Totally Charmed

by Crusie, Jennifer, Wilson, Leah

  This would be one powerful witch.

  And then there is the final step. While atoms and molecules are small, on the order of one-billionth the size of the tip of your finger, there are objects much much smaller. Theoretical physicists believe that the fabric of the universe, what is called space-time, while over most distances (even atomic) shows no structure or texture, does in fact eventually show structure at distances that are a billion-billion-billion times smaller than that of an atom. At those dimensions space-time is a churning froth of tortured geometry. It is at those distances that wormholes are born, connecting different points in the universe together—shortcuts across normal space-time. For a witch who had mastered all the capabilities of a conventional Maxwell’s Demon, the final frontier would be to train that Demon to access the very fabric of space-time, to touch reality at those distances a billion-billion-billion times smaller than that of an atom. To be able to generate wormholes from the froth of space-time would allow a witch to open up portals between any two points in space, time or both.

  Teleportation becomes trivial. Time travel is a snap.

  And for the witch and Maxwell’s Demon who really wish to impress friends and throw a scare into evildoers, the application of just the right jolt of energy over those infinitesimal distances could initiate another Big Bang, the event responsible for the creation of our entire universe. Yes, such a witch could create an entirely new universe.

  That would be the ultimate witch.

  And it really would not take much. All that is required is an understanding of the scientific basis of magical abilities and a bit of extrapolation, plus a solid background in science, and you have the ultimate witch, one in whom magic and science have been melded together to create something that neither could have spawned alone. The key of course is for Piper to comprehend the underlying basis of her own magic, as she will only be able to fully exploit her inner Maxwell’s Demon once she understands the physics behind the manipulation of molecules, atoms and the fabric of space-time. If Piper could master the science that truly underpins her magic, then she’d find herself not only on the path of becoming the ultimate witch, but also in fulfilling the prophesy of Clarke’s third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  Robert A. Metzger is a research scientist and a science fiction and science writer. His research focuses on the technique of Molecular Beam Epitaxy, used to grow epitaxial films for high-speed electronics applications. His short fiction has appeared in most major SF magazines including: Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction and SF Age, while his 2002 novel Picoverse was a Nebula finalist, and his most recent novel Cusp was released by Ace in 2005. His science writing has appeared in Wired and Analog, and he is a contributing editor to the Science Fiction Writers of America’s Bulletin.

  WILL THE REAL PHOEBE PLEASE STAND UP?

  * * *

  JENNIFER DUNNE

  * * *

  In the first season, Phoebe was the Halliwell Flake, a kooky, reckless, sex-crazed spirit in need of a higher goal and some foundation garments. But as Jennifer Dunne traces her evolution over the years, she finds that Phoebe is the most complex of the sisters, the true visionary among them.

  I STARTED WATCHING CHARMED midway through the Phoebe-and-Cole doomed love story arc and was immediately captivated. The show’s focus on the characters’ relationships, both romantic and familial, as the basis for each episode was dramatically different from the “monster of the week” format common to other series. As a paranormal romance writer, I couldn’t resist. I wanted to know who these people were and how they’d gotten to this point in their lives. I wasn’t able to watch it regularly, however, and trying to pick up missed episodes out of order in late-night syndication only added to my confusion.

  I quickly devised a series of questions that would place any episode I watched into the story landscape I was building in my mind. The answers to most of these questions—was Prue working for Bucklands or as a photographer?—did not change the essential nature of the characters (either way, Prue was a bit of an overachieving workaholic) and had no impact on my ability to enjoy the show. Even Cole’s flip-flopping between good and evil, one of the most extreme changes, didn’t alter his essential obsession with Phoebe, only the manner in which he pursued it.

  The one character I could never pin down, however, was Phoebe. She went from a slacker with a series of dead-end jobs, to a “housewife” who looked after the Manor while her sisters were at work, to a diligent college student, to an advice columnist, to a student once more. In her personal life, she went from a flirtatious sex kitten to a woman consumed by a single overwhelming passion. She was the impetus for the sisters receiving their powers and becoming the Charmed Ones, as well as, in both past and future lives, the cause of witch hunts that ended in her execution. Unlike the other characters, her various incarnations seemed to lack any unifying basis.

  Then I realized that her continual reinvention of herself was the constant to her character. Her sisters might have focused on success and achieving a normal life, but Phoebe’s focus was on discovering her own identity. Her efforts to modify her self-image have made her an agent of change for not only her sisters, but all the characters on the show.

  From the very beginning, her search for identity has fueled the sisters’ development as the Charmed Ones. The spirit board revealed the Halliwell secret by spelling out A-T-T-I-C to Phoebe. While Prue and Piper were content with the status quo and saw no reason to follow the spirit board’s prompting, Phoebe readily answered its call. Her faith and willingness to embark upon the quest of discovery opened the attic door that had remained locked to her sisters. She was the one to find and read the Book of Shadows, invoking the spell that released the sisters’ powers and united them in the Power of Three.

  Her search for identity continued to pull her sisters along for the ride. Phoebe was the first to define their new existence, stating, “We’re the protectors of the innocent. We’re known as the Charmed Ones” in the very first episode (“Something Wicca This Way Comes”). She was the first to experience her power, the first to seek out someone to save rather than merely reacting to a demon or warlock attack, the first to expand her use of the Book of Shadows to find spells for more than vanquishing and the first to write her own spell. And where her sisters worried that their powers would forever doom them to a life of isolation, never able to have families and children due to the risk of freezing them or accidentally moving them to another zip code, Phoebe set their feet firmly on the path of destiny when she reassured them that even if such a thing did happen, she would use her power of premonition to “see them, find them and bring them back safely” (“Wedding From Hell,” 1-6).

  Her search for self-knowledge sometimes put her life at risk, as when she switched places with her past or future selves, or threatened the lives of her sisters, as when her desire to learn about the mother she never knew interfered with her ability to stop the warlock Nicholas from gaining immunity to the Charmed Ones’ powers. But it also saved her life, as when her admission of her true nature as a loving person instead of a cold fish transformed her back from being a mermaid, allowing Leo to heal her.

  The single question she most frequently asked in her quest to understand herself was whether or not she had a weakness that made her more prone to evil than her sisters. First raised in “Is There a Woogy In The House?” (1-15), Piper speculated that being born in the house simply meant Phoebe was more attuned to the forces within it, but Phoebe was not willing to take such a simplistic view of her own nature, responding, “That’s exactly my point. I could go either way. Good or evil. Kind of freaky.” She revisited the question in “Pardon My Past” (2-14), when she learned that her previous incarnation joined forces with a warlock lover, and told her sisters, “Being in my past life, that powerful, evil feeling, it was . . . it was seductive. And that’s what scares me. I mean, what if that’s who I really am?” She first tried to distance herself from Cole n
ot because she feared that he could not control his demonic powers, but because she was afraid she would not be able to resist their evil allure. The question assumed far more urgency when, after trying a series of compromises between her innate goodness and growing evil powers, Phoebe had to decide whether she would take a stand with the forces of evil, and destroy the Charmed Ones, or with the forces of good, and vanquish her husband, the Source of all Evil.

  So what good has all of Phoebe’s self-analysis been? Is she any closer to understanding just who she really is?

  One of the most common methods of analysis used today is called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator™.1 Unlike psychological tests, which must be administered and graded by trained professionals and which exist mainly to determine how far from “normal” a person is and in what way their psyche is damaged or deficient, the Myers-Briggs method of personality typing is easily understood by lay people and results in sixteen different personality profiles, none of which is inherently better than the others.

  Key to this profiling simplicity is the belief that you do not need to know the depths of someone’s mental processes to understand their overall personality, but rather merely judge their observable behavior on four sliding scales between mutually exclusive extremes. The four scales are Introverted-Extroverted (inward-looking or outward-looking), Sensor-iNtuitive (gathering information through specific details or as part of relationships and theoretical frameworks), Thinker-Feeler (making decisions based on facts or subjective values) and Judger-Perceiver (preferring to make decisions or gather information). The dominant extreme for each scale is selected to create a four-letter abbreviation, such as ISTJ or ENFP, indicating one of sixteen possible personality types to which a person’s behavior most conforms.

  Phoebe might never have analyzed herself with the Myers-Briggs profiles, but we have plenty of examples of her behavior that will allow us to identify her type. By knowing how Phoebe behaved in the past—sometimes in the way past!—we can determine how she views her place in the world and how she is likely to behave in the future.

  Clearly, Phoebe is a people person. She enjoys parties, makes new friends in all varieties of situations and never lacks for companionship. This makes her extroverted. Her power of premonition is obviously intuitive in nature, and even without using her power, she demonstrates an ability to understand what people mean as opposed to what they say. Unlike her sister Prue’s rigid adherence to procedure and analysis based on the bottom line, Phoebe is swayed by emotion. She does things because they feel good and helps others because she feels their pain—quite literally, while she had the gift of empathy. Finally, she is perceptive, taking in and relating back information without making value judgments about the nature of what she is seeing.

  This would make Phoebe’s type an Extroverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiver (ENFP), sometimes known as a Visionary or Champion. The defining traits of this personality type are an uncanny understanding of others’ motives and likely behavior, a vision of life as being fraught with possibilities for great good or great evil and a desire for authenticity in all that they do.

  The high-level sketch of this personality type certainly seems to match the main thrust of Phoebe’s character. But that might just be a coincidence. We need to delve deeper, uncovering the inner Phoebe, to determine if this is an accurate representation.

  Visionaries often go through many different jobs and careers, approaching fields of study through obscure back doors and taking roundabout ways to get where they’re going. They may seem directionless or lacking in purpose to others, but Visionaries know that everything they learn will eventually find an application and tend to resist limiting their options by choosing a career until they feel they have adequately explored the possibilities—usually some time in their mid or late twenties. Once they find an idea-oriented career focusing on human possibilities, especially one that offers plenty of variety, challenge and independence, they will become enthusiastic to the point of telling the entire world about what they do.

  Phoebe bounced around a variety of jobs: hostess at a restaurant, lounge psychic at a hotel, assistant at an auction house, real estate agent and consultant for the police. She even boosted her intelligence briefly to try and get a job at a dot-com company. When she finally enrolled in college again, she started off with only two core classes and seven electives, unwilling to commit to a course of study too quickly. And taking on the role of an advice columnist because she’s the innocent you’re protecting was certainly an unusual approach to landing a job. Billboards, radio and TV ads, as well as syndication of her column, certainly tell the entire world what she does.

  Another aspect of Visionaries is that they live their lives in accord with their values and strive always to achieve inner peace. When giving testimony about the Guardian demon’s attack on Darryl, Phoebe was the one who protested that it was wrong to lie in a courtroom, even though her lie protected the sisters’ secret. Her rage at a restaurant’s mistreatment of breast-feeding Piper prompted her Lady Godiva–inspired ride through the streets of San Francisco to raise public awareness of the situation and force a change. And while her desire for inner peace helped her share a house with her sisters and mediate the initial conflicts between Paige and Piper, it more often prompted a need to escape scenes of conflict. Even before the show began, she’d run away from Prue’s belief that Phoebe slept with her fiancé and nearly ended the Power of Three when she ran away from her painful situation with Cole by embracing the life of a mermaid. Most drastically, her longing for the vision of a world at complete and total peace made her crusade for the Avatars’ plan to create a utopia until she convinced her sisters to go along with the plan.

  Finally, most Visionaries are enthusiastic, loving people who are almost constantly in love with someone or some new idea. Overcome with the possibilities of the new relationship or idea, they see only the positive aspects. They tend to throw caution to the wind, overlooking details about their love interest that would give a more cautious person pause, romanticizing and idealizing their partners and making superhuman efforts to rationalize discrepancies between reality and their imagined ideal. When flaws in the relationship become too obvious to ignore any longer, Visionaries feel betrayed out of proportion to the situation because of all the energy they have invested in perfecting the relationship. Swinging to the opposite extreme, they overgeneralize their partners’ faults and failings, so that a loved one who once was considered incapable of doing any wrong becomes incapable of doing anything right.

  The parallels between that description and Phoebe’s relationship with Cole are obvious: in the beginning, Phoebe rationalized away all signs of Cole’s demonic nature and, after their divorce, in “Happily Ever After” she swung to the other extreme, insisting that Cole was to blame for everything the evil witch did and refusing to listen to his warnings about Adam. However, you can see the same trends with regard to ideas. Phoebe embraced her witchcraft powers with abandon, seeing only the positive opportunities while her sisters pointed out all of the possible drawbacks to lives filled with magic. And her overwhelming dedication to her new role as aunt after Wyatt was born nearly cost her everything she’d worked so hard to achieve in her career.

  But the point of a personality analysis is not simply to understand who a person is. An accurate understanding does more than explain what someone has done in the past; it allows you to predict a person’s future behavior. Given that Charmed is a character-driven show, what troubles can we expect Phoebe’s personality to create in future episodes? More importantly, what pitfalls could Phoebe avoid, or at least minimize the pain from, if she had a better understanding of her personality type?

  Visionaries are prone to overextending themselves, making too many commitments and starting too many projects because they fear missing something exciting. This results in a need to take time out and relax before they burn out. We saw this in season seven, when Phoebe took a hiatus from her advice column. This struggle is likely to become
more pronounced, resulting in dropped commitments at work or failed or near-disastrous demon encounters, until she finds a new means of relaxing.

  Visionaries also tend to attract an entourage of followers who look to them for guidance and leadership. We saw a brief preview of this when the Vortex demon sent Phoebe into an alternate reality where she was wildly famous. In that reality, she faced both an obsessed fan and a reader who blamed her for destroying his marriage when his wife took her advice. We may see something similar again, but in reality this time. Either outcome would shake Phoebe’s confidence that writing the advice column was what she was meant to do and precipitate a crisis of conscience.

  Another common trait of Visionaries is a low boredom threshold and a dislike of repetition. They appreciate change for change’s sake, often finding new and novel ways to improve on processes. However, they’re equally prone to breaking processes that were running smoothly. This trait may manifest itself in Phoebe as a series of amusing or intriguing side effects when she tries new combinations of magic. She also may be in for trouble at work if she changes the format, structure or content of her column too drastically for Elise’s taste.

  Because they perceive the world intuitively, Visionaries often assign symbolic meanings to events and circumstances. Under stress, these symbolic meanings tend to turn dark and foreboding and lead to crippling feelings of being an impostor. The Visionary often blames a scapegoat for their loss of identity. This sounds like a perfect scenario for the fear demon Barbas to return, possibly tricking Phoebe into attacking an innocent, one of her sisters or even one of her nephews.

  Visionaries are often procrastinators and care more about the people and feelings involved in projects than with the facts and figures. This could lead to trouble for Phoebe if she waits until the last minute to hand in a column, allowing key information to be printed that is incorrect. The Bay Mirror could be sued for libel, or readers acting on her column’s information could cause injury to themselves or others, again prompting guilt and a feeling that she is a fraud or unworthy of her column. Phoebe can address these feelings of fraud by gaining credentials that are publicly recognized as giving her the right and ability to offer advice, such as the doctorate in psychology she chose to pursue in late season seven.