#el and orion

[ao-ihinata]

El : Orion and I are not dating !!

Aadhya : Everyone who thought El and Orion were dating raise your hand

New York, London, Shanghai, Mumbai, Dubai Zanzibar, Toronto and every other enclave kid, the losers, and Orion raising their hand :

El : Orion, put your hand down or so help me ...

[stinkled00t]

my favorite kind of straight ships are the ones that feel gay

[queenofheartsdeservedbetter]

I need more books like Uprooted guys...

[camo-wolf]

Awww this cover is so cute!

[lovesick-joey]

late night doodles

[1choclo]

Orion would be easy to kidnap :P

Crow belong @itsxroxannex 😋😋

Part two

[izzenithal]

this is their whole dynamic and i love them for it

[evilhorse]

Cosmic Odyssey house ad (circa October 1988)

[a-rayneart]

I REALLY loved A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik and will probably have more art as I work my way through the books

[rotationalsymmetry]

Imagine being Orion in A Deadly Education.

People are mostly not that interesting to you. They don't like you so much as they like what you can do. Maybe at some point you tried to really connect with someone, and it didn't go that well, so you didn't keep trying. Fighting mals though? You're good at that. It makes sense to you, unlike most of the things people do. It's rewarding -- intrinsically rewarding -- and people seem to be happy that you're doing it? Because they don't like doing it but it benefits them. So, basically no downside.

And you go off to school and it's full of mals, and people think you're great because you fight the mals, and you ignore them as best you can when you're not fighting mals for them. (You're polite, your mother always wanted you to be polite and you don't want people to be mad at you. But you don't do anything beyond being polite.) And people seem to think you're doing a good thing. So. It's ok. It's good enough. The world makes sense, more or less. This is what you're for.

And one day you see a soul eater go under another student's door, and you destroy it like you always do. Except this person is mad at you. Which makes no sense. No one's ever been mad at you before, not for fighting mals. So apparently you did something wrong even though you only did what you always do which has always been right before. But you guess you should probably make it up to her? So when she says she needs to go to the shop at dinner you offer to go with her, why not?

Except somehow she's mad at you again. So you have to make it up to her even more now, you guess?

(You don't like it when people are mad at you, but you know what to do when people are mad at you. You Make It Up To Them, usually by doing whatever they tell you to or fighting a mal or both, and then they stop being mad at you. You prefer to understand why they are mad at you, but most of the time it makes no sense, and you know what to do when it makes no sense to you why someone is mad at you.)

So you guard her door while she fixes it. Which takes her a weirdly long time. You've just taken down several mimics, you're bursting with mana, you'd give her some if she asked. Mana has never been a scarce resource for you; on some level it hasn't really occurred to you that it could be a scarce resource for anyone else. People aren't that interesting to you, you don't think about them much, except when someone tells you to, like your mother making you do flash cards of other kids' names. But she doesn't ask, and she doesn't cheat either, she does things the long and hard way, which makes a third thing all coming from the same person that doesn't mesh with your pre-existing worldview. She's fascinating.

And then she pulls on your mana like it's nothing and she's even more fascinating. How did she do that? Is she a malificer? (Is that why she keeps being so mean to you, when nobody is ever mean to you?) What's going on?

And you've never voluntarily fought alongside anyone else before, but she's good to fight with. She's annoying, but she does also point out things you missed or didn't know.

And she stands up for you, in a way that nobody has ever stood up for you before. She's not nice. She's the opposite of nice. But it's starting to dawn on you that being nice is not the same as something else that seems like it should go with being nice. And if El is not nice to you but is that other thing, maybe some other people who are nice to you are...not that other thing to you?

It's a lot to think about.

Anyways. You like her. You're not very interested in people. But you are interested in El.

And then you have the best day of your life, when you've gotten to take on more mals and scarier mals than you've ever taken on before, and you did it and you were good at it, and you kind of didn't want to leave but you were supposed to leave because that was how the Mission worked, and then you were about to die because you missed the bell and the cleansing fires had started and there was nowhere to go, but at least you were going to die next to El.

But she didn't think she was going to die, and she cast a wall of mortal flame (who does that?) and it worked as a firebreak and you didn't die and no one had ever saved you before. That wasn't how the world worked. Who was this person who kept breaking the rules of how the world worked like they didn't even apply to her?

(And then you look around and she isn't there and you kissed her earlier when you thought you were both going to die, and she, uh, didn't react well and oh no, what if you've ruined everything what if you like her but she doesn't like you like that what if she won't want to be around you any more? What if the one interesting person in the entire world doesn't think you are interesting?) (it'd be ok, right? It was ok before.) (it wouldn't be ok. So maybe it wasn't ok before either.)

[elizabysmal]

I’m about a third of the way though the third book in the scholomance series and I’ve been rotating these two at 350 degrees in my brain for two weeks

[ao-ihinata]

Orion conflicted because he can't tell if he wants to consume el in a romantic/sexual " I want us to become one " sort of way or as food sort of way because el is the equivalent of organic free range, raised stress free, cruelty free chicken

[jadempress]

Imagine you're in school, fall in love, and get pregnant. He comes from wealth, so you think you and your baby are going to live a nice cushy life with your new man. Then he gets mauled by a bear. He's eaten right in front of you. You grieve for him. You go to his family, hoping they'll take you in, but they're awful and they want to harm your baby. So you end up raising her alone. It's tough being a single mother, but you do your best to love and protect her. She grows up and goes to school. The school is known for its bear attacks, but what can you do? It's a good school, and you can only protect her so much. Eventually your baby has to fend for herself. You can't help but worry though. The cell service is terrible but you manage to reach her and warn her to stay away from bears. She seems happy though, and even tells you she's made friends. Finally she graduates, and you're so happy she's safe. She brings her boyfriend home to meet you. It's the bear that ate your boyfriend.

Anyway, that's what happened to Gwen Higgins of the schomance series.

[queenofheartsdeservedbetter]

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo reminds me a little the Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, WHICH IS PERFECT, I'M GONNA CRY ✨

[jalytown]

POV: you’re a mal and you just interrupted their study date session (rip)

(mini-rant and bonus under the cut)

i arise from the dead to share this because I am so brainrotted and also so goddam DESPERATE!!! I NEED people to read the scholomance series by naomi novik pls pls PLS i love them so much i'm actually going INSANE

also i tried out new brushes and a new way of coloring for this so idk how i'm feeling about it but i had fun i guess?? here's the flat colors before rendering because i like how it looks as well hehe

anyway i'm going to slowly spiral by myself about this series :DDD I NEED MORE PEOPLE TO TALK TO ABOUT IT AAA

[ace-and-ranty]

But my favorite Unreliable Narrator El moment continues to be Chloe, the Cassandra.

Nothing will ever beat El getting told, to her face, that something's wrong with Orion, only to continue ignoring all mounting evidence well into Book Three.