Young Wizards/Headscratchers

Dalek Kan Noladti: when is someone going to give Carmela a pair of Kamina's shades? She's an over-the-top, self-parodying Mary Sue. She needs to just get magic, put on the shades, and then blow all her power on hitting the Lone One with a giant drill or something equally ridiculous before it actually gets grating.

• I can't even tell what this is saying, but I get the vague impression that it is trying to insult Carmela, so let me just say that I beg to differ.

Heliomance: Nita's manual came from the library. What's more, she didn't have her card on her the day she took it out, and was enjoined to bring it back after the weekend. How has she got away with holding on to it for years?

• It's not a normal book, and it was specifically meant for her to find. I think it's more than possible the librarian just quietly forgot it existed.
• ^ It's a magic book that doesn't even look the same to everyone who sees it. It's pretty easy to assume the librarian simply forgot it ever existed. Or, to cover the whole equivalent exchange theme the book covers, Nita simply paid for the cost of the book to the library.
  • Or the librarian was a wizard too, and she gave Nita the manual never expecting to get it back.
    • Or it was planted there by somebody, and it isn't really owned by the library at all.

Also, when she was dealing with her mother's death, why didn't she just pop over to Timeheart and say hi?

• Misuse of wizardry. Going to Timeheart isn't something you do lightly, it was something she was supposed to deal with without using wizardry and third, it would be viewed as a personal, selfish sort of thing. Wizards aren't supposed to use magic for themselves in this kind of situation. Finally, Nita probably knows her mother isn't gone, merely that she isn't here anymore. She still can't see her again until she herself dies.
  • Also, Timeheart may not be something you can CHOOSE to visit. You visit, or you don't, but it is not under your control.
    • Timeheart is another universe, like any other universe... and like any other universe, it's bloody hard to visit.
  • Getting to visit Timeheart seems like a reward from the Powers for a job well done - Kit and Nita only ever visit in their dreams, and apparently only in the early books. It may be the Powers see this as something important for new wizards to experience, otherwise the promise of an afterlife reward for their service would be a hollow Take Our Word for It. Being able to know about Timeheart with empirical certainty is something mere Muggles don't get the privilege of, and avoids a whole lot of problems that would come out of blind faith.

Is Timeheart for wizards only or if one happens to love you? It doesn't seem like muggles get to go otherwise. The second book specifically points out that Ed gets to go to Timeheart either because he had magic at the time of his death or because Nita loved him. Not because he was a living sentient being one stepped removed from being a Power or anything like that.

• • I believe it was stated that as long as something's been loved at anytime ever by anyone or anything, it gets to go to Timeheart. So that would include most of the universe: people, pets, parks, beloved possessions, etc. In fact, nearly all sentient beings would end up there, because almost everyone has been loved by someone else at sometime in their life - like by their mothers at birth or caregivers or what have you. Ed was an ancient manifestation of a unemotional predator, so Nina probably was the fist entity to love him.
    • Does that mean HITLER, MAO, POL POT AND STALIN are admmited to the in-universe version of heaven, but say a baby that was left to die by it's mother before any sort of bond could form dosen't? what happens in those sort of stauations, do they get oblivion, some sort of HELL!!!! fuck you Powers!!!!!!! If this isn't the case could somebody explain
      • There are plenty of real-world religions that don't have a concept of hell.
      • Bit angry there. ;). Anyways, a child that was completely and totally unloved by everything in the universe and that had never, ever, been loved (extremely unlikely, if a mother is carrying an infant to term instead of aborting it, but then later abandons it, it seems likely that it was loved earlier, if even for an instant) would, presumably, get oblivion. As for horrible people getting in, so what? I'd see letting Hitler into heaven as a far lesser evil then damning anyone to hell. Besides, it's not as if they can hurt anyone anymore.
      • The Powers love everyone in the universe. So, by definition, everyone goes.
      • Also, babies who aren't even born are loved by their mothers (yes, even if the mom gets an abortion - abortion is an extremely difficult choice.) So let's go out on a limb and say the mother was incapable of love - the Powers would still love the child, love everyone unconditionally. So yeah.

Computer Sherpa: Does anyone else feel it's more than a bit unreasonable for the whales to hold Nita to her promise in Deep Wizardry? Keeping one's promises is certainly important, but there are promises and there are promises, and insisting that someone sacrifice their life because they agreed to sing in a concert seems almost Lawful Evil. Ed says that at one point whale wizards would compete for the honor of being the Silent Singer; are they that low on wizards that they have to enlist a human the hard part of their ritual for them? And at any rate, despite her unusual maturity and the power the Powers have vested in her, Nita is still a child. Would they take a baby whale and ask it to sacrifice itself for the adults?

• They probably would. (Well, perhaps not a literal baby, but Nita was thirteen, so that wouldn't be a fair comparison anyways.) Children aren't really given a great deal of protection in the Young Wizards universe. What's more objectionable is that they pretty much tricked her into it.
• Yes, the whales are running exactly that low on wizards. That's why the half-trained young humpback was practically running the entire Song. There literally was no one else capable of being the sacrifice (excepting the end twist, of course). Anyway, the marine wizards kept forgetting that Nita and Kit weren't full grown and experienced. When Nita promised to play the Silent Singer, everyone was so grateful they didn't think too hard about what she actually knew about the situation. After the revelation that Nita had promised to do something without knowing what it was, none of the other wizards, on land or sea, took any steps to force her to do it. This was probably because they couldn't force her without ruining the Song anyway, but still. They never coerced her, they just explained how screwed everything would be if she dropped out.
• It wasn't the whales that trapped Nita in the role; it was Nita herself. No one asked her to sing the Silent Lord. She volunteered, and insisted that she wanted to do it when questioned, even after she'd been told by more than one reliable source to make sure she knew what she was getting into. And if Nita had not agreed to take the role, it ideally would have been a juvenile whale to sing the part - the reason that the Song of the Twelve is so powerful is the magnitude of the Silent Lord's sacrifice. It has to be someone giving up their entire life and potential for the good of the world - "Not old enough to love, as yet/but old enough to die indeed." Using a mature wizard might work a little, but you've got to have a kid willingly sacrifice themself for the full potency of the ritual to take effect. I wouldn't be surprised if the Silent Lord is often sung by a wizard on Ordeal.
• Justified by the blank check (was it "cheque"?) wizardry (The Moebius spell) in the first book; this is explicitly mentioned in the second. i.e. Nita promised to pay an unspecified price at a later date, the Powers then asked for a life. The second book plainly states that Nita's role in the song is payment for the spell.

Battle Hamster: In A Wizard of Mars, it's revealed that the Lone Power almost always interferes with an Ordeal, and that if It doesn't, it's a really big deal, something that has only happened eleven times in the past five centuries in the galaxy. But when she asks Ronan about his Ordeal in A Wizard Abroad, he never mentions the Lone Power interfering, and (1) Nita isn't surprised or anything, plus (2) nothing is made of it (or has been yet). For 1, Did Nita just not know what a big deal it is? For 2, Did the Lone Power not interfere because Ronan was potential avatar of the One's Champion? Did the Lone Power subtly interfere in his Ordeal, and it's not mentioned? Or, most likely, is it Continuity Drift?

• My inference from Ronan's account of his Ordeal was that the Lone Power was probably controlling or masquerading as the sea. (It was the sea involved, right? Been a while since I read A Wizard Abroad.) That, or Continuity Drift.
• Ronan's Ordeal isn't really about him taking in the sea, though that's what he has to do. It's about him protecting the invaders he hates so much. In fact, his then infra-affinity for water makes it easier for him to pull it off! Ronan's Ordeal is unusual because it's really subtle in comparison to the others we've seen, and relies on Ronan's own character being susceptible to the Lone Power's suggestions that he let the Romans die. Or, alternatively, Continuity Drift
  • Presumably it was as stated above, and like the interactions adult wizards tend to have with the Lone Power, where it doesn't show up directly. Maybe Ronan was older than most people during his Ordeal, or it did have something to do with the One's Champion. As for the reason Nita isn't shocked anyway, since she is startled when the Lone Power didn't show up during A Wizard of Mars, she probably just didn't realize that it was so atypical. Or possibly Continuity Drift.

In High Wizardry, Dairine's manual copies her mind and "adds her engrams to its own" without asking... after making a big fuss over her wanting to link with the motherboard. Later in the series, the Defender plants a hidden message in her mind without her knowledge or consent. Aren't these actions kind of... not okay?

• In Wizardry, you aren't allowed to change something without that something's consent. If I'm thinking right, the Manual is more an extension of the Wizard who wields it as well as Magic (or, rather, the Manual is the link between Wizard and Magic). In So You Want To Be A Wizard (and subsequent novels) it's shown that the Manual automatically updates itself depending on the Wizard, which is basically what Dairine's Manual does with her mind. Also, someone planting a message is nowhere near Mind Rape, which is more along the lines of causing intense pain (physical or psychological) while going through someone's mind.
• Fair enough, I used a bad pothole there. It just bothered me because it seemed like she was being treated like a piece of hardware, a bit.

The timeline seems very tangled to me- I can't work out anybody's age or how long it is from one book to another.

• That's because it is tangled. Probably due in part to the large gap of time between the writing of books four and five. Word of God had this to say about timeline problems, during the writing of Wizard's Holiday: "As of 2003, Nita is fourteen in her world, but it's taken twenty of our years for her to reach that age. I doubt she'd be overly concerned by this seeming paradox, assuming that she ever came to perceive herself as fiction (and in wizardry, stranger things have happened.). In Nita's world, as in mine, it's always now."

In the first book, it's implied that writing your name wrong in a spell changes you. However, in the fifth book, Nita casts a spell using her name that turns out to be wrong because she's changed in the interim. Instead of changing her, it simply doesn't work. Ehwhat?!?

• It's implied that it CAN cause changes, not, I think, that it will.
• The in-universe justification is that even contemplating accepting the Lone Power's offer to cure her mom's cancer if she gives up her wizardry was a violation of her Oath, and her wizardry has been draining away as a result. Or something. It's been awhile since I've read that particular book. The point is, the change was in her ability to perform wizardry, so she needed Kit to show up with that old copy of her name.

Did anyone else find Nita's delight at seeing the Lone One suffer A Fate Worse Than Death a little disturbing? At the beginning of A Wizard Alone, Nita has a dream about a clown being mocked by an audience, which we later find out is a representation for how trapped Darryl feels during his Ordeal. Near the end of the book, we get to see her Circus of Fear nightmare again, and it's made clear that the LP is now the sad clown cycling in circles indefinitely, rather than Darryl. She wakes up smiling over it. Nita is usually quite compassionate, even towards the Lone One, which makes the moment seem really OOC.

• Good point! I always had a little nagging feeling when I read that, like it was an unsatisfying ending, but I never thought about it that specifically. Maybe it'll have repercussions later on? Nita's wizardly bills seem to be piling up (she paid for the blank-check, but then there's the years-of-her-life in HW, and the thing with the Lone One in TWD, and the huge wizardry in A Wo M, all that stuff . . .)
• I've been thinking about that too! I mean, when you think about all of the huge wizardries (that just make the Lone Power hate her more and more) that she's done lately, and how so many characters get Killed Off for Real without too much fuss... it kind of makes you wonder if Nita's going to be around much longer. But, barring Dairine of course, Nita draws more parallels to the LP than any other wizard in the series. She doesn't suffer too much guilt over killing things, as long as she isn't friendly with them, like when she was killing the drows in AW Ab. She was the one that was most affected by King Bug, she's the only main character to make a deal with the LP, the thing in AW Al... all kinds of little things like that. Maybe all of this is foreshadowing, and Nita is intended to become another Hesper...? At the end of the series, maybe? After all, it's gonna take something big to pay off all those wizardry bills...
  • Something to do with Bobo maybe?
• Don't forget that the sad clown isn't the Lone Power in its entirety. It's only a fragment, which IIRC had already been described as a particularly aggressive version. No redeeming possible in this case, the best option being to trap it so it doesn't hurt anyone else.

Timeheart has the same kind of Fridge Logic that comes with all "living forever afterlife" scenarios, but this one in particular bothers me. Now that Betty Callahan is dead *sniff*, what's going to happen if Harry ever wants to get remarried? Or ever even dates another woman? After they all die and go to Timeheart, won't that make for an awkward reunion?

• I don't think people in Timeheart would care about that sort of thing. There's actually a little known line in the Bible that addresses this, where someone asks Jesus about people who have multiple dead spouses and he replies that "in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Matthew 22:30), presumably meaning the institution of binding marriage is done away with and people are either asexual or can love whoever they want to.
  • Hmm... now that's interesting. Say that you're kind of clingy and would be insulted to hear that your spouse has remarried or taken up a second lover in the living world, even if you had already divorced them or something. Would that mean that being Timeheart changes who you are, or how you think? Kind of like a more benevolent version of Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul? I mean, I guess everyone has to change a little bit to fit in to the perfect world of Timeheart, but still... changing people's personalities without their knowledge to avoid conflicts is usually only something that features in horror stories.
    • Well, it's not actually changing. What Timeheart is the perfect universe. Remember how alternate universes work, where every choice (and actually, every movement of a subatomic particle, but that may or may not be relevant) goes every way at once, with different outcomes going into different universes? Timeheart is the universe where literally everything went right - up to and including the Lone Power deciding to create death. So the people in Timeheart don't change - they were just always as perfect as a sentient being can be. And apparently the Powers that be also tack in their alternate selves memories or something? Or they could just be being kind/acting.