Carmela's Ordeal?

[SpacePen]

I think Carmela could've already been on her ordeal without knowing about it. Isn't that kind of what happened to Daryl?

yes, but Darryl was autistic and Carmella's not. Also, Darryl did eventually find out that he was on ordeal and that he was a wizard.

she isn't in the manual for the same reason that Aunt Annie wasn't until Nita figured it out herself.

If Carmella knew she were a wizard and wished to conceal it from her non-wizard brother and friends, that would be one thing (Aunt Annie didn't know Nita was a wizard when she was hiding from Nita). If she didn't know she were a wizard, she wouldn't be concealing it like Aunt Annie because she wouldn't know that she had anything to conceal. She would have been like Darryl, who was in the manual even though he didn't know he was on ordeal.

I don't think it's possible to learn the speech unless you're a wizard, or on your ordeal,

au contraire. DD specifically states in the books that there are species which use the Speech for daily conversation, and that they are not species which are all wizards.

Couldn't she have done what Diarine did and taken the oath without anyone knowing?

Yes. But I don't believe this to be the case! When Dairine started poking her nose into Nita's wizardry, we knew fairly quickly (within one book) that Dairine both wanted to be and was on the path to become a wizard. Carmella has, however, been poking around Kit's wizardry for several books now, and hasn't shown any great desire to BE a wizard: she's envied what she considers Kit's "secret fun", and she uses it's side-effects for her own pursuits (Chatting, shopping, drooling over hot boys, learning foreign languages, annoying her brother). We've never seen a desire on her part to be a wizard like we saw in Dairine.

I could be wrong now, but I don't think so!

[Dragon Writer]

I agree with that last - it says in the beginning books, it's those who want to be a wizard who become one.
I mean, it's even the title of the manuel! (and the first book - so you WANT to be a wizard.) She might have a natural talent for it, but - at least currently - she has no actual desire FOR it. She loves the magics and adventures, and she COULD keep up with the responsibility, but I think she prefers to just be the outside helper, free to tease whenever possible.

[zilvox]

No i don't think so. It seems like a lot of work went into making this something different.

[wizardsrreal]

I think that Carmela didn't go on her ordeal then. I don't think she ever will be a real wizard--I don't think she could handle it, all the responsibility--but I do think that because of her will power she was able to do things that most people wouldn't. Because she is so good with languages, she could have talked to her 'egg-beater' to get the safety setting to come off and talked the TV into making the worldgate, or finding one that Kit had made.

I think that she is too old to become a wizard but that what she can do is somewhat like Ponch. Ponch wasn't a 'wizard' per say but he could do things and find 'other universes'. I don't think she could ever have more power than a wizard, but the way I see it, none of what she can do comes from herself. She never feels drained--at least not more than a normal, non wizard, teenager does--and she always hitches a 'ride' with Nita and Kit if she wants to go somewhere intergalactic.

just my imput

[Nights Mistress]

I'd have to agree. Carmela is a great character, and a nice foil for the increasingly serious wizard characters but it's her very non-wizardness that makes her that way. To be a wizard is to be incredibly self-sacrificing (every wizardry involves you tiring yourself for it!) and very responsible. Carmela doesn't want any of that. Sure, she can step up and do seriously cool things, but it's not what she wants to do. She wants to see the universe and have fun while doing it.

Additionally, Carmela represents the fact that anyone can step up and help make things better, regardless of whether you have magical powers or not. Instead of relying on divine intervention (in the form of wizards) to fix things, Carmela shows that anyone can work in Life's name. It's a powerful message, and one I'd be pretty sad if lost in favour for giving Carmela wizardry.

[rick455]

All of that is true, but Carmella is more valuable not bound by the oath.

[SilveredBlue]

All of that is true, but Carmella is more valuable not bound by the oath.

I agree, because she can show up and kill alien when needed.

Also, the TV itself might not be a wizard, per se (what kind of Ordeal would it have?) but I found this paragraph in the Paramagica article very interesting:

...Creatures or beings moving upward in terms of eclestic positioning are more likely to succesfully use or manifest paramagia than others. A special case of this kind of paramagia is sometimes caused by repeated exposure to wizardry, or exposure to wizardry of unusual power. [emphasis mine] This is usually considered the most likely cause of the tendency of wizards' pets to get "a little strange".

Eclastic positioning, from the same:

A species' status in terms of its recognition of its own sentience and relationship to its universe (or lack of such recognition).

I do hope I did the quotes right. So anyway: The TV was/is developing sentience- after Kit used wizardry on it. So might this be the 'leakage' effect that is causing the TV to exhibit paramagica? And the "Dataaaa" couldn't have been the WHOLE Manual. I think that Spot just told the TV where they were going, and some other details about their trip.

[terradragon]

Additionally, Carmela represents the fact that anyone can step up and help make things better, regardless of whether you have magical powers or not. Instead of relying on divine intervention (in the form of wizards) to fix things, Carmela shows that anyone can work in Life's name. It's a powerful message, and one I'd be pretty sad if lost in favour for giving Carmela wizardry.

This is exactly why I hope she ISN'T one! I like the idea that you don't have to be a wizard to kick some butt and do some good.

[Elita Justice]

My 2 cents (though it feels more like 20)

I'm of the opinion that Carmela is not going to become a wizard. If she were the kind of person suited to wizardry, she would've found the manual, or it would've found her, already. Here's why:

1) I don't think there's ever an age/point in your life where the Powers That Be decide someone's too old to be a wizard; I think there's an age where they decide someone's the right age to be a wizard. Think of the conversation Nita had with Liused in SYW:

"Small children look at things and see them, listen to things and hear them. Of course they understand the Speech. Most of them never realize it any more than you did. It's when they get older...that they lose the Speech, and we lose them." (Liused, p. 97-98, So You Want to Be a Wizard)

So we've found out that when you're young, most people exhibit the characteristics of a wizard anyway. This proves that Carmela can use the Speech without being a wizard (though as it's been pointed out many times before, there's other evidence for that). To me, this also means that eventually, the Powers weed out non-wizards when they stop being children, and stop paying attention. If Carmela wasn't offered wizardry then, it was because she just isn't the right fit.

It's also been mentioned in the books (I think it was W@W) that sometimes, if there's need for more wizards, people get a late onset Ordeal. However, this is in emergency situations, and if the events in W@W weren't emergency enough for Carmela to be made a wizard, then I don't know what is.

2) Carmela as a character is much more dynamic when you consider her level of involvement with Kit and wizardry in general despite being a non-wizard. I don't think DD would want to ruin that for the short term excitement her becoming a wizard would create. There's a lot more hilarity, tension, and sub-plot opportunities if she remains just a friendly hanger-on.

Plus, if you look at Carmela's personality, she doesn't even really seem cut out to be a wizard. Yes, she has a way with languages, and yes she is willing to accept the existance of wizardry in the world, but as Space Pen said she's never mentioned as being too concerned with right and wrong, good versus evil, or vanquishing the bad guy. I'm not sure she'd be able to handle the responsibility of taking on entropy every day for as long as she lives. She got her first taste of that in W@W when she and the other's were being taunted by the Lone Power on Rashah:

"Carmela had sense enough to be unnerved. She took a hasty step backward, then another, as the Lone Power approached....It smiled, and Carmela shrank back." (p. 464, Wizards at War)

When everyone made it out alright, she calmed down, but you could tell she was freaked when The Lone One stepped out of King Bug's carcass, and she realized this was serious.

3) I guess this is related to my previous two points, but if DD is being true to her universe, she has to follow that universe's rules. Right now, the rule (or at least the rule as it applies to most people) is that if someone is a fitting candidate for wizardry they will find the manual, be offered the oath and, if they take it, begin their Ordeal. This all happens, like I said, as soon as most people stop paying attention to the world around them, which seems to be around 10-13. From what I can tell, until Carmela found out about wizardry through Kit, she was neither offered wizardry, nor did she act like a potential wizard. Unless DD bends these rules a little, I don't see how Carmela could become a wizard.

Sorry to make this post so essay-like, but reading everyone else's input got my mind whirling :P From what I can see, though, that happens a lot around here.

[permafry_42]

lolz chocolate is literally black gold on other planets

as for carmella being a wizard, i have to agree. wonder if the tv is an apple too jking; i just dislike the apple product placement in the books.

[SpacePen]

"product placement"

I don't think it's product placement.... it's just that Apples were in the US schools, mostly Apples, when she was writing High Wizardry, and Duane was making the 'non-wizardly' part of her world true to ours. The way Duane has "our" technology dynamically tied to the YW universe, the apple-without-a-bite technology naturally keeps pace with "our" universe's Apple devices. (Plus, how can you pass up the imagery and allusion that reverberates with the symbol of the fruit that wasn't bit?)

[NitaEmmaYW]

I think that it is possible .... in the next books it could be about her ordeal and the mission of that may be saving Roshauh but I highly think no though....

[anotherBob]

Elita has a point that Carmela doesn't have the right personality for a wizard. As for the age issue, remember the mediterranian wizard who did the passthrough wizardry from WoM(I can't recall her name was nearly out of adolescence when she became a wizard and had her ordeal.

Bob