You know, I'm not actually saying that I'm right and you're wrong here. I'm saying, "well, you may feel one way about it, but I feel a different way--it's not so clear-cut."
Fair enough.
I'm pretty sure each Fallen in its coin works differently, too. They are each individuals, after all.
And the uniqueness is what happens
inside the characters' heads. Unless Jim's going to write a bunch of extra short stories, which A. he doesn't really want to do, and B. would make them required reading for the main series, we're just plain not going to see it.
I disagree. Even apart from Thomas (who I'll talk about below) I can see Murphy getting tricked/coerced into taking up a coin. It would fit her character arc: in Small Favor, she talks about her faith in the law and how it hurts everyone to break it, in a manner reminiscent of the way Michael talks-->by Ghost Story, she's in a much darker place and disregarding the law-->at the end of Cold Days she say's she'll follow Harry down whatever dark road he chooses to take-->in Skin Game, she makes it clear that she'll do just about anything for Harry and to keep Harry safe, and gets the Sword broken as a result, and is also permanently injured-->I can easily see a situation where Murphy, worn down and feeling helpless, ends up taking up a coin because she thinks it's the only way to save Harry.
Murphy has already flatly refused power from benign and outright
good sources, including the one literally powered by the God of her own faith. She's seen what the coin did to Harry and recognized -- then and now -- that it was a bad thing for him. She has been personally attacked and physically near disabled by the Denarians.
Her picking up a coin would not fit with any of that or the character development that came with it. She'd have to be very stupid to ignore everything she has seen with her own eyes.
Plus, Jim's said repeatedly she's not getting any supernatural power-ups.
Except he didn't really mean it, because Harry had to talk him out of it later. And then there was the thing with the Skinwalker convincing him that he's a monster, which we still haven't seen too many consequences from, and his reaction to Harry's suicide (which seems really clearly to have reinforced the "monster" thing for him), and now Justine is dying because she's pregnant with his child...
As far as I can recall, the only time Harry has to talk him out of it is in Small Favor, right after they find Hendrix and Gard.
Accepting the "monster," which, going by the later books he really has not genuinely done, does not mean he's going to take up a coin. Justine is in trouble because of the one monster already in Thomas, he'd have to be monumentally stupid to think that another monster would help.
And Thomas hasn't been particularly affected by any of the Denarian stuff, so he wouldn't have the same reaction to the concept that the people who have been hurt by it would.
Because, frankly? It's not his plot. It's Harry's, and Harry has basically gone the whole nine yards on it. And he's seen enough of it in Harry and has enough experience fighting his own demon that he'd understand the concept.
But it's not a negative consequence, which is what I'm talking about.
He's half blind and needs a cane to walk, and I think I remember something about him losing a kidney. That seems pretty negative to me.
She was a throw-away character that doesn't get mentioned in any scene except the one she dies in. Harry doesn't even ever reflect on "that one girl he got killed because he was using hellfire" when he's talking to Michael about Lasciel at the end of that book (or anywhere else in that book), much less in any other books.
It's still something that affects him. That there were other, bigger things going on does not negate that.
If it were meaningless, it would not be pointed out so directly in the book.
It's like, Harry's neighbors almost certainly can't watch tv, or use computers, without them breaking because Harry lives in the same apartment building as them. And I don't even want to think about how much they probably have to spend replacing cell phones. Or about things like hot showers and light bulbs. Harry is almost certainly making their lives worse by a fair amount. But that doesn't matter, because we don't see it in the books.
Harry's field does not extend that far. In an early book, he's in line of sight of Murphy and she's able to safely turn off her computer while he's in the hall just outside her office.
He's in the subbasement of a boarding house and I think in Changes it's mentioned that his only neighbors are a couple elderly people two floors above him. They're fine.
The story could have Nicodemus in it without it being from his perspective.
Then it's not a story about Nicodemus. It's a story about whoever's perspective it's from.
He's not threatening the way Mab is, or the way the Fomor are, or the way the Red Court was. Because those guys win occasionally, and Nicodemus never does. That's the kind of victory I'm talking about. I mean, if there was even some mention of "so-and-so isn't available to help right now, because Nicodemus managed to *insert something nasty here* and they're busy doing damage control," or "Sanya's in the hospital--he tried to stop Nicodemus from doing *something nasty* and got a grenade tossed through the window of his hotel room for his trouble," I'd be happier. But he can't even seem to win offscreen.
So the guy who nearly killed Harry several times, crippled Harry's best friend and nearly killed Harry's daughter is less threatening than Mab, whose only action directly against Harry has been to make him stab his hand?
The Fomor are scared of wizards in general and only came into the city because Harry wasn't there. And they haven't won anything on screen. Their biggest on-screen operations have been thwarted by a short mortal woman and a half-mad, half-trained wizard. The "wins" they've had so far are kidnapping people who -- as you would have it -- don't matter.
Nicodemus doesn't win "off screen" because he's the type of baddie that whatever plot he's up to
needs to be stopped by the main character. He's not going to go rob a bank. He's going to depopulate a major country by unleashing a plague at an airport.
Frankly, he's too "big" for a short story material.
Jim has explicitly said that Harry went with Mab because she was the most reliable evil, not the lesser evil. And Molly would deal with worse consequences because of who her father is--if her father were the Summer Knight, then she would be dealing with worse consequences because Harry went with Mab.
Mab
is less evil than Nicodemus. Jim doesn't have to spell that out because it's frankly obvious. Mab is going to ask Harry to kill people -- but for a reason, and we learn that her reasons have to do with preserving reality.
Nicodemus is going to actively try to make Harry a worse person, someone who kills because it's convenient. Mab
prefers that Harry fight back against her nastier side and
wants him to do his own thing.
And you think that would be the
only consequences for Molly? You don't think Miss Crazy In Love With Harry And Already Tempted AF To The Dark Side would look at Harry taking up a coin and think, "Well, if he's doing it, maybe I should to?"
You forgot about the Black Plague (although, fun fact, my high school history class said that the Black Plague was actually one of the major factor in causing the Renaissance, which drastically improved people's lives... 
)
And Mab and Lea have done stuff that is comparable.
Such as?
Please note, I'm not saying that Nicodemus isn't evil. I'm saying that, from my perspective, he looks less like a "doing evil for fun" kind of guy, and more like what happens when you take an "ends justify the means" kind of guy and give him the ability to gain power by causing suffering, then wait 2000 years. His "ends" could be completely benevolent, irregardless of how evil his "means" make him.
At a certain point, it doesn't really matter what his ends are.
Means of "causing a new Black Plague, murdering innocent children out of spite and torturing a 12-year-old girl" are way past that point.
The kind of person who would do any of those things -- let alone all three with a smug smile on his face -- is not the kind of person who fits the protagonist role in a series like Dresden.
