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Harry had no bargain. He began giving pizza, which is of ultimate value to the Little Folk, without strings. Their acceptance creates an obligation for them to provide something he values even as they value the pizza- so yes, I think the Guard are lifelong feal-bound servants. They value pizza over their lives- they'll go to war for it!- so pledging the lives of some of their own fits. Perhaps it's one per pizza he normally provides.
I don't think motivations matter much to the Little Folk. I also don't think they would understand "the right thing." Toot is pretty alien in his thinking.I think for Toot toot (and later on, little folks soldiers), Harry is their king because he treated him/them nice while no one else does (except the ones close to him), and not only that, he's pretty much their only pizza dealer. Without him they wouldn't know where pizza came to be. To them not only he's the only drug dealer in town, he's the nicest dealer too, he listens to them, keeps his words, so especially for Toot toot he's the closest to a friend he ever has outside of his own species.
I do think how Harry treats them is important. Fairies don't take insults lightly. (Remember Thomas calling Cat Sith a freak?) I imagine most people near Harry's level insult the Little Folk almost reflexively if/when they deal with them. This would greatly lessen the debt owed. Harry works hard to not insult them. Which is honestly surprising given how he can't help but insult people/beings, both great and small.
But they didn't do it out of loyalty to Harry. They did it to protect pizza.
The only thing I'd change is that they are bound only to the extent that any of the fae are bound by obligations and debt.
I would have classified it as mild exageration rather than overdramatic. I'm sorry if I came across as dismissive or insulting.that's alright, i'm just tired of being taken in bad faith & misinterpreted in reddit when i literally said some literal words with no hidden meanings
But yeah, I was exaggerating, because that's honestly an argument I've seen frequently in the "Is Mab a bad guy" debates- that because she isn't literally as evil as possible at all times, she's good.
Sorry if I seemed to throw you in with that crowd.
One possible way to look at Mab is like a tool with no moral compass. She has a task and will commit murder to attend to that task, if she thinks it will move the task in a direction she believes it needs to go. One way of reading what she tells Harry to do if she dies is to understand that Molly can't do what she does. That she can't remove the emotion from her execution of the duties that Mab must perform. She can't be Santa's helper. She has to be the monster. This is all hashed over in previous books. Mother Summer define the risks when she describes the relationship between Titania and Mab.Mab briefly alludes to this in cold Days when she tells Harry that Molly would have been more suitable for Summer.
Ask yourself why Mab had Molly brought in. What chain of events did that set in motion? What secondary effects came about because of it? Ultimately, Mab can always go to the Wyld and draw in more muscle to replace fallen thugs. If worst comes to worst, with just a few “seed” fae, she could rear up enough Changelings to repopulate her cadre within a human generation or two–nothing, to a being thousands of years old.and this is probably related
As far as she’s concerned, everyone and everything is expendable, including herself, when it comes to adhering to her (seemingly irrational and inexplicable) priorities.
(And by the way–don’t think Titania is much better. When push came to shove, she let her own daughter be murdered rather than upset the balance of the Faerie Courts. At least Mab is up front about it. Usually.)
Sacrifice her best troops? Mab would sacrifice every creature *in* Winter, every one she could bring from Summer, and every single mortal on planet Earth if that’s what she thought was appropriate. And she wouldn’t even need to add extra sugar to her cup of tea afterwards, much less lose sleep over it.
But no one does cold-blooded like the Queen of Winter. Mab’s been in the business a long time, she’s got a balance sheet, and she is *not* going to come out in the red, unless, of course, she really *has* stripped a gear, as Lily and Maeve believe. In which case there’s a stark raving bonkers demigoddess whose powers are no longer being held in check by the Escher-esque code of Sidhe behavior. And that’s all kinds of bad.
But hey. It’s probably not that. I mean, not *everything* that happens can be the absolute worst possible possibility, right?
Did Mab lie? (At the end of Ghost Story)
Mab did not lie, Mab was wrong. There’s a subtle difference to that, at the end of Ghost Story. As far as Mab is concerned, she’s telling the truth, because she’s telling the truth from her experience, as she knows it.
"You had several people killed/hospitalised and kidnapped and traumatised a teenager, but it was all just part of your ploy to use said minor as a tool to manipulate Dresden, so it's cool"did i say cool & parade? stop being overdramatic & assume i said something that's only in your head
Yeah, let's throw her a parade.
Man is mostly described from Harry’s point of view and his point of view changes. He gets closer to Mab and sees things in more detail. I do not think Mab changed that much, the Mab we see now already came through in some earlier woj. The character is more fleshed out.Agree, and yeah humans in my post mostly referred to wizards & other humans who more or less had limited experience/interaction with fae, not including changeling for example.
Also the concept of complete alien and impossible to understand Sidhe is just not possible to maintain and to write if you get closer to them.
I got the impression that Molly met Mab after Mab went to Harry.Yeah I think she did, Mab showed up & gave Harry gift first, then Molly after a while, which soon followed by Kringle. Molly said she left her parents’ house before Kringle was due to arrive, so that's right after she went in to her place which haven't been confirmed if it's the house across the street (most likely) or her place in svartalves complex (which might be too much of a stretch given she needed to give a tiny lift when closing the door, svartalves apartment sounded much more modern to have that door quirk).
As I usually say, JB has changed Mab. In the first books it is mentioned several times how cruel is Mab. How she likes to torture people, and not only Slate. In Changes, Harry says something along the lines that she is the less of the evils because she is not wicked, and in BG she is like a Vulcan. So I understand she began as a villain but she is not that anymore. And I bet in the next books she will be regaining parts of her humanity and when she dies (BAT, I guess) she will have her redemption.That's one way to perceive the progress of her character, I kind of think she perceived that her death is imminent.
He's grown a lot from his youth where he'd start fights out of boredom at least.True but the cowboy essence of "you cross me & i'll kill you" never went away
She attempted to kill the Archive by letting the Hobs loose in a train station. Kidnapped Molly and brought her to Arctis Tor and let the Scarecrow dine on her. Set the fetches on the movie theater owner just to get Harry's attention. Tortures Slate to madness.
