In the second half of the fifth chapter of Games Wizards Play<\/i>, Nita and Kit talk about the strangeness of their meeting with Penn. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Young Wizards<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For general talk of misogyny, racism.<\/b><\/p>\n
Oh, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just so happy<\/i> about Kit and Nita. The second half of this chapter made me feel real<\/i> good about their relationship, and\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsurprise!!!\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because they actually got to talk<\/i> about some aspects of it. For example, this is early into the split section:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Okay,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but I had to, right? What kind of person would I be if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d stood there and let him trash-talk you?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel like you have to protect me,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Nita said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is like being out in the playground again, except this playground\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s full of wizards. Believe me, if I needed to tear Penn a new one, I would.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got Kit communicating why <\/i>he felt compelled to behave they way he did, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an admirable reason. He thought it was shitty to let someone badmouth his friend, even though she wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t in the room. But Nita also gets to tell Kit that she finds the whole situation to be terrible. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s negating what he did; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that her greater problem is that Penn should have never behaved this way in the first place. I felt quite vindicated when both Kit and Nita admitted the same thing I had earlier: that there were so few asshole wizards that the existence of them was mystifying. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re literally not prepared to deal with them! (WE ARE ONE AND THE SAME)<\/p>\n And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s neat to see them on the same page. They both recognize that Penn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attitude\/behavior issues, no matter how perplexing, are definitely<\/i> going to hinder him down the line. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clearly brilliant and can think outside the box. But his arrogance gets in the way of him moving on to something greater. You can easily see that in his awful request for Nita to help him do the work, or when he insists his work is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153perfect.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d FAR FROM IT. So how do you help a person get past such a huge roadblock, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all? Penn can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even recognize that his approach is flawed!<\/p>\n What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting, though, is Duane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inclusion of this bit:<\/p>\n Nita laughed, but she also rolled her eyes. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If I find out that the Powers That Be have sent me along on this thing to cure somebody of their sexism<\/i>, they and I may have words afterward. Because this is going to get on my nerves.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Obviously, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not gonna talk about this in regards to misogyny, but it is<\/i> a topic I just recently discussed while at Arisia: people who are marginalized in some way being forced to provide the education for people who are bigoted towards them. First of all: IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S EXHAUSTING. It is exhausting to have to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153prove\u00e2\u20ac\u009d your humanity to someone else. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not remotely worth it if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s harmful to you in the process, right? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s character improvement at the expense<\/i> of someone else! And in this case, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not hard to see how much this would suck for her. Should she have to deal with Penn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s misogyny so that he can grow???<\/p>\n So, the Powers That Be are intentional about what they do. Like Nita, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hoping that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re sticking Penn with Nita\/Kit for another reason. It is<\/i> interesting that someone dealing with the sun ISN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T working with Dairine, BUT HEY: NITA SHOULDN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T HAVE TO DO THE WORK THAT PENN NEEDS TO DO ON HIS OWN.<\/p>\n Anyway: THE DREAM. WHAT THE FUCK. What the fuck does this mean<\/i>? I love that Nita recognizes her prophetic\/vision dreams for what they are because there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fun dynamic in that. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fuck it, this is weird, LET\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S GO.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And holy shit, Duane is back to going real<\/i> weird. I do not get this dream\/vision at all. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the circle? Who does the voice belong to? WHY DOES NITA HEAR CARMELA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S VOICE??? Or Penn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s? Why the hell is the Lone Power teasing her? I FOUND ALL OF THIS CREEPY. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s supposed to be! Duane cranks up the tension with the sheer darkness of the sequence, then makes it worse by having the Lone Power taunt Nita directly. Yet despite the straightforward technique, we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually know what the Lone Power is talking about. Why does It say that Nita will be the reason that everything fails? SAVE WHO FROM WHAT? How the fuck can the Lone Power be on her side?<\/i><\/p>\n Of course, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t trust or believe the Lone Power. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gotta be some sort of trick or manipulation. Look, I love that trope where an antagonist must work with their enemy in order to deal with a common conflict. I simply don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think the Lone Power is ready or prepared to ever do something like this. I AM TRYING TO PREPARE MYSELF.<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtu.be\/6qkeywJeTsU<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the second half of the fifth chapter of Games Wizards Play, Nita and Kit talk about the strangeness of their meeting with Penn. 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":[533,510],"tags":[513,511],"class_list":["post-4437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games-wizards-play","category-young-wizards","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-young-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4437","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=4437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}