The nature of ways and intent

[DonBugen]

So, I was listening to the dulcet tones of James Marsters narrating White Night for the umpteenth time, when there was a particular line that stopped me in my tracks.  Quite frankly, it fairly overturned what I thought of as a hard-and-fast rule of the Dresden Files, and shook up my understanding of what Ways are and how they are formed – something that I thought was pretty simple to understand.  Is this a goof of Jim’s?

This passage happens in the fight in the Deeps; Marcone suggests that they leave the fight and escape to the Nevernever:

The gate was six feet away from me; we could pull up stakes, hop through, and close it behind us.  Gates to the spirit world paid absolutely no attention to trivial things like geography.  They obeyed laws of imagination, intention, pattern of thought.  Even if Cowl was back there, he wouldn’t be able to open a gate to the same place as mine because he didn’t think like me, feel like me, or share my intent or purpose.  White Night chapter 39

But… this doesn’t make sense, on several levels.  If two people opening a Way in the same place cannot open it to the same location – if, as suggested, the location it is opened to is somewhat reliant on the intent, purpose, and feelings of the individual – that would completely destroy some of the mechanics of travel in the Nevernever.  There would be no point in Dresden having Graver stake out the Way in Chicago during Turn Coat, for example, because there would not be a common path from one location to another.  There would be no point in Dresden advising Morgan what was on the other side of his storage bolthole in TC, either, because Morgan would undoubtedly open it to a different location than Dresden would.  In fact, Margaret’s gift to her son would be completely useless if this was the case; she gives exact directions through the Ways, down to the number of paces, which could not function well if there was some sort of ambiguity.  And that’s not to mention that it would be impossible for Harry and crew to follow the Fetches in Proven Guilty, or Agatha Hagglethorn in Grave Peril.  If Cowl couldn’t follow Harry by opening a closed gate, then Harry couldn’t follow the fetches for the same reason - he certainly didn’t have the same thoughts, feelings, intent, and purpose as the Fetches.

So why does Harry act as if he were to close his gate to the Nevernever, no one could open up a gate in the same location and follow?

I understand that Ways are fluid and don’t always stay the same, but Jim has always portrayed their locations as being anchored to their metaphysical resonance of the real world – i.e., a creepy-and-scary location in the real world might connect with a scary place in the Nevernever, and a creepy-and-sad location a few yards away connect to a sad place a hundred miles away in the Nevernever.  If the nature of the place changes – such as blasting into Marcone’s vault instead of breaking in, for example – the end point of the Way might change, but this is related to an actual change that happened to the nature of the location, not due to the perception of the person performing the ritual.  If Ways change naturally – and they do – they often change gradually, over years and decades.  Not immediately, because someone who thinks differently opened a Way.

It seems at first as if Dresden's quote in White Night is a goof… but this isn’t the only time that Jim communicates the idea that if a person steps into the Nevernever and closes the gate behind him, he can’t be followed.  In Turn Coat, Peabody’s escape ends with him ripping open a gate into the Nevernever, causing a significant injury to a Warden in order to delay Dresden, and jumping through.  Dresden follows Peabody before the gate closes thanks to Luccio’s intervention and tackles Peabody.  Instead of preparing to ambush Dresden with a lethal attack, Peabody had instead been wasting his time trying to close the gate.  Why waste the time he bought himself trying to close a door that could so quickly be opened again?  By messing with the gate, Peabody exposed a weakness and delayed his escape, which eventually led to his death.  Completely stupid, unless he knew that he couldn’t be followed if the Way was closed.

I know that Jim presents Ways in this exact same way in at least one other instance, but I can’t recall the source.

How do you all understand Ways to work?  Is this a goof of Jim’s, used for narrative convenience in this scene?  Or are Ways far more complex than the broad brushstrokes I’m painting them with?

[jonas]

Perhaps, this always made me think the same ways went to the same places for groups of people because like magic itself they all believed that's where it went and had the intent to use that way that they were told about explecting it to go to that specific place. Harry is fed info by the Ruby, and Margret just plain believed from experience. Possibly understanding belief colors that experience.

[wyltok]

I believe the last time this was discussed was saved in this Reference Collection post: http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,32830.msg1894720.html#msg1894720

[exartiem]

I think there is a difference between opening a random gate from an unknown place to somewhere unfamiliar.  If Harry and Cowl both tried to open gates to Arctic Tor from the same locale, they might arrive in different parts of Arctic Tor.  One might appear in the middle of Mab's throneroom, while the other might pop in miles away.

The ways are different because they are "staked" to specific locales on both sides, mainly through repeated use.  Even Harry's bolt hole is staked because Harry has opened that gate repeatedly, his intent being to fix the exit to a point in the NN that will help in his escape.

I would also imagine that if you are gating into someone's domain, and that creature is powerful enough, they could affect where you appear within their demesne.

[Rasins]

Yeah, I think there are parts of Fairy (the part of the never-never that is closest to the real world) that actually touch the real world, and there are parts that don't.

I think those that touch/overlap the real world are able to be anchored and create the ways.  The ways are "stable wormholes" into and out of the Never-never.

What Harry is describing is creating a "wormhole" from the real world to the never-never that is NOT attached/overlap the real world.  Thus the two endpoints don't necessarily match up for everyone, and that is where intent and imagination come into play.

I think that's why the gateway from Chichen Itza COULD lead straight back to Chicago.  But that effort, to go to a specific spot would take a tremendous amount of power.  The kind of power maybe only a god could conjuror?

[DonBugen]

Wow, Wyltok, that is an awesome resource.  I particularly like the argument at the end of the page, which particularly talks about the differences between Gates and Ways, and that a Gate is a one-off opening, versus a Way being something that has been solidified in some way and anchored.  Aaand, I see that it was you who proposed that theory.   No wonder you found it so quickly.

I do like it; however, I don’t think that it explains at all Dresden’s attitude towards finding Molly in Proven Guilty.  When Harry sits with Charity and lists off the myriad of things that could possibly go wrong, he never voices that he might not be able to follow the Fetches even if he finds exactly where they crossed over; only that it would be hard to find the exact location.  Below are snippets of the chapter:

"There are plenty of things that can use mirrors as doorways or windows from the spirit world, but there's only one thing that feeds on fear and uses mirrors as pathways back and forth from the Nevernever.  It's called a Fetch." 
"The problem is that we don't know where to do it…  On top of that, I'd have to know precisely where to cross over into Faerie, because I'd have only minutes to grab her and get out, and I have no idea where she is."

First I had to find her.  The only way to do that was to learn where the Fetches carried her through to the Nevernever.  Geography in the Nevernever isn't like geography in the normal world.  The Nevernever touches our world only in certain points of sympathetic energy.  The portion of the Nevernever that touched an empty and abandoned warehouse might not be anywhere near the area of the spirit world that touched the full and busy childcare center across the physical street from the warehouse.  To make it worse, the connections between the mortal world and the Nevernever changed slowly over time as the world changed.  There could be a thousand places in Chicago where the Fetches might have dragged Molly back to their lair.  I had to find the correct one, and I had to do it before dawn, before the rising sun scattered and dispersed the residual traces of her presence that would be my only trail.

If the argument about there being a difference between a quick-and-dirty Gate and an anchored, established Way is true, then Dresden’s logic doesn’t make sense here.  Regardless of whether the Fetches had made the theater a Way, Dresden had no way of knowing it at this point.  He speaks of the Fetches only using mirrors as doorways and windows to go back and forth, rather than having a single solid established pathway – their use of mirrors is what tells him that the phobophages are Fetches, rather than some other monster.  He also expects to pop up exactly where the Fetches crossed when he finds the point they crossed, as he states that the operation must be done in minutes; not something that you can manage if two people only went to the same general location, but potentially miles away.  In addition, Dresden knows that his will, intent, purpose and thoughts are very different from the Fetches; they are returning home with prey to feed on; he is following a pack of enemies in order to retrieve their captive.  If Harry’s entire plan to rescue Molly relied upon him opening a closed gate to follow the Fetches, it doesn’t make sense why a year later he assumes that Cowl can’t follow him into Faerie the exact same way.

The conversation with Morgan and Molly in the storage unit also is a bit telling:

“The idea is to protect you from a surprise assault long enough for you to go out the back door and run.”
Molly glanced at the back of the storage unit and said, “There’s no door there, Harry.  That’s a wall.  That’s kind of the opposite of a door.” 
Morgan nodded his head at the back corner of the space where a large rectangular area on the floor was clear of any runes or any other markings.  “There,” he said.  “Where’s it come out?” 
“About three long steps from one of the marked trails the Council has rite of passage on in Unseelie territory,” I said.

Considering that Faerie makes Australia look like Rhode Island, the chances that Dresden’s storage unit would just happen to open up right next to a marked Council trail is one-in-a-million, even considering how good Chicago is for Ways.  If gates go somewhere different for different people unless they’re connected to a Way, Morgan wouldn’t have any reason to suspect that Dresden could reliably answer his question of “Where’s it come out?” because it would be absurd for Dresden to build a Way on the other end.  If Harry built the bolthole for his own safety, there would be no reason to make this little rectangle a Way – who else but him would be hiding here that could open a gate?  And as doors go both ways (as Morgan reminds him later), attempting to firm up and solidify the Nevernever on the other end as a Way would be akin to putting a giant flag in the Nevernever saying, “Hey, there’s something interesting over here on the other side!”  Not something you do when you need a place to lay low and hide for a while.

I still suspect that this line in White Night is a “the curtains were blue” moment (to steal the WOJ you reference in your signature, Wyltok).  It just doesn’t seem like any of the people in the Dresden Files think that way – when talking about what is on the ‘other side’, the discussion is always about a specific place in the Nevernever, rather than “It’s leads to a peaceful location” or “It leads to a hostile location” or “It leads to a frightening location.”  That is the sort of commentary I would expect to see if two people opening a Way in the same location would lead to different areas which shared the same sort of sympathetic energy, because you wouldn’t expect that you could tell someone exactly what was on the other side – only in general what they might find if they opened a gate there.

[Zaphodess]

Maybe crossings over do leave a kind of signature that can be followed, for a time. Unless they are actively wiped out. Kind of like tyre tracks. They aren't streets (like established Ways). They are just there for a while after someone used that path.