war among its own members. (Remember, it’s very Euro-centric.)
The original Merlin learned a lesson about wizards involving themselves in politics. They already have too much power to use wisely, from his point of view.
2009 Whisper radio interview @1:39:25
Can you tell us about the White Council and where you got that idea.
The Original idea for the White Council came from The Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings there was a White Council, of the wise, and it was Gandalf and Saruman, and several of the other Lord of the Rings characters who were the magic heavy characters. And I really liked that concept, and I thought, well if the wizards are going to exist on this world then they are going to have some kind of organization of one kind or another, and the White Council ends up being kind of the Bar organization for the wizards you know. If you want to be someone who’s taken seriously you have to show up, you have to pass their tests, you gota put in your time helping out, and then you are recognized as a full wizard.
Grey Council
2010 Bitten by Books Q&A:
#136 “I am also highly intrigued by the Gray Council showing up as 12 in number.”
Thirteen, actually: Harry was already there.
“So we found out who 2 of them were, i’d like to know how many of the rest we already know and how many of them haven’t been formally introduced to us yet.”
Hang on, counting… You already know six of the folks who showed up at Chichen Itza, excluding McCoy and Vadderung.
Marcone
2010 Powell’s books Q&A off of Youtube @0:30
With Regards to Even Hand
It’s from the perspective of John Marcone, and sort of shows you what he’s doing behind the scenes. And if you read the short story and then go and read the story that’s in Changes in Burger King, it has two totally different meanings.
2011 Bitten by Books Q&A
John Marcone has been on the fence for most of the series. Sometimes he does the right thing, sometimes the wrong. Will there be a book where he goes full good guy or bad guy?
I think it’s safe to say that Harry will never get a clear read on Marcone. Sharks aren’t good or evil. They’re /sharks/.
I say this, of course, only because I miss the recently departed Shark Week.
Per Priscellie Jim told her at ComicCon:
Hendricks’ first name is Nathan
@BillyYank Marcone was a Marine.
Elaine
2007 Huntington Beach B&N Q&A @4:55
In the early books you mention that Elaine has the same pentacle as Harry. Is that significant or have you changed your mind on?
No it’s significant. There is a reason for that. Harry and Elaine come from the same philosophical background as far as magic is concerned… Or at least so he believes in any case. I guess we will have to see if Elaine thinks the same way. Who here has read White Knight so far? Yah, Elaine doesn’t think exactly the same way as Harry when it comes to the use of magic, but at the same time though they are not exactly on a totally different page either. It’s significant that they both have the same symbol. It says something about what they think and what they believe.
2010 Lee’s Summit signing
Q: Is Elaine another candidate to wield power over Outsiders (the way Harry supposedly is)?
A: Yes. There’s a reason Justin picked the two of them. (Editor’s note: The original asker posted this clarification)
…I asked him the question
The full question was if he had stated in the past, during an interview, that Elaine also was a candidate to have the potential to wield power over Outsiders. His longer answer was yes, he had said that before, that Harry and Elaine are just a few months apart age wise so for all intensive purposes the same age. He then told me that was one of the reasons that Justin had picked both of them to adopt, it wasn’t just random kids with power. The key word in my question and his answer was potential.
2011 Naperville Signing
Are you going to do any more work with characters from the Paranet?
Yes, and no. There will be some that factor in, and Elaine is kind of the executive president of the Paranet. So she’ll be involved.
Fitz
2011 Bitten by Books Q&A
Will we be seeing more of Fitz in the future books
I think it’s unlikely, but who knows. Supporting character have surprised me before.
(Jim said at the DC signing that He was aware that Fitz ment bastard and he picked the name intentionally -Serack)
Others
(“mortal” is much more questionable here, but didn’t know where else to stick these)
As for Ramirez, we know he’s younger than Billy, who is a college Freshman or Sophomore at the time of “Fool Moon.” Ramirez is near the end of his apprenticeship in “Summer Knight,” so we can easily assume he was in his teens when he began said apprenticeship. He suggests in “Dead Beat” that he was an apprentice at the time of Harry’s trial for Justin’s death, but as he could only have been a maximum of 8 years old at the time, I tend to think Jim slipped up on that point. (And hey, the younger Ramirez is, the easier it is to ship him with Molly!)
Actually, he was talking about Harry’s confrontation with the White Council in “Summer Knight.”IE, Ramirez.
Jim
Quote from: LazaruskniteMaybe this was a addressed in one of the other thread but I haven’t been able to find it – how can the other side be ‘cheating’ if Harry is supposed to be dead already? Way back in Dead Beat, when Harry first meets corpse taker and nearly dies he is saved by Gard. After saving him Gard tells Marcone that she shouldn’t have done it and that Dresden’s destiny was actually to die in that alley. Given we know that Gard is a Valkyrie, we can assume she wasn’t commenting on the dire nature of the situation but was actually telling Marcone what should have happened. If that is true, then isn’t everything after that point kind of a punch to the face of destiny? Dresden should have died years ago, which means the entire series is basically a case of being ‘off the rails’. If that is true then wouldn’t it also be true that whoever killed Dresden didn’t cheat, but actually put things back into balance?
Basically – has the issue of Gard changing Dresden’s destiny ever been addressed? How does that impact Dresden’s death now and its status as ‘destined’ or ‘cheating’ or whatever?
Point of view is an extremely important factor in the Dresden Files, generally speaking.
Gard’s point of view as a figure of Norse Mythology, a Geat, a scion of Beowulf himself, for pete’s sake, is just a /tad/ different than Captain Murphy’s.
One might think of it as them working for the same general organization, but in (very, VERY) different divisions.
2009 Dayton Book Signing @3:25
Could MacAnally possibly be a son of Dionysus?
He’s not a Greek god nor a scion of the gods, I’ll tell you that much, but we will probably won’t get to see much about MacAnally until the big trilogy at the end.
2011 DC signing
Is Mac ever going to speak more than ten words?
Not for a while. He’s not a man of many words, as most truly dangerous people are.
Where did the name “Fitz” come from, does it have anything to do with the fact that the word means “bastard?”(paraphrased)
Yes, it means he’s an illegitimate son, and we’ll find out more about that later.
Is it possible that Susan left a ghost that we might encounter later?
No, probably not, not with that much energy flying around when she died. I don’t like to do the, “they’re dead, they’re not dead, they’re dead, they’re not dead” thing too often, because then it’s no fun. So just assume Susan is dead and gone. Although this might not be the last time we see her, now that I think of it. [laughter] I’ll have to check my notes
2012 Reddit AMA:
Sarks: Edit: One last little question, that reading other questions below made me think of. How did Mac get his pub declared neutral ground?
Jim: 6) He filled out the proper paperwork, as cited under the Unseelie Accords. Which is about as involved as a mid-level quest that leads into epic weaponry quests, so it’s kind of a story in itself. I mean, /Mab/ designed it. The summary of it is: It’s a giant pain in the ass, but anyone can theoretically do it if they have the mildest of supernatural contacts and are determined enough.
2015 AMA
Is goodman grey able to steal magic from wizards like the first naagloshi we ever saw could?
He /can/, but it’s ruinously costly for him. The more you become something other than you are, the less of you is left over. He could, theoretically, get a gulp of Dresden’s blood and become Dresden, power and all–but, especially with such a powerful will in question, he would /be/ Dresden at that point. There wouldn’t be anything of /Grey/ left over to make decisions. It would basically be a form of suicide, only with a really hard-on-buildings corpse left over.
The Naagloshii themselves, as immortals, are immutable. Grey has free will.
2016 DF Reddit podcast Q&A
Crowley from supernatural, that’s Binder