I Know You Guys Want Me To Draw Different Characters, But I Love Nita So Much :’)

Some magical sisters from my absolute favorite book series of all time: the Young Wizards series! It’s really under-appreciated tbh and I, 10/10, recommend it!! Anyway, even if you haven’t read it, you still can appreciate the art I guess  ◕ ‿ ◕

Iris Scott - Lunar Eclipse, 2020 - Oil on canvas

The Wizards' Oath changes from novel to novel in the Young Wizards series. Do you think you'll ever have a final version of it, or do you see the Oath continuing to grow and change for as long as the series continues?

There won’t ever be a “final” version, no. Whenever the series ends (or its author does), there will always be an understanding that there would always have been versions of the Oath we’d simply never see (or have time to see).

It’s not so much an issue of the Oath itself changing. At the start of a wizardly career, it’s offered to each probationer in the form that will best express to them what their responsibility to the Universe, the One and the Powers that Be is going to look like, at least at the outset. It tends to be simple and clear to start with: people need to be certain about what they’re signing up for. But afterwards, Oaths can change and become more complex as their users change, and as their understandings of that responsibility grow.

There are versions of the Oath that have become very popular across cultures, across regions of a world, or sometimes even planet-wide or further, depending on the species. But everyone understands that each wizard has the right to restate the Oath for himself/herself/itself/whatevergenderself so that it best expresses that responsibility to minimize the growth / effects of entropy, including the most basic strictures: don’t end life if you can avoid it, don’t handle finite resources thoughtlessly, don’t interfere in working systems unless the system itself is under significant threat, don’t change things without permission / fix what’s not broken (a dual simplification/restatement of the Troptic Stipulation: see Tom’s discussion of it and other aspects of the Oath here).

But outside of that, there’s room for considerable elaboration. Some wizards over time evolve personal recensions of the Oath that are quite long. In fact mention is made in future-canon of a species somewhere a long way off whose entire wizardly practice consists in recitation of the Oath in one of its most involved and complex forms. They spend their whole lives, these wizards, in an ecstasy of expression that we’re not remotely equipped to understand… continually reminding the Universe how it’s meant to be cared for. They don’t actually do anything — or so it would seem to us at first (or second or tenth) glance. But our perception of the never-ending intervention that is their lives is necessarily limited by the (all-too-)human perception that to matter, you have to be doing stuff. As their species reckons things, they are the most recklessly active and adventurous wizards extant. And who are we to judge them as being otherwise? 

The above is just one of many worlds or other kinds of places (I think this gets mentioned in AWoM somewhere) where, in this mode or others, the Oath appears in forms that would make no sense whatsoever to a human. Yet these still fruitfully express the relationships of the species in question with the Powers and with the Universe they’re helping to take care of. And even when using what we consider one of the conventional local wordings, inside a human wizard’s head — over the course of their practice — images and concepts get attached to the mere words that are evocative of the interventions you’ve participated in, the lives you’ve saved, the friends you’ve lost, the causes you’ve won. In fact you could probably make a case that no matter how many times you repeat the words, even if they’re the same words, it is impossible for you ever to speak the same Oath twice. You are not the wizard you were a year ago, or three, or ten: or an hour ago, or five minutes back. You are in constant change, as is the Universe you serve (since you’re stuck inside Time together). Your work in that Universe changes you further, and your constant commitment and re-commitment — as itself manifested in the Oath — changes you further still. It’s all flux, from a wizard’s first breath to the last: and that’s as it should be.

So, no… no “final” versions of the Oath: not until the last quartz molecule stops vibrating. By which time, it’ll no longer be any problem of mine. :)

This is awful. I just looked it up and Koi fish can live more than 200 years, the oldest on record being Hanako Fish who died at age 226.

Tom and Carl will die before them.

Okay, so I’ve just started Games Wizards Play book 10 in the Young Wizards series, which means it’s time for some thoughts on my FAAAAAAAV YA SERIES OF ALL TIME. (No offense HP, no offense)

ROSHAUN MY CHILD MY SON COME BACK TO ME!!! COME BACK TO ME BABY! IT HAS BEEN ONE WHOLE BOOK  AND HE’S NOT BACK YET I AM NOT OKAY! I AM NOT ALRIGHT! THE MADNESS MUST END! PLEASE GOD MAKE IT STOP JUST BRING BACK MY BABY PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE! WE LOST PONCH I CAN’T HAVE THIS TOO I CAN’T TAKE THIS OH GODDDDDDD *INCOHERENT SOBBING*

And I am done. This is basically my internal stream of consciousness all through A Wizard of Mars tbh. I have basically been a blithering, sobbing, screaming wreck since Wizards at War. Life’s been hard. And since my house burned down, I don’t even have my ENTIRE COMPLETE collection to reference : |

Some further reviews on the Young Wizards series:

So You Want To Be a Wizard…

You will cry because of a car

Deep Wizardry

You will cry because of a shark

High Wizardry

You will cry because of a space turtle

A Wizard Abroad

You will cry because of Ireland

A Wizard’s Dilemma

You will cry because of a parrot. Also cancer.

A Wizard Alone

You will cry because of autism

Wizard’s Holiday

You will cry because of a barren hellscape

Wizards at War

You will cry because of OH GOD NOT THE DOG PLEASE NOT THE DOG OH GOD NO

A Wizard of Mars

You will cry because you are no longer capable of feeling anything because the last book emotionally broke you.

Great series. 10/10. Would recommend to all your friends and loved ones and then you can all cry together.

Astronauts just found life in space, we kid you not

Russian cosmonauts have discovered something remarkable clinging to the outside of the International Space Station: living organisms.

“Results of the experiment are absolutely unique" | Follow micdotcom

New York Post

‘Sightings of a lifetime’: Whales and dolphins flock to NYC waters

Here’s one increase in traffic that won’t have you pounding a car hood: The city’s waters have been rife with sightings of marine life all s

Thank you for sharing this! This is another one of those situations where we are just now seeing the noticeable, dramatic payoff of years and years of quiet, unnoticed environmental work.

“Experts say years of conservation efforts have resulted in some of the healthiest waters in generations, with booming fish populations, clearer ocean waves and more chances to interact with our urban aquarium.”

This quote also really got me:

“‘It never gets old, it’s always thrilling,’ said Celia Ackerman, a naturalist with American Princess Cruises who captured the images. As a child growing up in Brooklyn, Ackerman couldn’t wait to move out of the city so she could study marine animals. 'I would have never imagined I could enjoy them here right in my backyard.’”

The galaxy sings in B flat. Fifty-seven octaves below middle C, hundreds of thousands of tiny stars with little worlds trailing atmospheres in elliptical orbits. Double-star systems, triple-star, more; planets, civilisations, dark matter, tangible matter, all circling, swarming, humming together in one enormous note, not bumping together but carrying a wave from the centre of their island universe, expanding out into space… Sound cannot exist in a vacuum. This is a widely known fact. And space is a vacuum, sure. But only when you look at it from here, from our tiny little world. Close your eyes, zoom out, and look at the celestial spheres from their view; and space isn’t so thin after all. Close your eyes, zoom in, and even our dense atmosphere is just atoms in a vacuum of their own. Sound as we know it, sure, that doesn’t exist outside our little stardust orb. It’s too small, too fragile. Too like ourselves. But where there’s movement and things to move, there’s sound. Sound waves can be small, only a few thousand nanometres trough-to-crest. And they can be massive, playing the celestial music of the spheres. Because in all that movement, the pulses of our discs and and lights and gravity wells, the stars dance. We are sound, the particles that carry a wave thousands of light-years across. We are the music of the celestial spheres. The galaxy sings in B flat.

Source

anexpansionlikegold

NATASHA I DEMAND YOU HAVE THESE FEELS WITH ME

(via reconfemmandoforares)

Sharks may not be as solitary as originally thought. Researchers have discovered the fish congregating and interacting with others of their own species in ways that suggest they have long-lasting friendships.

PHOTOGRAPH BY TANYA HOUPPERMANS