The books do say that younder wizards are more powerful, most likely because they believe things better, but it might also be because younger people tend to have more engery, and magic requires large amounts of energy.

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I started reading fantasy books when I was about 13 and I wanted to be able to do magic and wizardry just as bad as Kit or Nita. What do you think? I am on errantry and I greet you. Dai!

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Dai cousins... yay my first post!
this is soo true
i started reading fantasy when i was eight (i know i'm wierd) with the lord of the rings and narnia series. then dad introduced me to DD's books about two years later and i was hooked... i even got into trouble in class cos i kept reading high wizardry cause i wanted to know what happened in the end.
i still read SYWTBAW every couple of months, hoping that they'll come true

Alla

Lesse... When did I start reading fantasy? I have no idea. I've been reading it forever.

What am I doing? I'm going off topic again... Aren't I in the Save the Topic Foundation? Shouldn't I be saving the topic, keeping it ON topic? *checks siggy* Woops, wrong foundation. I'm in the Kill the Topic Foundation. Muahahaha!

Errm. Meow.

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Ronnie:
The books do say that younder wizards are more powerful, most likely because they believe things better, but it might also be because younger people tend to have more engery, and magic requires large amounts of energy.

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I think the books said it was because younger wizards haven't learned what is and isn't possible, therefore they can do more of the 'impossible.' Right?

No-spoiler comment:
In a later book in the series, a character has this to say:

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"You simian-descended, equivocating, pronoun-starved little twerp," it said. "Maybe the universe does favor young wizards because they haven't properly mastered the Speech's plurals yet. We really have to look into that."

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Which is a different viewpoint on that last comment .

Hmm, very intristing... maybe they get picked in between young and old because there horomones are changing and that triggers energy? I thought I read that in one of the books.. If someone alredy posted that, sorry..

OOT (out of topic)

I didn't know I read fantasy books until a few months ago. I have been reading a whole lot since I was in 4th grade. The book that triggered that was Harry Potter. I guess it didn't really matter to me because I was reading something that I liked and kept me hooked.

I still think it has to do with the belief system! When you are young anything is possible,
'flying Raindeer', 'santa', 'evl's', 'magic'. But as you get old you start believing what is told to you, 'you can't fly', 'there's no such thing as magic' etc etc. At a certain age you stop believing everything is possible, and I think at is the cut off stage of wizardry! Because part of wizardry is believing the spell is going to happen and work, its the beleiving that makes it all possible! So in a way the longer a child beleives the longer that child has a chance to become a wizard.

Dar was very grown up for her age and had a lot of knowlege BUT she she thought that Darth mall and vada where real, she believed in the force, in other words she still believed!

Fox

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Fox wrote:
At a certain age you stop believing everything is possible, and I think at is the cut off stage of wizardry! Because part of wizardry is believing the spell is going to happen and work, its the beleiving that makes it all possible! So in a way the longer a child beleives the longer that child has a chance to become a wizard.

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Spoilers for later books:
Uh-oh. So if, say, a 15-year-old girl who would normally be too old and sensible to believe in magic, still believes in it for the simple reason she's seen her brother using it...

... then Kit could be really bothered by his sister, especially if he realised she'd never have become a wizard if he hadn't told his family about himself!

Hah! That would be pretty funny! But why not? Why should you have to be really young to accept the idea of magic? We tend to get harder and more difficult as we get older, but I like the idea that someone could buck the trend.

PM does that mean you agree with me? Love the new pic!! hahah, do you create them yourself??

Lamarquise your right it would be nice to see someone break the trend because theres already alot of new stuff happeneing!! Ponch and Ronan (and the tenant), the wizard leakage at Kit household etc etc. I was just thinking though, you can't become a wizard at a ceratin age right! So is there no limit to who can use the power if a wizard gives it too them?? Like Ed and Nita! Ed was really old yet could use Nita's power, could not then Carmela use Kits or Nita's?? I mean in a bad situaton Kit could give up his wizardry to his sister and she could then use it! She understands the speach well enought to cause the lone power some problems!! hahaha

Fox

I'm not sure if I agree, I just liked the quote, which I'd recently read while slowly making the timeline file. (Which I haven't forgotten, I just slowed down a lot when I got to Dilemma.)

Yes, my only avatar I didn't draw was the one I built on the doll site.

Hmmm, yes, Ed was at least several thousand years old if not millions, so Carmela could use the power - she just wouldn't know what to do with it. Ed didn't do any wizardry, he just used the power to amplify what he could already do.

Spoiler for later books:
My comment was that Carmela's in an unusual situation anyway, and just might be able to "beat the odds" to become a wizard. Poor Kit.

Exacly. I was going to say that.

I keeled this topic to.

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Originally posted by Fox:
I still think it has to do with the belief system! ...
Dar was very grown up for her age and had a lot of knowlege BUT she she thought that Darth mall and vada where real, she believed in the force, in other words she still believed!

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Hmmm, and Nita almost didn't believe. From rereading that part of SYWTBAW, she first thought the book was a joke, but she seems to have practically forced herself to believe because she wanted to be able to do something about Joanne.

Think about it though, wouldn't most people think that it was a joke to start off with - unless they were looking for it, such as in Darine's case?

Thinking back to when you were that age (reguardless of what books you were reading at the time, or how long ago it was), how many of you out there would have a) believed it, and b) had the courage/curiosity to actually take the oath.

The first time I read SYWTBAW I was all excited. I was reading the description of what makes a wizard:

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SYWTBAW:
Wizards love words, most of them read a great deal, and indeed one strong sign of a potential wizard is the inability to get to sleep without reading something first.

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And that is something that I have always had trouble with. Ever since I started reading by myself, I have always had to read something before I could get to sleep.

Looking back on that now, though, I dunno, if it was real, if I would have had the courage to take the Oath. But anyways... opinions people?

Alla

Wasn't there a topic a while back, asking how many of had actually read the Oath on our first read through the books? Ad didn't it show that everyone had, just on the faint off-chance?

I mean, I expect we all thought we were being pretty stupid at the time, but I don't doibt that anyone who's reading SYWTBAW is probably going to be able to "suspend disbelief," or your own sense of the preposterous, long enough to read it. Nothing to do with courage, really; just to do with the sort of people who are likely to be reading the books. (this is suspended for our oldfarts, who were probably a bit too old when they read it for the first time. sorry, darlings. )

Fox makes a good point about belief and disbelief, but seriously, I don't think Dairine did believe in Darth vader; even Nita, reading the oath for the first time, didn't really believe it'd pull through, did she? For a second she did, but then she jsut through she was being stupid. I agree that an inability to believe in wizardry is probably the cut-off point, but I would distinguish that from belief itself.

Perhaps it's not so much belief, as ignorance. When you're young, you don't know what should or shouldn't be done...

... I think I've mentioned it before, but this is actually true IRL, too. There's this one story that a lot of my teachers have related about a college student who wasn't paying attention in class, so he copied down a problem thinking that it was homework, laboured on it for hours, and returned to class truimphantly... only to find out that it was not, in fact, the homework, but an example the teacher had given of a famous "unsolvable problem".

And didn't Alexander cut the Golgothian (sp?) knot when he was fifteen or something? Seventeen? Somewhere thereabouts? That rather makes me think of that one time in TBONWM when Arhu just takes a spell specifically hinging on a particular aspect of rats and applies it to dinosaurs, becuase he doesn't know it'd be "against the rules".

And then there's another thing... who was it that said that one quote about asking "why not" instead of "why"? ...young people, throughout history, are often more likely to do this.... if you look at Asian history, especially (or perhaps not, but I've noticed it the most on this continent), there are a lot of rebellions driven by idealistic students, the most recent being tienanmin square...

I can't remember the details now, but at least once at work someone told me after I'd done something that it couldn't be done. It probably involved making the mainframe we used do something.

That was the Gordian knot - and the idea was that it was impossible to untie. Alexander's solution counts as lateral thinking, but didn't actually solve the problem, as he cut through it instead of untying it.

_______, of course, starts off knowing nothing about the Speech or any limitations of wizardry, so ... oops, this is the SYWTBAW topic, no spoilers for later books. But the same thing applies as with Arhu, I suppose.

Oh... oops O.o I always get the gordian knot and the golgothian demon mixed up, they sound similar to me... >.<


...but. Yeah. You knew what I meant, so that's okay ^.^

Anyway, about that... what I meant was that when you're younger, you're more likely to not automatically dismiss a move like that as being "against the rules"... that your mind isn't as fixed in a single way of thinking as it might become when you're an adult. There's this one buddhist monk somewhere who declaired he would never read another book because he wanted to keep his way of thinking "pure"... and then there's the saying "the master fears the novice for his unpredictability", yes?

...um. Something like that... my brain is fried from the sudden transition from break to school right now, sorry...

We've been discussing things like that in French class recently; the rules of the world aren't as firmly grounded in a child's mind, or even in that of a preteen or young teenager. They still believe, in some dark recess of their hearts, that magic does exist, and so they're more open to the idea of the Oath.

Which I took, by the way. It didn't work. :P

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We've been discussing things like that in French class recently; the rules of the world aren't as firmly grounded in a child's mind, or even in that of a preteen or young teenager.

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I love that quote!!! But I would take it a differant way, to me that would mean [and I'm sure this is in the book ] that because children dont know those rules of the world then they have no trouble in breaking them! Is'ant that why the younger the wizard is the more powerful they are?
Foxy