#galadriel scholomance

[chill-reading-books]

Okay so, I finished the first scholomance book. Mom gives spooky warning about staying away from Orion, oooo! I'm also 25% into the Last Graduate and- word of Galadriel's power is kinda spreading and- I think it would be really funny if as graduation approaches more and more people try to join her alliance, and she wouldn't really turn most people away, and in the end her alliance is just "the whole school". I think that would be funny.

[maelancoli]

i'm kind of late to this but i just finished reading the scholomance trilogy by naomi novik and i feel like it is such an underrated urban fantasy?? taking the chosen one trope and turning it on its head with a fmc who has been prophesied to bring death and destruction, who is imbued with terrible power, but cannot even properly use said power to solve any of her obstacles because it would obliterate them and her soul. it takes a tired trope and the idea of an 'overpowered mary sue' and throws it back in your face by showing how all the power and destiny in the world is useless against a system filled with corruption that has burdened you with an easy way out (evil/destructive magic) that you can't take so now you have to work twice as hard as everyone else just to do simple, constructive spells instead of flicking your wrist and being done with it.

[izzenithal]

this is their whole dynamic and i love them for it

[nepttunnee]

i just finished a deadly education and let me just say i adore el and orion. i love how they fall for each other but for the exact opposite reason of the way other ppl see them. el looks at loved for being a knightin shining armor who can do no wrong orion lake and goes. hes actually cringe and fail. i like that in a man. and orion lake looks at weapon of mass destruction knows multiple languages to roast you galadriel and goes shes actually kind of nice. she shares her food with me. i want to marry her i think. thinking abt them

[emily-e-draws]

wip of the faves... at any given moment I am thinking about the scholomance trilogy

(preview from the latest batch of sketches going up on my patreon!)

[ace-and-ranty]

also like. I love Orion as like. Person who isn’t a person. Child who was born dead. The whole section of the story where he starts straight up subjecting people to eternal torment for attacking El rings strange in contrast with everything else until you remember that his heroics were the byproduct of hunting maleficaria for mana, his actual goal. Guy who’s whole personality was built over a sinkhole that finally caved in. Lost all his morals

Ooohhh, I feel like this is a good time to use this quote from Naomi's AMA...

"(...) Once Orion does register El, he fairly quickly realizes that she is the kind of person he wants to be. Everyone around Orion constantly is telling him he's a hero, and meanwhile he's mostly just doing what comes incredibly naturally to him and thinking "this is great, I get to hunt all the time, and I'm a hero! :D" and meeting El and being forced to look at the system that has made him a hero and its unfairnesses makes him start to realize that he wants to truly be a hero, that this is something that he wants to choose, the hard and moral path (...)"

And also this quote from The Golden Enclaves...

“It’s both of you,” Shanfeng said. “You, and the child Ophelia made. The boy we heard about from our own children as they came out of the Scholomance each year of the last four. The boy who saved the lives of others, who took no payment, and paid no attention to which enclave they were from. Ophelia got—not the hero she wanted, but the hero she deserved.”

And of course this delicious nugget from The Lat Graduate:

The words are even engraved on the stairway railings and the upper molding of the library reading room, those precise words: to offer sanctuary and protection to all the wise-gifted children of the world, only absolutely nobody ever took them seriously. (...) Except, apparently, the Scholomance itself.

Orion and the Scholomance as parallels is absolute crack to me. Selfish machinations of powerful enclavers; run on the death of countless children; and told a beautiful golden lie that they believed in so hard, they built that lie into their true selves.

(With a little help from your friendly neighborhood mass-destruction witch :)

[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.

[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

[fullmetalfisting]

ok I'm rereading the Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik and I'm at the part in the second book where Orion says, "Even my mom and dad, they always thought something was wrong with me....they always thought I was weird."

And I'm like. Can you imagine being a woman who gave herself a pseudo-abortion to create a child who was a ghastly, already-dead, always-hungry monster and then incubating him in your womb and raising him like a Normal Boy™ and then being like, "It's really weird that this nuclear weapon I made and impregnated myself with shows no interest in anything other than being a nuclear weapon. I should make him feel guilty about his lack of interest in this XBox I bought him."

[witchyamethyst]

I love El so much because she's never nice and she never has to becone nice as a part of her character arc. Sarcasim isn't just a tacked on aspect to prove she's "not like other girls" it's core aspect of her that gives her a genuinely witty and entertaining voice that's fun to read.

[starling-illu]

I'm reading Scholomance and their friendship is v important to me

[chill-reading-books]

Oookay. I've made it just into the ninth chapter in A Deadly Education. Spoilers ahead!

Now, what was that prophecy exactly again?... Laying waste to enclaves or something like that? At this point, I think that may come true in a rather different way! (And honestly I look forward to seeing it)

So, El has slain the maw-mouth now. She's absolutely an incredible person, working so hard to not hurt anyone and never touch malificing at all, being so loyal with those who worked with her, and then fighting this horrifying thing against ALL her self-interest.

Just now, Aadhya figured it out and confronted her about it, and El blurted out that she actually doesn't want to join any enclave at all.

All the ways the enclavers are privileged at the expense of their unaffiliated peers have been slowly built up over the course of this book so far, as well as El's resentment of them. Now, she gets to have an existential crisis about it, yay!

I see now how thematic this book is about social inequality and exploitative systems where the luxury of some is built off the misery and danger and hurt and death of others. And not in a dystopian way either! It's real people, all seeking safety and security and comfort, and falling into these self-sustaining patterns that perpetuate an enormous divide.

Anyway, I suspect El is not going to truly destroy the people, but upend and overturn and tear down all their comfortable systems with their built-in "acceptable loss" of the outsiders and the less powerful.

That's my prediction as I'm in the middle of reading her reflections on why she just can't stand the enclaves anymore, despite fighting enormously with her mother to try and join one when she was younger.

[ao-ihinata]

The cruel Prince trilogy 🤝 A deadly education trilogy

Book 1 : Iconic first kiss

Book 2 : BETRAYAL !!

Book 3 : " When I said I wanted to kill him I didn't mean it literally !! "

[isitfanon]

I speed-read The Scholomance trilogy in 4 days and I have never felt more like I've been run over by a train than right now

[enlightningbugs]

Comics about A Deadly Education - the 2020 school year

It’s fun to think about pop culture and high school seniors speedrunning the “am I old” crisis

[foldingfittedsheets]

@aridotdash took a commission slot to get El, from the Scholomance series! Here's 20 minutes of a tertiary order entity and her familiar, Precious. (If you haven't read these books, I highly recommend them).

You too can get some sale art if you wanna check out my$20 for 20 minute sale! (There's also non-timed slots here if you want something polished). Just shoot me a DM! Commissions are currently going to my betrothed and I going on an unofficial honeymoon, so funds support the gay agenda!