A Knot Zoo.

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 just realized that the first antagonist Kit and Nita faced together was a helicopter parent.

Thoughts that will change the way you think about the universe and your existence

I’ve got another question for you (sorry for asking so many questions about the young wizards series). The concepts of the Wizards Manual and the Speech. Let’s say, for instance, a wizard isn’t mathematically minded and has a natural bent towards poetry and literature, could the Speech take the form of poetry and could the Wizard’s manual be a mixture of modalities (pen and paper, laptop, and headphones)?

Well, this question has to be handled in two parts.

Can a wizard use something besides the Speech to do wizardry? No. There's only one language in which the Universe was built (though numerous recensions of that).

But that said: want to do spells in which the Speech is structured like poetry? Well, sure, why not? Poetry (when it's not free verse) is some of the most structured stuff there is: it'd work perfectly. (As long as you were really careful with the scansion...) And other forms of artistic structure could also work.

As regards the math end of things: you could make a case that both Nita's and Kit's Manuals (maybe more Nita's...) are mathematically- or scientifically-aligned because both their mindsets lean (or leaned) that way. But are there wizards constructing spells that look more like artwork than equations? Almost certainly. (There's at least one reference in Games Wizards Play to wizards dancing spells in the Speech rather than speaking it. Not to mention one of the wizards working with the event organizers for the Invitational, a graphic designer who was embedding the Speech into fonts...)

Secondary to all this: can the Manual be used in more than one modality? I don't see why not. The master project of "porting over" the Manual into more modern and easier-to-manage instrumentalities is first mentioned in The Book of Night with Moon—where Ehef, one of the feline wizards living and working at NYPL is a supervisor on the project. And this would almost certainly be a continuing effort, resulting in items like the WizPhone that Nita trialed at Kit's urging some while back. (And of course Spot, who started out with Dairine as a desktop and upgraded to a laptop along the way.) The attitude of the Powers that Be would certainly be that they want to make doing wizardry easier for qualified people, not harder. So, mix and match among modalities? Sure. (And at least you'd never have to worry about them staying in synch...) :)

...As for pen and paper: it's likely enough that the Speech was for many centuries in writing-centric cultures most routinely written longhand (after it broke out of cuneiform and hieroglyphics...). Probably there are even now wizards who prefer to do their spell structuring longhand—who knows, maybe even with fountain pens. (In fact, now I've managed to make myself suspicious about the work habits of a couple of people I know...) :)

Anyway: HTH!

“But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?”

- Mark Twain

This is honestly my favorite quote. It’s changed how I look at life and religion.

(via the-bitchextraordinaire)

So this quote seemed very familiar when I saw it earlier, and I just realized why. 

The power was burning in her tears, an odd hot feeling as she wept for Fred, for Kit’s Lotus, for everything horrible that had happened all that day- all the fair things skewed, all the beauty twisted by the dark Lone Power watching on his steed. If only there were some way he could be otherwise if he wanted to!

For here was his name, a long splendid flow of syllables in the Speech, wild and courageous in its own way- and it said that he had not always been so hostile; that he got tired sometimes of being wicked, but his pride and his fear of being ridiculed would never let him stop. Never, forever, said the symbol at the very end of his name, the closed circle that binds spells into an unbreakable cycle and indicates lives bound in the same way.

Kit was still reading. Nita turned her head in the nova moonlight and looked over her shoulder at the one who watched. His face was set, furious and bitter, but yes, weary too. He knew he was about to be cast out again, frustrated again, and he knew that because of what he had bound himself into being, he would never know fulfillment of any kind. Nita looked back down to the reading feeling sorry even for him, opened her mouth and along with Kit began to say his name-

Don’t be afraid to make corrections!

Whether the voice came from her memory or was a last whisper from the blinding new star far above, Nita never knew. But she knew what to do. While Kit was still on the first part of the name she pulled out her pen, her space pen that Fred had saved and changed, and clicked it open.

The metal still tingled against her skin, the ink at the point still glittered oddly- the same glitter as the ink with which the bright Book was written. Nita bent quickly over the book and, with he pen, in lines of light, drew from that final circle an arrow pointing upward, the way out, the symbol that change could happen- if, only if- and together they finished the Starsnuffer’s name in the Speech, said the new last syllable, made it real.

- So You Want to Be a Wizard, Diane Duane

So, in the history of all of the universe, who prays for the one sinner that needs it the most? Her name is Juanita Callahan, and at age 13 she has more mercy in her soul than I could ever hope to strive for.

(via professorsparklepants)

Success! India’s First Mars Probe Is In Orbit And Working

“India has managed to do what few other nations have accomplished: putting a satellite into orbit around another planet — and it did so a lot cheaper than the competition.

The $70 million Mangalyaan, or “Mars craft” in Hindi, began circling Mars after a 24-minute engine burn to slow it down enough to be captured by the Red Planet’s gravity.”

Read more from NPR.

your fave is problematic: diane duane

subsists on the tears of her fans

married to a guy who knows everything about everything

knows the ways of the force and wont share

creates delicious-looking food and uses the wrong measurement system. no one likes metric, diane. #1776

writes fanfic of her own characters

does the ff.net thing where she talks to her own characters in her fanfic of her own series

makes us wait forever for new books and has the nerve to make it worth it

has worked on all of your childhood faves. ALL OF THEM

Well ouch...

Regarding Blank Check Wizardries

So I’ve been rereading SYWTBAW and I stumbled across something that I’d forgotten – it is Kit, not Nita, who suggests using the blank check wizardry. Nita actually worries about the ramifications of the spell, but Kit shrugs it off and says, “I don’t think the price’ll be too high.” Cue the Song of Twelve. Imagine how Kit must have felt when he realized that Nita’s looming death was payback for a gamble that he had made. Imagine the guilt crushing in, harsher and deeper than any ocean, as he clung to his fierce denial out of sheer desperation. Imagine how painfully he must have wished that he’d insisted on casting the blank check spell alone – which was his original intent – instead of letting Nita stubbornly join in. Imagine the extra agony wrapped up in the words read the fine print before you sign. I didn’t think that Deep Wizardry could wreck me any more, but here we are.

you’ve done the fandom a vital service with this pun

why did I do this

You know how there's like some mathematician or something, who like did some useful stuff but is primarily known for overshadowing that work by going to great lengths trying to convince people to blow up the moon or something?

I wanna be like that but the hill I'm dying on is that the moon should be considered a planet