Elsethread, @Yuillegan quoted a WOJ:
"I know that a lot of the folks that are generally perceived as bad guys aren’t necessarily, there are several who are currently perceived as good guys who aren’t necessarily, and we’ll continue to have those fall out over the next several books"
2011 Boston Signing
So who are the "bad guys" who "aren't necessarily?"
I think we've seen the groundwork for a redemption-arc for Marcone. He's long been protective of children, his "criminal empire" has -- overall -- reduced violence and collateral damage, his entire
being is defined in large part as remorse for an early mistake, and (most telling from the Doylist POV) he took a huge personal risk in the Raith Deeps to rescue people "because you're the only one who can..." which is pretty much
Harry Dresden's own motivation -- nobody else could/would, so Harry had to step up. Like Marcone did.
Mab, of course, is busy being Cold As Ice so she can save the whole world... no matter the personal cost to her. A thousand years without contacting her sister, ordering that her own daughter be killed. Mab's
already a goodguy... in her own veins-of-icewater way.
All of the Demonreach prisoners are "bad guys" by definition, but the "British" one seems likely to get more screen-time and to turn into some version of a "Good (
or at least not utterly bad) Guy." I mean, what's the Warden of a prison for, if not to sometimes bend the rules...?
Nicodemus Archleone
may have an arc like Marcone's coming. Sacrificing his own daughter clearly hit him very deeply, and it may be working "below the surface" in a similar (but slower) manner to Harry's rage when he learned about his daughter. Nic with a Sword trying to redeem Tessa could be a scene worth reading. Nic with a Sword trying to save Anduriel's next host would be pretty amusing, too.
Kumori's "we can end death" ideal is clearly some version of wanting to do the right thing, and could slip to lighter and lighter shades of gray (the same way I fear Eb may have slipped to darker shades); her criticism against the WC seems mostly to be that they are corrupt and not actually being very whitehat, which... kind of puts her into a white hat herself. Even Cowl's efforts seem to include doing good (such as trying to Darkhallow in order to prevent "those maniacs" from doing it); we don't know a lot about his other motivations.
Others?
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And who are the "good guys" who "aren't necessarily?"
To begin with, I note that LOTS of Harry's allies through the years have paid a pretty heavy price. Maybe one/some of the Alphas comes to the conclusion that Harry is more of a problem than a solution (as just one example).
I'm worried about Molly. She watched as cute Karrin jerked his heart around, as ultra-hot Susan jerked his heart around, as lovely ex Elaine jerked his heart around; and then learned Harry got Susan pregnant (remember the last time her guy got another girl pregnant? yeah, I remember that too). She warned Harry about the personal cost to her, if he involved her in his suicide; and sure enough, the Rag Lady strayed to the borders of sanity... where F'ing
Lea found her and began training her. Then Harry pulled her out to Demonreach and the Winterlady mantle fell on her... so then
Mab began training her. Molly seems happy, now... Well, happy-ish, mostly. Which honestly is pretty damned disturbing, given what she's been through in the past few years... mostly, courtesy of Mr. Dresden.
And speaking of Elaine... I like her, but I think she's teetering if not fully on the bad side. Specifically, I think she's a Nemesis agent, the vector from Justin (Outsider-summoner) to Aurora. She retains at least some free will -- mortals are
such a problem that way! -- so she left Harry that clue to free himself in SK. But she's being a sleeper agent, working for the Paranet and relatively trusted by the other good guys.
I expect that at least one Senior Council member who seems like a goodguy is not. Everyone suspects Cristos, so I'm betting he's just trivially "bad:" a bit power-grubbing, marginal morals and worse ethics, but not into the really Evil
TM stuff; at most, unwittingly a puppet of the BC. Langtry just looks like a garden-variety Jerk, trying mostly to "do the right thing" within the context of being a stick-up-the-ass sorta guy (which could actually be a nice bit of Doylist cover for being a dyed-in-the-wool villain); my biggest objection to him being Black Council is that if
the Merlin were BC... they'd have already won. I mean seriously, Peabody & the Merlin between them would have made the WC a tangled mess of pure ineffectuality. Maybe Injun Joe saw (during the Ramp war) how bad the White Council's don't-get-involved has been (lots of mesoamerican misery from that, raising specters from his own tribe's death), and the Black Council wins him over with the "we will finally begin Doing Something" line; I like IJ, I'd hate for him to be a bad guy; but I can see the story-arc of despair... I don't have enough of a "read" on Martha Liberty, but my gut says she's clear. Rashid is almost certainly a Good Guy, but maybe in a similarly cold-blooded "make any sacrifice needed" way as Mab is. Eb is kinda on the fence, for me: he's far,
far too used to making compromises, accepting
bad here in return for
good there, "necessary evils," and all the rest; lots of whitehat's have slipped grayer and grayer trying to Do The Right Thing At Any Cost, and ended up wearing hats so dark-gray as to be indistinguishable from blackhats.
My money is on Ancient Mai, for one reason: the stone guard dogs are hers. How could they possibly have missed the ubiquitous mind-control black magic that Peabody was using on all the Council, all the Wardens? They couldn't have missed it, unless they were
made to miss it. She was
VERY badly shaken when Harry showed up with Mouse. She vouched for Mouse's testimony to the Council, which seems not-BC... except that she wasn't the only wizard there who could vouch, so trying to
discredit a genuine Foo Dog would render
her a suspect, too. Hypothetically, one could posit that Peabody had some special "guard dogs won't detect this" magic, but there's been no real hint of that (rather, we see the dogs tend to be a bit hairtrigger, alerting on lots of non-problems). The black-hat fits Mai better than anyone else.
And -- as I opened the SC can of worms by saying -- it's "at least one" not "at most one," so my strong suspicion about Mai shouldn't be taken as clearing other suspects!
Other thoughts?
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