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Post by devilinthedetails on Aug 30, 2018 11:02:04 GMT 10
Recently I purchased all the Emelan books and I've been re-reading them. As I began to re-read the Circle Opens quartet (I've just finished Magic Steps), it occurred to me how young Sandry, Briar, Daja, and Tris are when they take on their respective students. When I last read the Emelan books back in high school, I don't think that I appreciated that they were only fourteen. Somehow in my head I aged them up. In re-reading Magic Steps, I found myself wishing that Sandry was a bit older when she took her first student. Even if she was eighteen or so, I would have found that a bit more believable. As it was, I had to suspend my disbelief quite a bit.
Does anyone else have to suspend their disbelief over the ages of the original four protagonists when they take on students? Did anyone else mentally age up Sandry, Briar, Daja, and Tris or still do that? Is anyone else like me in wishing that the protagonists had been a bit older when they took on their own students? Do you have any other thoughts about their ages when they became mentors?
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Elsceetaria
Knight
May or May Not be a Little Teapot
Prone to brain fail. Pres CRTL + ALT + DEL to restart.
Posts: 2,281
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Post by Elsceetaria on Sept 7, 2018 15:07:09 GMT 10
I can't say that I age them up, but their age requires me to suspend belief. I cognitively know that they are 14, but I don't really see them that way. Even the most mature 14-year-olds that I have met still have moments when they act like the young teens that they are. We never see this from them. I think that 18 would make more sense.
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Post by devilinthedetails on Sept 7, 2018 22:09:22 GMT 10
I can't say that I age them up, but their age requires me to suspend belief. I cognitively know that they are 14, but I don't really see them that way. Even the most mature 14-year-olds that I have met still have moments when they act like the young teens that they are. We never see this from them. I think that 18 would make more sense. Thanks for commenting! It's interesting to hear your thoughts. I wonder if I was able to age the characters up in my mind the first time I read the Circle Opens quartet because that was the first Emelan quartet I read (I borrowed it from my local library without realizing the Circle of Magic books came first, silly me) but re-reading the books in the published order might have caused me to realize how little time had elapsed between the start of one quartet and the other, making it hard to mentally age the characters. Either that or I'm just more attuned to the little details that I glossed over when I was younger. In my re-read, I haven't really been able to age up the characters in my mind. Now that I realize how young they are, I more have to do what you describe and sort of suspend my disbelief. Most of the time I can sort of forget that they are just fourteen but sometimes when their age is pointed out multiple times in a book, I wish it wasn't since every time it rips me out of the story. I agree that even the most mature fourteen year olds I've met still have moments that reflect the fact that they are young teens. That's sort of natural and expected and even consistent with psychology that tends to suggest that our minds aren't fully developed at that age. There is a big difference between the maturity that a fourteen year old and the maturity that an eighteen year old is capable. Eighteen years old to me would definitely not have required much if any suspension of disbelief.
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Post by MythicMistress on Sept 8, 2018 7:55:03 GMT 10
I don't remember ever having any hangups about the age of the Circle four when they found their students. Probably the closest I came for that sort of thing was Briar and Evvy due to their types of magic clashing. Sandry and Daja pushed off quite a bit of work with their students to other people as soon as they could, and Tris at least had lightning magic in common with Keth.
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Post by devilinthedetails on Sept 8, 2018 12:03:25 GMT 10
I don't remember ever having any hangups about the age of the Circle four when they found their students. Probably the closest I came for that sort of thing was Briar and Evvy due to their types of magic clashing. Sandry and Daja pushed off quite a bit of work with their students to other people as soon as they could, and Tris at least had lightning magic in common with Keth. It's funny because the last time I read the Circle Opens books I don't remember having any hangups with regard to their ages when taking students. I wonder if part of it is in the intervening years I've worked a bit in the education industry and I've seen how hard teaching can be, so I think that asking a fourteen-year-old to do that especially in a field as dangerous as magic is kind of asking for potential disaster (which I guess Tammy sort of hints at with having for instance Sandry almost forget to put up wards when she and Pasco meditate). That could just go to show how we bring our experiences to what we read and our experiences shape how we interpret what we read. It was interesting to see how Briar and Evvy negotiated their conflicting magics. I actually felt like Briar was a bit more of a natural teacher than Sandry since he did think of a creative way to teach Evvy reading with the stones, but their magics were opposed to each other as you say even if their similar pasts as street children could create common ground in a different way. I'm re-reading Cold Fire right now, and you're right that Daja does hand over a lot of the responsibilities of teaching Nia and Jory to other mages which might make her story the most believable to me in that way. Sandry did push off a lot of Pasco's dancing training to a dance teacher, but I felt like she was still teaching him the more dangerous magic stuff. Maybe that would have gone down easier for me if Lark had been a bit more involved with Pasco's instruction.
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Post by MythicMistress on Sept 8, 2018 13:12:20 GMT 10
You're right when it comes to Sandry and how Lark or another more experienced mage probably should have been helping train Pasco in the magic department. I guess I just have an easier time suspending my disbelief than others.
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Post by devilinthedetails on Sept 9, 2018 1:11:02 GMT 10
You're right when it comes to Sandry and how Lark or another more experienced mage probably should have been helping train Pasco in the magic department. I guess I just have an easier time suspending my disbelief than others. Suspension of disbelief is in many ways the bread and butter to enjoying most stories especially in the fantasy genre. I certainly can't critique anyone for being able to suspend disbelief when it comes to the ages of the main characters when they teach magic since oblivious me didn't even notice their ages the first time I read the books. Apart from that, any discussion of what might be regarded as realism in fantasy can risk sounding absurd as in my case: "it wasn't the magic that snapped my disbelief; it was the ages of the characters when they taught it." So I definitely wouldn't say my interpretation is more right or valid than anybody else's. We all just engage with the books differently (and how we engage with them can even change throughout our lives).
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Post by MythicMistress on Sept 10, 2018 3:58:45 GMT 10
You're right when it comes to Sandry and how Lark or another more experienced mage probably should have been helping train Pasco in the magic department. I guess I just have an easier time suspending my disbelief than others. Suspension of disbelief is in many ways the bread and butter to enjoying most stories especially in the fantasy genre. I certainly can't critique anyone for being able to suspend disbelief when it comes to the ages of the main characters when they teach magic since oblivious me didn't even notice their ages the first time I read the books. Apart from that, any discussion of what might be regarded as realism in fantasy can risk sounding absurd as in my case: "it wasn't the magic that snapped my disbelief; it was the ages of the characters when they taught it." So I definitely wouldn't say my interpretation is more right or valid than anybody else's. We all just engage with the books differently (and how we engage with them can even change throughout our lives). I can't believe I forgot not to use an "I" statement when talking about suspension of disbelief. I'm sorry if I came off as trying to state a superior opinion.
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Post by devilinthedetails on Sept 10, 2018 7:38:08 GMT 10
Suspension of disbelief is in many ways the bread and butter to enjoying most stories especially in the fantasy genre. I certainly can't critique anyone for being able to suspend disbelief when it comes to the ages of the main characters when they teach magic since oblivious me didn't even notice their ages the first time I read the books. Apart from that, any discussion of what might be regarded as realism in fantasy can risk sounding absurd as in my case: "it wasn't the magic that snapped my disbelief; it was the ages of the characters when they taught it." So I definitely wouldn't say my interpretation is more right or valid than anybody else's. We all just engage with the books differently (and how we engage with them can even change throughout our lives). I can't believe I forgot not to use an "I" statement when talking about suspension of disbelief. I'm sorry if I came off as trying to state a superior opinion. No worries. I didn't interpret what you said in a negative or superior way. I just find it interesting how different readers can suspend disbelief about different things.
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