"Eavesdropping On Whale Songs Over The Last Six Years Is Providing New Information Vital To Answering

Question about the consequences of the events in Deep Wizardry. Will the Master Shark be replaced by another shark like the Silent Lord is replaced, or on a more permanent basis? Or was his power simply lost, and there will never be a Master Shark again?

This may sound odd, but this is a matter to which I think I’ve given absolutely no thought whatsoever. …Which is unusual for me.

And now that it comes up: Mere replacement of Ed’rashtekaresket – either qua Ed, or as regards his particular unique developmental, historical and spiritual positioning – seems impossible. I rather think that there will be (meaning “almost certainly already is”) a shark now holding the Master-Shark position in lieu of the original office-holder. Except that shark will be holding it, as it were, by vicariate. (And I’m invoking “vicar*” here not in the Home-Counties-C-of-E mode that means “your [cozy] local clergyman who invites you round for tea”, but rather in the sense in which Catholics use the word when they speak of the Pope as “the Vicar of God on Earth”: of someone acting as a stand-in or deputy for someone of much greater inherent power.)

I think that should there be need for the attriibutes we think of as the Master-Shark’s to be exercised, then this vicariate Master would do so, enabled by (and channeling) the power still embodied in the original… who, as we know, appears to be Not All That Dead, Not Really Dead Anyway. (But then that would be somewhat in his nature, and shark-nature generally, so no surprises there.)

That make sense? Hope so. :)

*In passing, I coudn’t not link to the dictionary.com definition of vicar because of the quotes about Obama and soccer riots. Tea, meet keyboard…

I’m upset because I want to change the world but the world is too big and people are too mean

Chapter Titles: A Wizard Abroad

The city breathing, burning, living the life they had preserved. Ten million lives and more. If something should happen to all that life- how terrible! Nita gulped for control as she remembered Fred’s word of just this morning, an eternity ago. And this was what being a wizard was about. Keeping terrible things from happening, even when it hurts. Not just power, or control of what ordinary people couldn’t control, or delight in being able to make strange things happen. Those were the side effects- not the reason, the purpose.

Mind-Blowing Beauty of Mars’ Dunes: HiRISE Photos

Mars plays host to a huge number of dune fields — regions where fine wind-blown material gets deposited to form arguably some of the most beautiful dunes that can be found on any planetary body in the solar system. Using the powerful High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, planetary scientists have an orbital view on these features that aid our understanding of aeolian (wind-formed) processes and Martian geology. Here are some of our favorite Mars dunes as seen by HiRISE.

A wizard’s Manual can come in all shapes and sizes. For those who know which links to click, there is a section of Wikipedia where the globe puzzle is full and finished. Articles in this section never have a problem with trolls or misinformation, and cover subjects ranging from a listing of every Power to a deep dive on echolocation spells.

The Chart of Cosmic Exploration Elegantly Details 56 Years of Human Adventures into Space

The Powers went ‘Dairine’s kinda annoying, we’ll make her deal with someone annoying so they’ll get on each other’s nerves’ and it worked for about a week before she and Roshaun teamed up so they could get on the nerves of the rest of the known and unknown universe instead.

whenever i see great meta like this, i feel the need for a reread <3

Some thoughts on Kit Rodriguez

So pretty much every time I re-read or re-listen to any part of the Young Wizards series, I discover new things about the books and myself in relation to them, despite the fact that I have been reading them for over half my life now. 

This morning I was walking back from yoga and listening to my audiobook of So You Want to Be a Wizard, and I was just at the part where Nita and Kit meet for the first time, and I was feeling all sorts of warm fuzzies and just wanting to jump into the novel and hug these kids and tell them that it really is going to be okay in the end because they will make it be okay, together.

And then I realized that I’d never, in ten years, thought about this first encounter from Kit’s perspective – or really thought at all about what Kit was doing before Nita came along. We know that he took the Oath about a month before meeting her, that he’s done a few small wizardries and they’ve worked, but he’s still getting bullied and the fact that even Nita knows about the recent bullying suggests that, if anything, it might have escalated since his taking of the Oath.

So put yourself in Kit’s shoes for a second. You’re smart, but you’re small and you don’t talk like anyone else, your teachers like you because you’re dedicated to your work but that only makes it harder to get along with everyone, you’re twelve years old and yet you don’t have any friends to go out and play with, so you wind up in the city on a weekend antique-hunting with your parents (horror of horrors), and you’re more or less trying to make yourself unseen in the back of the store while they haggle over the price of some armoire that you find to be, frankly, a little hideous. You’re looking halfheartedly through the meager collection of boos, the only things in this place worth a second glance in your opinion, and then suddenly one of them bites you and you think, “God, just my luck, could this day get any worse?”

And then you pull out the book. And you open it. And the universe holds its breath for a second. Exhales: slowly, cautiously. Watches to see what it is you’ll do.

You take the Oath before you leave the shop.

And then you wait. 

At first it’s not so bad. You’re light on your feet, heart fluttering in anticipation, can’t wait to get home to try some of this out.

A week later, you’ve done a few spells, nothing major, but you believe in the power now, the way you hadn’t allowed yourself to at first. You marvel in it, you spend all your free time sunk in the sensation of truly and deeply knowing the world around you in its own language. You talk to your dog, which in itself is sort of usual, but now your dog talks back.

But. There is always a but. Because the bullies are noticing that you’re happy, and they may not understand why, but they don’t approve. You say the wrong thing in class, correct one of them, high on the power the wizardry’s given you – only to find yourself, an hour later, with face pressed to asphalt, grit in your eyes, and the knowledge that even a wizard can’t do everything.

This is not the noble Ordeal the Manual talks about. This is just the pressure of the everyday, pushing and pulling you out of shape. And life’s starting to feel a bit like it did before you ever found that book. The wizardry works, but every night before bed when you check your status and it still says “probationary” you start to wonder if you’re ever going to have an Ordeal, or if maybe the Powers That Be are starting to regret the energy they expended on a beat-up broken-down kid like you.

You think, sometimes, about giving it up before They can take it away.

Every time, you say to yourself, not yet. Just one more shot. There’s always another spell to try, another chapter of the Manual to read. Maybe if you work harder the Ordeal will come. Maybe the hard work is the Ordeal. Maybe it’s only natural to feel these doubts – to wonder, at times, if you’re just dreaming it. To wish for someone with whom you could share that dream, so you could know that it’s real and that it’s really worth it.

When the girl appears, just as your spell has ground to a standstill, you’re terrified – you don’t know how to talk to girls! – but you also start to hope again. Because what if, all this time, she’s been what you were missing?

You spell with her and the world goes quiet and you know that nothing will ever be the same again and you are so unbelievably ready for that.

(Brief thought on Deep Wizardry ramifications of this potential Kit characterization behind the “read more,” since one of my followers has just started reading SYWTBAW and I don’t want to spoil her!)

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