lolz,I can totally imagine MLP Dresden Files crossover in the near future.

 

Someone already wrote it, wherein Equestria is a pocket-dimension of the Never-Never and Celestia sends Twilight in human form to Dresden to ask for his help with something-or-other.

 

And here's part one of my infrequent update of this thread.

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Part two all up in this shit!

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Part three, mofos!

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Can you guys handle part four!?

You better be able too, because this shit isn't done yet.

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I'll give you guys a short break from the informative awesomeness for some boring background information.

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This boring stuff sure is boring, isn't it?

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/Ryuugi sees their guard is down.

AN OPENING!

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Nobody expects the WoJ!

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TAKE IT ALL! UNGH!

And there's the last of it.

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OR MAYBE NOT! SURPRISE BUTTSEX, BITCHES!

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WoJ never stops*. Not even when you want it to*. It just keeps going and going*. It's like some kind of monster*.

*In bed.

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Congratulations! By some miracle, you have survived the most recent installment of WoJ*! I advise you be weary, though--WoJ is prone to revive randomly*. I advise you keep an eye out, less it take you by surprise**.

*In bed.
**In the butt.

 

And the theory that Cowl might be Evil Alternate Universe Harry just got a boost...

Interestingness on the subject of being conflicted; don't remember ever hearing about that before. From the way WoJ put it, it sounds like if Harry ever got completely over all his issues (not that it would ever happen) he would get along just fine with tech.

Best review of D&D 4th Edition ever.

 

If Cowl was an alternate universe Dresden, I'd think he would be much snarkier, and would take himself a lot less seriously. Kind of like the recent versions of the Master from Doctor Who.

And I hope this doesn't mean that Fix is suddenly above Harry in the food chain...

 

The only reasonable explanation I can think of is that Fix is more practiced at being a Knight and has a better idea of how to get things done without throwing a truck-load of power around (because he's been on the job longer and he just doesn't have that power).

 

The problem with that is that Harry should be able to easily compensate for any lack of experience as a knight, with his experience in magic and being a wizard. And not just any wizard either, but a very powerfull one with access to soulfire.

And when it comes to non-power related things, its not like Harry is some novice in dealing with sidhe either, he has been dealing with them most of his life thanks to his godmother. And we have recently seen several examples of Harry being capable of cunning and clever planning. Not to mention the fact that he has experience in politics too, thanks to his experiences in the White Council.

Not saying Fix should be a pushover, the fact that he has managed to keep the job for as long as he has should tell that much, but the idea that he could run circles around Harry just feels absurd.

 

I think it meant that Fix much more willingly embraces the role of Knight and doesn't have Harry's moral problems with it. There's no way Fix is more powerful than Harry: the power of the Winter and Summer Knights are equal, and Harry's got his own magic on top of that. And Harry also has many more years experience than Fix at wielding magic.

So what I think Butcher meant was that Fix's will to act is stronger. If Harry and Fix were to face off, I'm thinking Fix would be completely willing to go for the throat - unlike Harry. That would be a significant advantage.

One thing I'm still not clear on is how much power - in terms of raw power - the Knights have. My feeling for it is that the Knight mantle comes with about as much power as a moderately powerful wizard of the White Council, plus increased physical capability. On the downside, the power of the Knights is not as versatile as mortal magic and favours certain uses over others.

However, this could be completely way off base.

I thought this was very interesting:

I have this image of the White Council dispatching the Blackstaff to deal with the mysterious but powerful new Winter Knight.

Also interesting was the fact that Lash was in Ghost Story.

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Oh, also:

This seems to imply that the borders of the Nevernever and the physical universe only exist where mankind has set foot.

 

@Taure: that's the impression I get of the Knight's power-level as well, except they're fairly restricted in what they're capable of if they didn't have any innate magical talent to begin with.

 

First off, fuck you for making me read that enormous wall of text in one sitting.

^translation: "Suck it, Rowling - here's how it's done with forethought."

My only nitpick with that is this: The last time Dresden met Fix, Fix had a shotgun pointed at Harry, and Dresden told Fix specifically that if he ever did that again, Harry would "fucking kill him" or something similarly dead serious.

To me, that means that Dresden knows the score with Fix, and as much as he personally likes Fix, when the gloves come off and they throw down (if they ever do), Dresden will *not* be holding back.

I read that differently, in that the Nevernever is tied to the Summer and Winter Fae, which means it's tied to Earth and the Earth's seasons. I could be wrong, of course, but even though I've never seen any proof that the Nevernever is centered or based around the Fae Courts, I always envision the Courts as the extremes of the Nevernever.

Can't wait for Cold Days, even seeing how underwhelmed I was with parts of Ghost Story's plotting and logic.

 

Fae courts (faerie) is the part of nevernever closest to earth. And pretty sure earth's seasons are tied to the courts as much as they are tied to it - if either court gains power then eternal winter/summer. Think Taure might be right which is definitely interesting. Implies some level of dependance on mortals for the fae.

 

I'm not entirely sure a human not being able to get past the moon from the Nevernever has anything to do with the fae in the first place. Remember that the linkage between NN and the mortal world is... unfixed. Two people could open gateways in the exact same place that dump out at different points in the Nevernever. The creator of the gateway is very much a factor in determining where it goes, and it's generally decided by a cultural/"spiritual" thing on the part of the user.

It's likely no one can get past the moon from the Nevernever simply because no one can make the necessary emotional/belief/logic connections between a place in the Nevernever and a different planet.

 

It's got me thinking. If the Nevernever extends just beyond the moon, this implies that it's sort of like Earth's supernatural footprint. But what about the third place that we know of, other than the Nevernever and the physical universe? That is: the area beyond the Outer Gates.

I'm now wondering if the Outer Gates correspond to this line in the sand around Earth and the moon. What if the Outside is the Nevernever of other planets, and the Outsiders are supernatural creatures of other worlds? We know from Alera that Jim likes to mix sci-fi elements into his fantasy.

Right now the biggest problem with this idea is the idea that the Outsiders are Earth-native supernatural creatures that were banished. But i can't recall if that's Shezzaverse canon or Dresdenverse canon XD

Edit for ninja:

I don't think this is the case. Certainly the Nevernever and physical world borders are unfixed in the geographical sense: if you opened two portals at opposite ends of a street, likelihood is that they would lead to very different places. It's also true that over time the border is mutable, as it depends more on ideas than geography. For example, a portal from the FBI headquarters leads to the Erlking because the FBI hunt people and the Erlking is a hunter. But if the FBI moved shop and the building started being used for a different purpose, then it probably wouldn't lead to the Erlking anymore.

However, I think that the borders are objective within these rules. The entire White Council shares certain Ways, for example, and Harry inherited a load of knowledge from his mother about routes through the Nevernever in Changes. If it were all subjective that wouldn't really be possible.

 

If memory serves, canon on Outsiders is "They're out there, they want in and Lovecraft was at least partially right". I'm pretty sure there are no other confirmed details.

It would make sense for them to be extraterrestrial supernatural critters, the only problem with that theory is if that is the case, why would they want in?

What I find most likely is that the Nevernever actually does cover all living things in the universe but we only see the part that's relevant to Earth.

Edit: WRT NN Portals: That's what I was trying to get at Taure. The circumstances of the portal creation lead to different destinations.

The bit about different people making different destinations in the same place was a canon thing from early in the books, if memory serves. I could be wrong, but I remember Dresden monologuing about it at one point. The theory I've got kicking around to address the Maggy/Council Ways working for multiple people is that expectation factors into things. Random street corner A has no real metaphysical significance, and if Council Member 27 opens a portal there they'll find a distinct potion of the Nevernever. Then they tell people "hey, a portal here goes to there" and when future people try to open a Way there, it leads to the same place, because they expect it to.

That said, it is a bit of an overly complicated explanation and you are most likely correct. That's just the theory I'm working with on the assumption my memory isn't completely broken.

 

I can't recall a time when it's ever stated that they're Earth derived creatures. We know for certain there they're completely alien to our world (even the Fae are part-mortal, which Outsiders are not), they're not from the Nevernever, and they need mortals to allow them through the Outer Gates.

It could work, I think, but them being extraterrestrials rather than Cthulhoid monstrosities gives them no reason to want to destroy the universe. Plus, Jim has described them as being the generic Hellboy tentacled monster type things, and has said that HP Lovecraft was killed for writing what he did (implying that he was breaking the Seventh Law). Also, one of the goals of the Fallen is opening the Outer Gates, and they're all about destroying the universe.

So yeah, maybe they are extraterrestrial, but not in the sense of aliens from another world. They're more like extra-universal, to the point where they're nothing like anything from this universe in any way.

 

I'm no Lovecraft expert, but are Cthulhu's race of beings not extra-terrestrials?

But yeah, unless I'm getting this from Shezza, I'm fairly sure there's some part of Dresden that mentions or implies that Outsiders once ruled the Earth before the new order heralded by the coming of man locked them beyond the Outer Gates.

 

I think the most reasonable explanation for the Ways and how the Nevernever's geography was described earlier in the books is simply Butcher retconning it. There's simply no way for it to be both subjective and objective at the same time (to the point where Margaret was able to predict where the new Ways would be).

There are two ways for openings to the Nevernever to be subjective: the first is if they depend on some innate feature of the person, which doesn't seem to be the case, despite what Dresden said early on. The second is them depending on the person's expectations, and that's even more unlikely, because that would be immediately obvious the first time anybody did any experimentation with it.

Or they could be objective, depending solely on the real-world location and what's associated with it.

Ok... now that I think of it, it's possible that it's both: there are always objective Ways, that depend on some sort of pattern-matching, but the rest depends on the wizard in some capacity. Still, I don't know.

 

Taure, you're getting that from Shezza. There's no canon explanation for where the Outsiders come/came from or what they did before they were sealed away. Or even if they ever were not sealed beyond the Outer Gates. All we know about them is that they exist, they want in, and Lovecraft was at least partially correct about them.

Fully possible T3t, probably the only way to find out for sure would be to ask Butcher.

 

Well, subjectivity is part of the objective description:

I think this is pretty much how it works. But of course association is subjective, not objective. It just so happens that we're talking about the subjectivity of mass numbers, which gains much of the substance of objectivity, so far as how much a single person can affect it is concerned.

 

Think less about Ways and more about the Nevernever as a whole. The Ways are places in the Nevernever that are closely enough linked to the real world to be almost permanent. The Nevernever in general is likely only tangentially linked to the real world.