The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
Has Mab become something more? [CD Spoilers]
blauregen:
--- Quote from: Hollorr on March 08, 2013, 02:45:11 AM ---Then in that case....I say mab is good!...since most are gonna call her evil! EVIL I say....lol
--- End quote ---
From a welfarist perspective, and assuming that being overrun by outsiders is detrimental for human (or sentient (or in the DV (soul-having (or insiders as opposed to outsiders))) welfare, this is a justifiable position too. :)
We really have to consider this from an in-universe-perspective, and for this we first to have to determine what kind of fiction we are dealing with. In many fictional works, there exists absolute good and evil. An example would be the Star Wars Universe. As long as a Jedi stays on the light side of the Force, it isn't really important how many people he maims or kills, how much corruption she enables or how many atrocities he commits. He or she is by definition a good guy.
I am not sure whether the DV falls into this category.
Form the author, I got the impression that the question is - in the DV - centered around the preservation of free will, which conveniently appears to be a unique property of humans and select ex-humans. If we restrict it to that, then Mab is evil simply because she acts evil in trying to subvert this, regardless of any greater utility she may achieve this way. She has no qualms about using humans as means to an end.
huangjimmy108:
--- Quote from: 123456789blaaa on March 07, 2013, 09:44:30 PM ---
You're assuming that the current Mab is the product of all 1000 years. What if she becomes the Winter Queen, then 500 years of being the Winter Queen slowly smother her soul (down to either a small ember or nothing) then 500 years of increased interacting with mortals fans the flames until we get the current Mab.
I'm symplifying enormously here but you get the idea.
--- End quote ---
The problems with making such assumptions as you did is the side effects. If we apply your idea, it effects something else. That is the beauty of Jim's Dresden Files.
If we assume that Mab's soul could move up and down the spectrum from bright to dark during her tenure as the winter queen, you basically cheapens the corrupting power of the winter queen's mantle. Even the knight's mantle is already so powerfully corrupt as we saw in CD. The lady's mantle should be magnitudes more corruptive and Queens should be magnitudes more from the lady's.
If we assume that interactions with mortals could significantly brightens Mab's soul, and we must assume that it is significant because assumeing little will reduced the effect of moartal interactions itself, then we must assume that once upon a time Mab's soul is a lot darker than her current soul is.
If a soul that much darker than current Mab is redeemable, than the corruptive influence and the danger of total darkness becomes laughable. Even someone that is in deeper shit than Mab can be redeem, whats to worry about? And if Mab could move from a lot darker place to her current position, it will be easy for her to go fforewoard and brightens her soul even more. Why didn't she then?
You see how one assumption could open so many new can of worms?
Mira:
The problem is Mab cannot be all sweetness and light, that is for Summer. Mab is not without feeling, in her own way she grieves for her loses and loves, but it is her way. She heads an army that fights an eternal enemy. An enemy that wants one thing and one thing only, to be inside. It is an enemy who will take advantage of any opening it sees in a heart beat. I don't think it an accident that the Outsiders made an assault on Demonreach at the same time Maeve tried to make her move.
Arjan:
--- Quote from: Duncan Cain on March 08, 2013, 01:56:10 AM ---Mab is not evil. She is just an firm believer in the statement “the end justifies the means”. In a way, she is like Marcone taken to extremes.
--- End quote ---
Not true. Marcone is evil. He chooses to build an empire based on the misery of others and chooses every day to keep it running. Others may use it for their own purposes and some of these purposes may even be labeled a greater good but Marcone himself is evil.
You may call Mab evil depending on your definition and a lot of her subjects probably are (again depending on your definition) but with Mab you can go for alien morality or a goal oriented morality and decide she is not.
You can not do that with Marcone. His goal is simply power. His means are evil.
Ms Duck:
--- Quote from: matolilyfu on March 08, 2013, 02:50:22 AM ---Oh Hollorr, I am so not cool. DF is my first fandom obsession in many moons... (I have seen Batman and enjoy Green Arrow, but am a strictly a viewer - no deep meanings.)
It would be easier for me to consider a Mab a hero for sacrificing her life and saving mankind, if saving mankind mattered to her. I think if she needed the dead bodies of every man, woman and child on Earth in order to fulfill her purpose, she wouldn't blink an eye. I don't think her nature includes any protective impulses for mortals, so saving them might be a by-product of her possible life-sacrifice, but isn't the goal.
--- End quote ---
but from this you consider the survival of homo sapiens to be more important then the survival of earth itself?
that's a very... human... point of view.
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