I realize my blog is a bit scattered, and mostly fandom based, and probably no small amount of ridiculous, but I’m going to share a fandom-related story with you lovely followers. ^___^ What follows is a ramble-y account of my love affair with the Young Wizards Series.
I went to NYC for a choir trip during my senior year of high school (which was a lot longer ago than I feel like it should be…), and while we were there we visited a few museums…as one does on field trips, you know? Well, the highlight of our trip, for me, was definitely getting to weigh myself on all the planets, because of the scene in High Wizardry by Diane Duane. And, yes, I checked to make sure the ladies’ didn’t lead to Mars…I was disappointed to find just toilets, I’ll admit. (Just kidding! …well, mostly.)
It’s weird to realize the impact a book series can have on you, the ways in which the written word can influence you. But I’ve been reading the Young Wizards Series for so long now (and that’s a story in and of itself, which I’ll probably share at some point), that in many, many ways I feel as if the characters know me as well as I know them. I sometimes imagine that maybe, somewhere out there, there’s a universe where literary characters are all real, and are reading about our universe’s fantastical adventures. If the universe is infinite, and if there are an infinite number of universes, then who’s to say there isn’t a world like that, after all? Maybe in some place, Nita and Kit are reading about my Ordeal, or my little sister running off all over the universe (she does run off to Europe on occasion…the rest of the galaxy isn’t such a far stretch, at that…).
But back to my point. I stood there, my hand on the same asteroid that Kit and Nita discuss as having come such a long way, and for me the moment was beautifully surreal. I don’t think any of my classmates had such a profound experience as I did on that trip, because I finally had arrived at a place that I had been reading about since I first got into fantasy, and it was a real place, not something unattainable like The Leaky Cauldron, or a magical wardrobe to Narnia.
It was real, and I could touch it.
I think that’s the real power of words, right there; the real magic in our universe. That one person’s words can leave such a lasting impression on another human being isremarkableandpowerful, and has the same chance of being misused as the magic I so dearly love to read about. Because as surely as words can heal and inform and touch, they can just as surely be used to hurt and twist and maim.
And I think, maybe, much of my fascination with words and languages comes from Diane Duane’s books, too, as surely as my fascination with that asteroid came from her books.
I’ve been called childish and ridiculous—been told that no one can take me seriously. I’ve been bullied, and was pushed off swing sets when I was little, and I’ve been called all sorts of unpleasant names like “nerd” and “loser”, among others, and been told I read too much (as if there is such a thing!). Maybe these things are why I empathized so totally with Nita, that very first time I read So You Want to be a Wizard, but she kind of became something of a guiding light to me. At first it was just that Nita had a profound impact on me, as a character with whom I shared so much, but later, as I grew older and continued to reread the series, it became less Nita, and more the entire feel of the series. There is so much good in this series, so many “words to live by” and the characters are so unconsciously good that to the reader it becomes second nature, too. Kit and Nita are like two bright standard bearers in a world that seems progressively darker, that more and more places emphasis on characters who do bad things for the right reasons, instead of character who do good things because that is the right reason.
I don’t even know if I can still call the impact these books had on me “subtle” because I feel like I’ve embraced the philosophies of the characters with every fiber of my being.
I’m going into anthropology, probably with an emphasis on archaeology, which is all about understanding other peoples, and in some cases preserving those cultures which are rapidly losing themselves to “modernization”. Maybe this makes me silly, but whenever I think about what I’ll be doing later in my life, working to understand and write about cultures unlike my own, I can’t help but also hear the words of the Oath in the back of my mind. I live by those words. I think they are perfect, and important, and I still read them out loud every time I get to that page, because whether or not they can make me a wizard, they are still a promise that I made to myself when I was eleven, and I intend to keep that promise—magic or not.