In the first half of the fifth chapter of\u00c2\u00a0A Wizard Alone<\/i>, Nita wonders if she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s getting better. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For discussion of grief<\/b>.<\/p>\n
Oh, Nita.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fascinating to see this from an outside perspective because I can notice things that Nita does not. Plus, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been through this! Grief didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always manifest in the same way, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot here that I relate to in how Duane has chosen to write grief for Nita, Dairine, and their father. So as I read the first half of this chapter, I could see the small ways in which Nita was moving on. Towards the latter scenes, she became aware of this, too, at least in her own way.<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my theory. At the start of her Friday, even her father notes that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been more active with wizardry in the last day or so than she has been since her mother died. Note how quickly Nita wants to brush this off; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a defensive reaction, one that I think later feeds into why she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worried that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s using wizardry to avoid life. And in her father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a similar sense of inadequacy, though he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s concerned he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not being a good enough parent. All of these people feel like they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not\u00c2\u00a0enough<\/i>. Why? What causes that?<\/p>\n
Even if the text doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say this, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to offer up an idea. See, I struggled with feeling like I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hurt\u00c2\u00a0enough<\/i>, that once I started moving on from my father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death, I had not grieved as I was supposed to. Which is obviously an absurd idea! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like grief is an RPG and you have to level up to a certain amount in order to progress to the next level. Yet my brain told me that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d done it wrong, that I had not cried enough, that I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sad for the proper length of time. And I can see something like this in all three of the Callahan family members. As Nita finds interest in this new possible errantry (while still being largely uninterested in school work), I sensed\u00c2\u00a0guilt<\/i>. How was it fair that regular life didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t keep boredom and existential dread away, but wizardry\u00c2\u00a0did<\/i>?<\/p>\n
As I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m re-reading the scenes at Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s home and school, I notice that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not thinking about her mother, about grief, about being in pain\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re some of the only scenes thus far where Nita feels like the\u00c2\u00a0old<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0Nita. And granted, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll never return to that version of herself; that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just not how people work. When she meets up with Kit, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the same dynamic. You can see\u00c2\u00a0bits<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0of what their relationship used to look like, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more than we saw in the first few chapters of the book. Of course, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m more thrilled by what is coming in the future. Will Kit and Nita work together on each other\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s assignments? Are they the\u00c2\u00a0same<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0assignment? (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M STILL GOING FOR THIS OPTION, I THINK THEY BOTH HAVE TO DO WITH DARRYL.) How will the dynamic of their relationship change now that Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life has changed so drastically?<\/p>\n
I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know yet, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m thankful that Nita had someone like Tom to talk to about all of this. He made a fine point: wizardry is in the service of life, so Nita isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exactly\u00c2\u00a0avoiding\u00c2\u00a0<\/i>life by focusing on it. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d agree that perhaps the Powers That Be have a purpose for Nita that involves exactly what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s doing:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They value the work we do sufficiently to avoid pushing us to function when it wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be appropriate to the wizard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own best interests. Emergencies do come up; but\u00c2\u00a0routinely<\/i>, if being on duty would impair your own status, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not called up.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Which is fair, but in the video reading, I realized that this made me more confused about Darryl. Why did the Powers activate his Ordeal\u00c2\u00a0now<\/i>? Were they aware of what was going on with him? I STILL DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T KNOW AND I CAN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T WAIT UNTIL KIT TRIES TO TALK WITH DARRYL AGAIN.<\/p>\n Anyway, Tom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s advice to Nita was sound, and I hope she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t beat herself up too much over what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going through. The alien translation\/communication issue is a fascinating one, and focusing on it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make her a bad person. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s okay for her to want to feel something other than pain, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0also<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0okay for her to wallow in that pain if she wants to. The most important thing is that she feels she can be herself and feel what she wants to.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=L_I5Ebl9IoQ<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – I am now on Patreon<\/a>! There are various levels of support, from $1 up to whatever you want! You’ll get to read a private blog, extra reviews, and other such rewards. I POST A LOT OF CUTE PHOTOS, OKAY. Think of it like a private Tumblr blog that only SPECIAL PEOPLE get to read.<\/b> In the first half of the fifth chapter of\u00c2\u00a0A Wizard Alone, Nita wonders if she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s getting better. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[523,510],"tags":[513,511],"class_list":["post-4058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-wizard-alone","category-young-wizards","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-young-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n– I have updated my list of conventions and events for the remainder of the year and much of next year.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a>
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches have been announced here.<\/a>
\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"