awakeTHERE WILL BE SPOILERS.
Seriously. If anyone comments here at all, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. So please don't read and then yell at me because you encountered spoilers. You were warned. (I will not reply to every comment; I call partial comment amnesty. But I may well join some of the discussion, or answer questions or whatnot.) I will be DELETING all comments containing spoilers which have been left on other posts. No one gets to spoil people here without a label.
You can also start a discussion at my website forums, with less need to be concerned that I will see everything you say! In case you wanted, you know, discussion free of authorial influence, since I always wind up getting involved in these things.
Have fun, and try not to bleed on the carpet.
September 4 2013, 12:56:31 UTC 3 years ago
In all the 7 books I ve only encounterd one instant when Toby really was self-destructive, and that was her crusade against the drugs in book 6. And she had a good reason for it, blaming herself for Connors death and as she is not the type that gets depressive, she gets reckless.
It is true that Toby almost constantly ends up in dangerous situations that almost kill her. But that is because things happen around her (or Seanan likes to throw them to her). It is always some extremely powerful enemy (Simon, Blind Michael, Oleander) that hurt her friends (Silvester, Karen, Tybald) and those friends ask her for help, and she doesn´t refuse them- most of the time because there is no one else who could help!!! She only has the options to say: "I will help, though it will probably kill me" or "I am sorry, but he/she is too strong for me, so you will not see your wife and daughter again/ you will stay prisoner of Blind Michael forever/ the one who poisoned your people will go free. And what a lame-ass hero she would be then?
And concerning Quentin- there was only one time where I really thought Toby should refuse help, because the situation is beyond her, and that was in book 3, when she went back into Blind Michaels land for the second time. And she did that because of Quentins girlfriend, because she knew that it would break Quentin if he couldn´t help her.
If anything I thought that Toby was uncharacteristically careful in chimes at midnight, taking backup, waiting for friends, ringing ahead.
September 4 2013, 13:09:27 UTC 3 years ago
Toby has always been incredibly reckless with her own safety, and often misses how the fact that she gets hurt upsets other people. There's a number of takes as to why Toby is genuinely surprised that people give a damn that she lives or not, but personally I thought it was pretty clear that the reason why was because Toby doesn't think she's as important or valuable as the people around her, and therefore it's okay for her to sacrifice herself but not okay for anyone else to.
It's one of those peculiarly tragic hero things; the thing that makes Toby the person that they need to save them is the thing that actually causes her and the people around her great pain.
September 4 2013, 15:38:20 UTC 3 years ago
As you put it now, I completely agree. Toby really is like "oh, you would mind if i died horribly?" and not only towards Quentin. I think he, May and Tybald are taking turns in worriing about her, otherwise all three of them would have gone mad already