In the first part of the thirteenth chapter of A Wizard of Mars<\/i>, Nita deals with FEELINGS, while Kit gets in trouble. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Young Wizards<\/i>.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so glad that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s video evidence of me reading this because now I can say that this part made me SCREAM and it is ACTUALLY TRUE. Just\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 oh my god, Kit, WHAT ARE YOU DOING.<\/p>\n
Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Dilemma<\/b><\/p>\n
Let me start out, however, by stating how much I love it when authors are able to capture the sort of emotional turmoil that many of us experienced as teenagers. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so drawn to YA as a reader and as a writer. I generally don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have that much interest (yet!) in writing adult fiction because I want to replicate things I experienced, to pass them along to other kids and teenagers, to validate the kind of things that are often ignored or dismissed. What Duane captures here is something I related to, though for an entirely different reason than what I suspect she intended. Seriously, re-visit Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s scene where she struggles with her attraction to Kit and the feelings of jealousy and bitterness that nearly overtake her.<\/p>\n
Now, imagine a young gay kid in her place, and I hope that you can start to see why this resonated with me so intensely. There really was<\/i> a bitterness I developed at a young age because I mistakenly believed that I had to compete<\/i> to get a boys\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 attention. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an absurd notion now, but my world was so limited back then. My understanding<\/i> of the world was limited, too! I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t conceive of any sort of existence where there were other boys who could like me back, who felt how I did about them, who were in the exact predicament I was in. Instead, I assumed that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to win boys away from the girls who so easily grabbed their attention. I stewed in that jealousy for a long, long time. (If I had actually pursued this to the Darkest Timeline version of myself, I would have firmly become a Nice Guy, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, but PHEW, I avoided that disaster later on.)<\/p>\n
Experiences aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily universal, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important to think of the exceptions. It really is! And we should always think about how we talk about experiences, how we frame them, how we validate them, because we can unknowingly leave people out in harmful ways. At the same time, there is something in this experience that Duane wrote that felt uniquely personal, as if she was able to peer inside my life and find this specific emotion that she could use. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s incredible, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the main reasons I love the power of fiction. Duane is able to capture this specific moment in Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life, but in a way that opens it up to others. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s beautiful<\/i>, and I love anything that validates the inherent angst and emotional terror of being a teenager. (Which is why I love Sarah Rees Brennan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work, and why Order of the Phoenix<\/i> is my favorite Harry Potter<\/i> novel!)<\/p>\n
SHE ALSO GIVES HER CHARACTERS SUCH INTENSE MORAL DECISIONS. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m only now realizing that both<\/i> Nita and Kit are forced to make very difficult decisions, yet they make polar opposite choices. In the first scene of this chapter, Nita struggles with her suspicion that something is going wrong with Kit. IT IS A GOOD AND TRUE SUSPICION, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not really the point. We<\/i> know that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right, but with limited information, she just has doubt. And is that doubt exacerbated by her jealousy over the Martian princess? Possibly! So when she realizes she could have Bobo tap into Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s manual much like was done with Dairine, the dilemma is even harder to solve. As she puts it:<\/p>\n But she had the horrible feeling that her preferences weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t at all the issue here. And worse, the fact that Bobo still hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t clearly answered her question told Nita something she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to know: that if she told him to bug Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s manual \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or his brain \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and she was convinced that this was the right thing to do, then Bobo would do it<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a chilling thought, and for a moment, I thought Nita would convince herself. However, Duane has Nita realize that no matter how she twists the logic within her mind, the act of reading Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thoughts\/manual is wrong<\/i>. And using a tool that is so wrong can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t possibly be a good thing, right? Besides, imagining the Lone Power as an evil duck is way funnier and productive anyway. RIGHT?<\/p>\n Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Dilemma<\/b><\/p>\n THREE HOURS MISSING FROM HIS LIFE. Three hours just gone<\/i>!!! What the FUCK did Khretef do during that time? Have events been set into motion that Kit can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stop???<\/p>\n Look, I do<\/i> sympathize with Kit, even if he makes a disastrous decision here, because the kid is being manipulated. We have no idea what the full scope of Khretef\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s control is over Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s body, but apparently it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s enough to make Kit go unconscious for OVER THREE HOURS. So yeah, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s frustrating to read this, but he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being controlled in some sense, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t he?<\/p>\n Of course, I also didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect that Tom would swoop in and GROUND KIT TO EARTH. Frankly, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t consider that Tom or Carl would observe what had happened on Mars and intervene. I was relieved at first because I thought that maybe this would keep Kit out of trouble. Yes, I was worried because, as I said, it was still possible that Khretef had already started something that Kit would need to stop.<\/p>\n Yet now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m seeing just how badly Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been manipulated. This whole entire struggle feels perfectly<\/i> designed for someone like him! After getting scolded by Tom and suffering through dinner with his family, I noticed that Kit focused on one specific part of this judgment on him: he was special<\/i>.<\/p>\n But he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have to see<\/i>, Kit thought. When I show him, when he understands what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s at stake, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have to see why I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t leave this to anybody else. Nobody else has my perspective\u00e2\u20ac\u201c<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Oh god, OF COURSE KIT FELL FOR THIS. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also probably why this wizardry was designed to go after a guy rather than a girl, as Nita already noticed. Did the original wizards intend to ensnare a teenager<\/i>, though???<\/p>\n OH GOD, KIT, DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T DO IT.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aIHaiGwakPU<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n -\u00c2\u00a0Please visit my new site for all announcements<\/a>. If you’d rather not have to rely on checking a website regularly, sign up for my newsletter instead<\/a>! This will cover all news for Mark Reads, Mark Watches, and my fiction releases.\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the first part of the thirteenth chapter of A Wizard of Mars, Nita deals with FEELINGS, while Kit gets in trouble. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Young Wizards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[530,510],"tags":[513,511],"class_list":["post-4297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-wizard-of-mars","category-young-wizards","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-young-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4297","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=4297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}