LC and the Outer Gates

[morriswalters]

I've been thinking about Mab's display of Marcone's bolt hole when he gets taken in Small Favor.  Also thinking about Harry and Grey Cloak in White Knight where Harry almost gets his head taken off by Cowl. Is it just me, or is Cowl's reaction and Gard's reaction to Mab watching in Small Favor really similar. Cowl of course is more violent.  But they both sense someone watching.  Almost like Mab has access to something like Little Chicago.

I had shrunk to scale with Little Chicago, my awareness now within the spell rather than in my own body, which stood over the table like Godzilla, murmuring the words of the spell.

Insert Mab in that word picture.

Then Gard’s head snapped up, looking directly at where Mab currently stood, as if the little snow sculpture could somehow see the titanic form of the Winter Queen looking down upon her.

 

[Kindler]

This is interesting, especially as Little Chicago goes (as far as I can remember) unmentioned except for a casual reference to the table with a cloth thrown over it.
EDIT: I meant to say in Turn Coat, the next book. I don't recall Harry even considering using it to track Thomas.

[morriswalters]

I think by Turn Coat LC was toast in terms of a current plot device.  Unless during the fire somebody carried it off, it's destroyed and I doubt that Harry would take the time to rebuild it.  But this use of similar metaphors or phrases is something that turns up  every so often.

[Mira]

I think by Turn Coat LC was toast in terms of a current plot device.  Unless during the fire somebody carried it off, it's destroyed and I doubt that Harry would take the time to rebuild it.  But this use of similar metaphors or phrases is something that turns up  every so often.

  I agree, like a lot of plot devices that were brought to an end, that is why the book was called, "Changes."   Not sure I agree with all of them or liked all of them, but there it is..

[g33k]

I think by Turn Coat LC was toast in terms of a current plot device.  Unless during the fire somebody carried it off, it's destroyed and I doubt that Harry would take the time to rebuild it.  But this use of similar metaphors or phrases is something that turns up  every so often.

I've been speculating about this.

I think LC may have been saved... that is, IF Jim has any further use for it... which I think he may, actually:  because of the whole "who fixed LC" mystery that he dropped as a pseudo-throwaway.

But it'd be easy enough for Mab to engineer safety in the sub-basement.  A couple of arches of glacial ice supporting a 1' thick slab on the roof of the sub-basement, the fire will burn out up above and most of the lab will survive just fine.

And then Harry gets to discover that his lab is now in Marcone's sub-basement!  (q.v. Brighter Future Society)

I can hear the gritting of teeth from several yet-unwritten volumes away...
 

[morriswalters]

If Mab wanted to preserve LC it would be in dry storage somewhere.  I doubt she needs it since I think the Outer gates serve a similar purpose.  The metaphor of a giant looking over the world looks like signaling to me.  Jim's try to show us or tell us something.

[g33k]

If Mab wanted to preserve LC it would be in dry storage somewhere.  I doubt she needs it since I think the Outer gates serve a similar purpose.  The metaphor of a giant looking over the world looks like signaling to me.  Jim's try to show us or tell us something.

If Jim wants it, LC will have survived.  I think your POV on the symbolism also suggests he may want to revisit that element.

Lea could have preserved it -- it was her garden on the other side, after all, and "saving Harry's stuff" might have seemed well-within the whole "faerie godmother" purview; certainly his stash IN her garden was treated that way!

Certainly it COULD have been preserved, if Jim still has use for it.

[didymos]

Little Chicago is gone:

#330 “Jim–someone else asked this as well, but I couldn’t see an answer: Little Chicago wasn’t mentioned in Turn Coat, and was barely mentioned in Changes… was it destroyed in the fire? Did the FBI notice it? It’s it gone for good?”

It was made of (mostly) pewter. The rest was plastic. Harry hadn’t taken steps to make it less destructible (which would have interfered with its function anyway–it was built to be sensitive, not tough). There was just no way it could have survived the fire. And no, the FBI didn’t confiscate it.
Changes is, in many ways, about loss. About encountering it and feeling its pain. That happens to all of us, sooner or later. There’s no avoiding it.
The real question is, how do you pick up the pieces and keep going, afterward.

[morriswalters]

The real question is, how do you pick up the pieces and keep going, afterward.

You take your knowledge, get to the BAT, go back in time with Bonea,  make her the Archive, build the Outer Gates as an advanced type of LC, build a prison for dark gods, rent a room in the prison and go into stasis, wait until old you leaves to come out.  And then go kick ass in the conclusion.  Or some crazy shit like that.

[Snark Knight]

Mab could probably just do the spell without a focus item at all.

[morriswalters]

Well you could be right. But I was looking at the metaphor.  A giant looking down on the Lilliputians.

[Kindler]

I think by Turn Coat LC was toast in terms of a current plot device.

Yeah, but I've always found it odd that Harry doesn't even think of using it to try to locate Thomas. It's alluded to, but never explained.

I don't think it would have worked anyway because the skinwalker could prevent it from doing so, but why is it not even mentioned? Harry's half out of his mind trying to track down Thomas, but doesn't use the one thing that's designed to find sh*t in Chicago?

Jim didn't have to use it. But it feels like too much of a deliberate choice to avoid mentioning it altogether. As far as I can recall, "Little Chicago" never appears in the book once.

....Just checked the EPUB file. No references to "model" regarding LC, nor Little Chicago itself. The only mention of it in TC is chapter 29, page 215 on Nook:

"A long table in the middle of the room was currently covered by a canvas tarp, and the floor at the far end of the lab had a perfect circle of pure copper embedded in it."

I dunno about anyone else, but that's always felt off to me, especially after all the effort Harry put into building and maintaining it. It appears, finished, in Proven Guilty, White Night, and Small Favor and is completely avoided in the narrative after that? Even JK Rowling—She of the Convenient Excuses—added a line about Time Turners being inaccessible in book six or seven.

From either a Doylist or Watsonian perspective, the above quote is significant to the narrative because LC is still there, but for some undisclosed reason, Harry doesn't consider using it.

[morriswalters]

Jim probably knew by then he was going to destroy it in Changes.  That didn't give him a lot of incentive to spend time on it.  As the Knight Harry isn't going to have all that much time going forward to keep it current as the timeline speeds up.  I think it was meant to foreshadow some other thing.

[Kindler]

Well, agree to disagree. I think Jim would've written the fifty words handwaving the reason he couldn't use LC in Turn Coat rather than excluding it altogether if it wasn't meant to be a hint at something.

[nedserD C B yrraH]

The main reason I think it was obscured intentionally is the similar way he described the memory of his blasting rod being taken. It was like a tarp thrown over something in the corner of his mind.