Carmela outrageous

[Lamarquise]

Anyone else find Carmela absolutely hilarious in this book?

How in the world did she get to the Crossings?

Is she a wizard? If she isn't, what is going on with that entertainment system and how much could she do?

[bluesalamanders]

It's pretty clear to me that she is not a wizard and probably will not become one. After all, she doesn't want to. The entertainment system is Kit's fault - whatever he did changed it a lot more than even he realized, and apparently that included some worldgating options (since, you know, she accessed them).

Yes, I found her hilarious in this book. I love her as a character. She's fantastic.

~Pont

[Lauren]

I think what happened is that the TV/DVD player got the gating options from Spot when they exchanged dataaa...as they said.

She simply accessed the main worldgating center, which is the Crossings, and it placed a gate into her closet. I mean, we know other alien races who aren't wizards use the crossings for intergalactic travel, so they must have some way for non-wizards to access it in these places.

It's just Carmela the first non-wizard Human to gain access as far as I know. That curling iron kicked some alien butt, though, didn't it?

[philosopherkat]

Hmmm, I wonder about Carmela, because she seems kind of flip about stuff like the end of the world - just bravado? or did she not understand what might happen? - but on the other hand she was strong enough to resist the Lone One's influence on her mind. Are there other humans that act through other people's wizardry?

[Lauren]

I don't think she completely understood the gravity of the situation. Perhaps she only thought this was an evil King who was being a nasty tyrant over the poor 'bug people' as she would probably call them.

I'm inclined to think that Carmela wasn't aware that this was one of the many faces of the LP. And she didn't think/know that it could very well have been the end of the universe. She didn't know about the Pulullus (sp?) and how it was distracting everyone from the real issue at hand.

[philosopherkat]

I was just thinking - maybe the reason Carmela's mind didn't submit to the LP's control was becausebecauseshe didn't understand it. A sort of "there's nothing to fear but fear itself" scenario, because I bet the LP uses wizards' fear of him to gain more control.

[Lamarquise]

You know, that wouldn't be surprising, would it? The Powers sometimes have strange ways of arranging things and even ignorance can be a tool when necessary.

It's the same kind of truth as Carmela was trying to get across to Kit but doesn't understand the same way. She makes fun of the fact that he takes wizardry seriously...maybe a little too seriously. She hasn't been through the same things and doesn't understand the hard parts and obligations. But she's right when she points out the really awesome parts of it, which might be easy to forget in the middle of the day-to-day practice of the Art.

[EWizard11]

Which is exactly why I was glad she WASN'T actually a wizard. ("For the TV!") She is quick to point out the more fun parts of the Art, but I have trouble believing she could take wizardry seriously enough to actually be a wizard.

But God, I love Carmela. She injects enough comic relief to carry the whole book.

[drea]

I don't think it's that she couldn't perceive the danger. I think she's such a smart aleck, that it became her nature to be so flip about anything. Plus she's just freaking hysterical. It's not that she can't be serious. She just refuses to be, because if she was, who would be enjoying it?

[Kathy Li]

Actually, what I wanna know is where she got her hands on that bar of Valrhona Caraïbe Grand Cru? And was it the one with hazelnuts? Or the one without? (Funny, I'd have thought Carmela was a milk chocolate person, and more likely to favor Jivara, not Caraïbe. )

[AlidaART]

Eep, kli, that's scary. Know a bit about chocolate, do you? You'd make quite the intergalactic espionage agent, then, huh? Congrats

Oh, I'd say Carmela is definitely a dark chocolate kind of person.

[Isarian]

This could turn out to be interesting. Even if Carmela is too young to become a wizard, it might not mean that she couldn't be active in that area. After all, we saw Dairine's WizMac turn into a major wizarding tool. Could it be possible that the entertainment center could spawn something that would not make her a wizard, but allow her to perform wizarding functions through it?

Love her humor, too Those funny lines, like "Oops", and "The toothpick of Virtue", reall help pull things together.

****EDIT****

Whoops, meant to say too old :-)

[Peter Murray]

Carmela's not too young, she's too old. Nita, Kit and Dairine are all younger than she is. Kit has been telling himself that she's too old for a while - he doesn't want her to be his own personal Dairine . That's why he was so happy when she read from the TV manual, not a wizard's manual.

One suggestion is that you have to be young enough to believe in magic. Of course, Carmela knows enough wizards that she believes in it - maybe she could become a wizard despite being as old as 15.

But she's funnier this way .

[kaiba4ever]

O.O Its the chocolate bar! Tis a pity that it's milk though...but it still looks so delicious in that above picture... Yeah, dark chocolate is better anyway, and I suspect Carmela likes it too. XP

I had been suspecting that Carmela would turn out to be a wizard, and when she mentioned the manual (the one for the TV) I thought she'd confirmed my theory, but it turned out that she was just another normal human that's just unsually cool. Like Millman and the Man at the bar than helped Dari in HW. Even if she isn't a wizard, she's still got alot of nerve (when she stands up to It) and will probably be much more involved from this point on.

[AlidaART]

Well...the man at the bar wasn't really a regular human...he was the Fifth Doctor from Doctor Who, who is hardly a 'mere human' (he isn't even strictly human at all, if I'm not mistaken), but yeah, Carmela is just a really spiffy older sister.

One does get the feeling that she'll be playing a larger and larger part in the action, yes