So considering the events of WAW, most of our wizards are specialized or headed that way pretty quickly. Roshaun is into solar mechanics, Dairine will probably be picking that one up in his honor until she can haul him out of whatever trouble he's gotten into and is (in any case) particularly good with astrophysics and non-organic lifeforms, and Nita is getting stronger all the time in lucid dreaming, precognition, and R&D.

What will Kit do without Ponch, though? He might always have a rapport with dogs in general, but most of his efforts in the last while have been devoted to figuring Ponch and his abilities out and I can't see any other mutt coming close to being that talented or taking Ponch's place in Kit's life. (It is now clear exactly where all the wizardry leakage chez Rodriguez came from...whether the wierdness continues is anyone's guess!)

Kit seems pretty much like a generalist at this point. Isn't that strange, though, for someone with his experience? Will we see him developing in other ways? I can't see him being as much into R&D as Nita...he can do it, but he seems to prefer getting out there into the fray. He's good with inanimates, quick on his feet, and seems to have taken charge really during this campaign, but those are hardly specialties.

Hmm...any ideas?

You know, I haven't really thought about it, but it is something that we should consider now that Ponch isn't Kit's main focus anymore.

Lately he's been interested in Mars, and we know that the next novel will have something to do with a WoM. I'm not sure how that would fit into a specialty exactly...

I'm still inclined to think he's pretty good with mechanical things, like in the beginning, and the part of life 'not as we know it' as Nita told her dad in A Wizard's Holiday. I hope this next book will develop some kind of new and/or improved version of a specialty for him.

Could being good with inanimates be a specialty of some kind? Kit's actually a hard character for me to figure out.

My guess is rocks and planets. Kit's always been into inanimates, as we've said.

To be quite honest though, I think he's going to end up as the "Carl" to Nita's "Tom". He'll be the one out doing stuff (possibly not "selling time" but something similarly extroverted) where Nita will be in prophesizing, researching, ect. This, of course, ties into my near certainty that those two are going to go Advisory in the near future. They've got the qualities and the experience, and they're beginning to get older and thus less powerful.

You know, I suddenly got a mental picture of Nita with large glasses and frizzy hair (much like Prof. Trelawney in HP) looking into a crystal ball and making predictions.

I know that's now how it is in these books (thank you DD!) but I guess my brain loves to wander away from reality.

Actually, that does make sense. Kit goes out and does more of the interaction with people and maybe even helping them with their wizardry issues, while Nita digs through her ever expanding manual.

You think anything will happen with Nita and the peridexis? I mean, that is a pretty big change in the way she does wizardry... to have it speak directly to her? I wonder if Kit will experience anything like that.

Taking charge could be a speciality in its own right - there are a lot of wizards, and wizards who can lead teams are probably very useful.

quote:

AlidaART said:
They've got the qualities and the experience, and they're beginning to get older and thus less powerful.

Something I noticed while collecting manual entries from the books, as part of the miscellany at the end of my timeline attempt, was that Nita hasn't quite grasped that she should be getting less powerful .
HW: +4.5 +/-.15
TWD: 6.08 +/-.5
AWAl: 6.76 +/-.5
I asked DD about that in chat, and she said it's deliberate, unlike Juanita T. in HW.

Now you're starting to scare me. If Nita's getting more powerful, what is she headed for? Would Kit's entry through the series do the same thing? Who knows?

I guess I was just thinking...even Carl has a specialty: space and time. You're right, though, that not every talent has to be a specialty to be vital.

My idea came from before W@W and involved Ponch having an influence on Kit or such, but what about modeling? Being able to open and temporarily use a metaverse as a testing grounds where you could model how physical forces and even spells would work in an environment where nobody would have to be hurt? I was thinking it would be a great place to test software or hardware or even solve mysteries...a place for forensics. But that's just me!

Actually it's scary to me as well. Perhaps this has something to do with the comment in the summary for WoM. The one about Nita becoming either far less, or far more, than human.

I wish I could go look back at the books and study all of Kit's entries, but his only appears about two times, doesn't it? Anyway, your idea about creating universes to test spells is really cool! Although, that would take a great deal of study first since he doesn't really have Ponch to go around and do it for him anymore... but really cool nonetheless.

Wow PM, that's an interesting note. And yes, Lauren, I would agree: it must have something to do with that.

I guess Ponch isn't the only strange one around here...and the prophecies. The prophecies are worrying me too. Because, I mean, who else did we know who prophesized? Uh, Peach. And we know what happened to her (ehm). Also, in W@W it mentions that Nita "needs to be" on er...the planet where Memeki was (name just escaped me) in order for everything to work. Why was that?

Interesting questions, all.

It says in HW that seniors don't specialize very much. I can see Kit as a senior far more easily than I can see Nita.
It's not offense to her...she just doesn't seem to be as easy to deal with as Kit is. I guess that's one of the ironies of the series: Kit's specialty is inanimate stuff, but he's good with people, while Nita specializes in live stuff, but is always quite introverted.

I don't think I would call Nita "introverted." I can see how FireWitch could see Kit as a senior more easily than Nita because he probably does get along with more people. Nita is strong. She is stubborn and she is clever. Still, screaming after a spirit trying to enter Timeheart isn't exactly introverted.

I think Kit's specialty will probably end up changing, or becoming more clear in the next book.

*sighs* Fire Witch beat me to referencing how Seniors dont really specialize. I really could see Kit as someone who will take charge, like a senior should, look at Carmela and his mother, taking charge runs in his family.

quote:

Originally posted by AlidaART:
Also, in W@W it mentions that Nita "needs to be" on er...the planet where Memeki was (name just escaped me) in order for everything to work. Why was that?

I took that to be a reference to her discussion with Memeki - the whole thing from "motherhood doesn't have to be like this" to "you have a choice now". It had to be Nita, because of what Nita's mom's did and said when she fought the Lone Power in Wizard's Dilemma. "But only your mother did what all our mothers do. Surely you understand! I can hear it in you when you touch me."

But Dairine could have done that too, couldn't she? Yes, I supposed you could argue that Nita is more mature because she's older, but I don't really get that vibe any more--Dairine is just as capable as Nita and Kit and Ronan in every way. I dunno...I just feel like there was more to it than just that. I think that such a big deal wouldn't have been made of it if either sister could do it, and it just happened to be Nita who would say the exact right thing. That seems oddly...tight-laced (I want to say something else that I can't understand why it's considered a swear, but Groupee is censoring me).

It seems oddly tight-laced and.... constricting? Conditional? To... adamant for something as abstract as a Power? I hope that's what you mean.

Actually, I was thinking the same thing. It even mentions in TWD that Dairine was supposedly closer to their mom that Nita was.. so it would almost make more sense (if that's the basis we're using for what happened here) that Dairine would be the one that should be there.

Throughout the entire book, before we discovered Memeki, I wondered idly to myself if it was Nita who was the 'power' only she didn't know it yet. Of course I threw that out the window as soon as I thought of it, but now that I think about it...

Maybe she'll pull a Ronan on us and be a sort of avatar for Memeki? I dunno really, but those two have some kind of connection that goes deeper and even Kit could sense that. Remember when Nita comes back and Kit introduces her to Memeki and they both seem to recognize each other? DD didn't go into detail about it that much, but I got the feeling that, that is going to pop up again in the next book. (In some shape or form, anyway.)

Or I could be so far off that I will laugh at myself later. *shrug* Who knows.

While we're thinking on the extrapolated far-side of things, what if Nita is one of the later incarnations of Memeki and she doesn't quite know it? That would fit the "greater than human...or far less" quote on the AWoM page of YoungWizards.com (not a direct quote by a long stretch, but that was the gist). Okay, a bit wonky, but I'd hope worth some speculation.

I don't think NIta's going to become an avatar. I think she was able to relate to Memeki's comment about what all mother's do because Nita had been there when her mother sacrificed herself, so to speak, and she saw all that went on and how hard it was to do that. Darine couldn't have done what Nita did with Memeki because she hadn't been there first-hand to witness what her mother had gone through. She might have gotten the images from Nita, but it wouldn't have been the same.

Kit's specialty is rocks. It started out as just 'inanimate things,' but lately, whenever YW talks about Kit's specialty, it always mentions rocks. I think right now, his specialty isn't very strong, but it's going to focus, and he'll be very atuned to rocks.

I really want to know what Ronan and Filif's specialties are. It seems that Filif's just awesome at everything, and Ronan's only specialty mentioned in the books has been carrying the Spear of Light. Maybe Ronan's is water . . . he Ordeal was 'taking in the Sea,' whatever that means.

Kit's speciality? I dunno. It seemed like it had grown to also include electronic things. Not to the extent of Dairine's speciality, obviously, but at the same time not losing his affinity for les-alive inanimate things, like rocks. That was how it seemed to me, at least.

The Nita-as-Hesper-avatar is interesting to me. And it seems like it makes a little bit of sense. Though it is kind of an unnerving idea, somehow...

I actually don't think that Kit's speciality has changed at all, or anyway very little since SYWTBAW. He's always had an affinity for inorganics; Nita used to have a contrasting skill with organics, and that's certainly changed, but I think just because Nita's speciality- to some extent- has changed, it doesn't mean Kit's has or will. In SYWTBAW he talked to the cars and [s]lifts[/s] elevators, which parallels easily enough with the TV/DVD player issues; also in HW he talks to the meteorite in the same way he talks to rocks on... whichever planet it was they first observed the Pullulus, which I forget. :P He has a real continuity in speciality like that, which I like.

His work with Ponch I see as having been much more about Ponch's talents and working with those- "adjunct talent" work- rather than being a part of Kit's speciality.

I would also agree with people that I think Kit and Nita could or maybe will one day be Seniors/Advisories. I think that's aways off, though, since Nita's fourteen (apparently), which makes Kit thirteen, and Tom and Carl- well, we don't know when they became Advisories, but they became Seniors in their mid/late thirties. So, you know, not all that soon. With regards to the quote in HW that Seniors "refuse to specialize too far", I would point out that although Nita is definitely specialising in this pre-cog style stuff lately, she also has considerable skill in many other areas; she's been examining the research side, she's worked with kernels, she spends a lot of time on things like energy weapons (Callahan's Unfavorable Instigation ), she still works with a rowan rod- all things that point to her having a lot of skill outside the purely precognitive, which would require her to confine herself to that. Also, I would compare with Tom and Carl; Tom does research, Carl does spatiotemporal claudications. These, especially the latter, are pretty narrow specialisations, sort of; certainly nowhere near as broad as "organic stuff". Yet they're considered to be not specialised enough to be, um, specialist Advisories (like Roshaun was in stellar dynamics, I think? Can't remember the exact title but it's in Holiday somewhere) but broad enough to be Seniors.

*shrug* Just my two cents. :P

Nita's been in her specialty since the first book... she had a dream the night she took the oath, with Fred in Timeheart. Although, you could argue that everyone that will be in Timeheart is already there, but it's still pretty prophetic.