That could work, but I was under an impression that Butcher wanted to have God be God with all that it includes because in other fantasy settings there is usually something that makes him less than the Absolute. Which means he should be the one and only being at the beginning before he started creating world.

 

Well, if multiple realities/timelines exist, would those alternate streams consist of "this" universe, or others? I remember Bob saying something along the lines of Spider-Man existing in an alternate reality [that's canon, right? I'm not just remembering some fanfiction, am I?], but under the umbrella of "Creation" all the same. If "creation" is "what's created" and Butcher is following the traditional theological concepts of such, would the White God be the overseer of all realities/universes?

 

Spider-Man stuff was about what you can find in Nevernever if I'm not mistaken and in my opinion it broke the setting a little.

The multiple timelines, confirmed to be the canon, are a little tricky in my opinion because the question is how they interact with the Outside? What if the Outsiders win in a different timeline than the books happen? Does it affect the whole existence or it's just that one? Are the same Walkers attacking many versions of the same characters and killed Harry more than few times already? Are there beings, other than God I suspect, that have only singular existence?

 

Makes my head hurt. I suspect Mirror Mirror will explain all this, and I'm not confident it'll be done smoothly. In Cold Days, the Outsiders launched their attack on Demonreach by manipulating time, so I suppose they have some control over it. I don't know if the idea of different realities branching off from alternate decisions applies to them, though. Maybe you're right, and the Outsiders are invading on the Time Theater, as well, and it's up to certain primordial entities to safeguard that aspect of Creation from their incursions.

 

No Bob explicitly said that creation is infinite and that spiderman exists somewhere. Also God capital G is called the White God by other supernatural powers. Archangels are said to be on par with Mab. Yet Mother Winter and Summer are an order of magnitude more powerful than she. So basically while the Almighty is tough he ain't all that.

 

Pretty sure the Mothers are the ones on par with Archangels, not the Queens.

 

Well, I've always figured that the Faerie Queens are as powerful as the Archangels in the sense that, while the Archangels possess immense power (the Queens are de facto gods, but I doubt they can disassemble galaxies), they are severely limited in their capacities to utilize it. And Mab, for whatever reason, has been assigned the task of overseeing the Outer Gates - which is, I believe, the main point of Outsider incursion. I assume this is a very significant mantle, so if we're talking about Power in those terms (i.e. mantles, positions, responsibilities, etc.) Mab is as significant as the Archangels are in their respective roles. So the Archangels have more juice in the tank when it comes to raw strength but due to Cosmic Fine Print, checks and balances keep all the Big Players in relatively equal levels.

 

In Dresden Files power has purpose. You don't have it or gain it for nothing. It's why mortals get free will and everything else is limited. The more power the more limits.

 

Checked it, it is in Ghost Story and it's about all universes.

I think Archangels are on par with Mothers. WoJ put Mab on the same level as the whole Red Court or the Black Court Elders which I doubt would be able to challenge an Archangel.

 

I'm glad I bothered to quote this in a Shezza thread a decade ago, it's been useful to reference and I don't have to go find it again. We've learned a lot in the years since and can probably fill in a lot more people into their respective tiers, but this is a good starting point from the RPG Butcher made forever ago.

 

I think I'd still put the Archangels above the Mothers. It's said in Skin Game that Uriel could unmake galaxies at will, I rather doubt that the Mothers are that powerful. Ivy is about as powerful as the Ladies, iirc, so she's a bit high. The Erlking is also a bit high. I believe Butcher said somewhere that just because he's a "peer" to the Queens doesn't necessarily make him as individually powerful as one of them, but I might be wrong there.

 

This is what Dresden tells us, but Dresden's not a reliable narrator. If you ask an ant which mountain is tallest and how far up they go, they'll tell you they don't know and that they scrape against the stars.

 

It’s a direct quote from Uriel though. So should be fairly solid in terms of truth.

 

You're right, I was thinking of his earlier analysis of Uriel's power.

 

I totally forgot that Uriel borrowed his Grace to Michael. That was pretty big thing to do.

You're probably right about Erlking. He's not directly on the list of beings that can fight with Mab and only as a part of Darkhallow:

The Archivy depends, but I suspect that she's a lot above the Ladies and only a little below the Queens, if not on their level. Denarians almost couldn't win with her when they got her trapped with little power and no way out.

 

This statement seems ludicrous.

The Black Court elders were scary, until plain mortals could defeat them by using a little bit of information leaked by the White Court ?

 

Yes. They have core weaknesses that were exposed to the general populace.

Someone could take on 40 kids and beat 'em, but let those kids know that they can win by hitting the enemy in the nuts, and one of the little thugs is gonna get a lucky shot.

 

The supernatural world in general goes to great lengths to avoid pissing off regular humans because there's seven billion of them with hair trigger tempers and a penchant for extreme violence.

 

Yeah, sort of a "quantity has a quality of its own" scenario. We may be individually weak, but get enough of us together and we'll take just about anything down. Not to mention we're just plain better at being systematic and relentless when dealing with recognized threats than most supernatural nasties tend to be. Combine that with the fact that free will makes us all potentially raving unstable psychos by supernatural standards, since we are not bound by any of the rules and codes of conduct that constrain other beings. Vanilla mortals are basically an entire civilization of low-rent Terminators, so it's not really that surprising that, en masse, we would scare the shit out of a lot of things.

 

My take is that Jim wanted to nerf the Black Court but he did it in a weird way.

Entities capable of standing up to Mab shouldn't get countered so easily.