#anyways. magic school is a hard setup to avoid bc it feels so intuitive to a modern reader | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

advancedscurvy · 1 day ago

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i still want to tear my hair out thinking about how hard it is to escape the like. "boarding school/university" for magic sort of vibe when youre trying to functionally create a fantasy world from a time period where things like that weren't common practice. witch hat atelier (shirohama kamome guide me) does it well by using a guild/tradesman and apprentice approach and i like. like more power to her. but as i dabble in the concept of monastic/abbey styled situations alongside this, it's like. you start realizing how firmly entrenched magic school is in the public fantasy conscience

#and not even just because of That One Series #earthsea does it. kingkiller chronicles does it. diana wynne jones did it iirc. IM PLAYING A PATHFINDER CAMPAIGN BASED ON THE WINDING CIRCL #like it's easy to view peoples educations and trade experience before they were independent as something obtained through public school #and logically that would be the case for magic for those with aptitude (in my universe. everyone.)#but it's missing the point which is that for much of history education was not done in classrooms in this way #you had a guild. a trade. a master. maybe tutors #or you were part of an order as an adult #and that's the main character's situation. she becomes an adult and joins what's basically an abbey but for magic.#but she's also sort of an instructor?#anyways. magic school is a hard setup to avoid bc it feels so intuitive to a modern reader #school feels natural to us #it would have made a medieval person very itchy #mine

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