#scholomance

[ace-and-ranty]

In retrospect, the scene of El going down the library stacks trying to get to Orion is so funny, because. She's doing such grim, survivalist, cold mental gymnastics to try and make sense of the school behavior. Over the course of it, El thinks the Scholomance is:

Trying to keep her from helping Orion so it can finish killing him

Accidentally loosing an invaluable, literally priceless, world-changing treasure to her in the attempt

Bribing her with an opportunity to show off, if only she lets the Mawmouth go devour all the little children

When in reality, what it was doing was:

Trying to keep El away from the Mawmouth, because its fucking job is to protect her.

Giving her a book that's already been paid for by her parents. It is literally just handing over her inheritance.

Asking for her help killing the Mawmouth, so it doesn't go devour all the little children.

It's. It's so funny. El is basically a cat trying to eat a piece of plastic, fighting against its helpless owner that just wants to help. She accused the school of trying to kill Orion whilst it was busy trying to save her fucking life. Herding teenagers: the world's most thankless job.

[daisukitoo]

My thanks to folks who have been recommending The Scholomance series by Naomi Novik to me. I cannot find the post describing it as "if Harry Potter were better written," but that was the one that finally got me to read A Deadly Education. The book starts strong and keeps getting better.

I can see why people say it is hard to describe the books without describing everything. A pleasant aspect of the writing is how it builds on itself. Groundwork is laid in one chapter and explored later on; El is not quite an unreliable narrator, but she can relate facts while avoiding their significance or misinterpreting their motivations and emotional valence. For example, she says that her mother is a hippie crystal chick; we later learn that her mother is The Hippie Crystal Chick, actually world famous in her specialty, and El has been hiding that connection from both the narrative and her classmates for three years. I am waiting for all the groundwork on Patience and Tolerance to pay off in the next book or two.

Spinning Silver is probably a better book than A Deadly Education, but A Deadly Education is a faster and more compelling read. It is perhaps easier genre fiction, while Spinning Silver and Uprooted are full-on literature.

[erosia-rhodes]

It took me 14 months to write my fic, but it only took 2 months to turn it into this:

That’s right, y’all. I learned the art of bookbinding. This is the dark path fic writing can lead you down. I wanted a copy of my 220K-word monstrosity on my shelf, but paying to have it bound is illegal. (Damn you, intellectual property law!) When I learned I’d have to make it myself, I was like, are you fucking kidding me? No way. That is insane. Then 24 hours later I was like, okay, I guess I’m learning bookbinding? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Then I started to enjoy it! Rejecting a life of crime gave me a new hobby. And it does look nice sitting on the shelf next to the Scholomance series that inspired it.

It really is gorgeous to me, mostly because I created the whole thing from concept to hardcase. I wrote the story, created the typeset, designed the cover, and bound it—all by myself! I feel a bit like Gwen Higgins creating that healing patch for El: tilling the soil, planting the linen seeds, spinning it into thread, and then weaving it into a patch. (Okay, I didn’t make the paper or the ink or the heat transfer vinyl, but we have to set boundaries somewhere.)

It was rather exhausting though. I feel like I’ve completed a never-ending quest full of side missions that each required a different set of skills and required me to obtain a wide variety of obscure supplies. I also spent a bunch of money that I don’t really have, which makes this the most expensive book I’ve ever owned BY FAR, which is ridiculous because all the flaws in its construction undoubtedly decrease its value. It cost so much that I feel obligated to bind a whole bunch of more books to bring down the average cost per project. That, or I’ll have to eat all the supplies instead of buying groceries next month.

I plan on writing a series of posts about how I made this thing, including all my trips to the hardware store, the fraudster on Amazon who sent me weird paper, and my newfound love for craft knives and bone folders. When I do, I’ll post the links down below.

In the meantime, if anyone has an urge to bind a copy of my fic themselves, here are links to zip files of the signatures and the cover images: Spellbreaker signatures | Spellbreaker cover images

Oh, and here’s a link to the fic on AO3. Spellbreaker: A Scholomance Sequel by Erosia Rhodes. Enjoy!

[pangaeaseas]

That's pretty utterly baffling to me. I guess they get it from the golden summoning thing but its so so clear that that was an honest accident and that the whole reason it worked out is that gwen is a great mother who raises the chosen one to BE the chosen one.

Or they don't like that she has a character outside her daughter. ...

I really love the character of Gwen Higgins, she is so lovely. Like she's El's mother and she's an excellent mother, but she also has a whole personality and well-thought-out ethical system and she's willing to donate her time and magic and ancient sacred grove to help Orion when she knows there's something terribly wrong about him, because El loves him and she has an ethical commitment to helping people. She's a mother but also a person! And it's Gwen's ethics, the ethics she imparted to her daughter but developed herself, that will save the world. It's a completely different version of the mother's love than other works. What Gwen does as a mother and human being is what makes her important, not merely the bare fact of motherhood.

[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

[cucurbitapuella]

I think I loved El Higgins so much bc she really digs deep into a core character trait I find so powerful and fascinating and that's selfishness as fuel for selflessness. The ones who look around and tell the world, don't you dare touch that one, They're Mine, and pour all of that and all of themselves into protecting what's Theirs, and also btw fuck off that one is Also Theirs, in fact, Everyone Is.

(See also: Tiffany Aching, Beka Cooper).

The Last Graduate is most obviously about this (El has her alliance who are Hers and then despite her best efforts she has her pack of freshmen who are, ugh, Hers, and eventually must grudgingly open up to realizing that now absolutely everyone is Hers and she's getting all of them out there, fuck you very much), but then. Then! The Golden Enclaves shows the struggle of that kind of selfishness, of saying these ones are mine and fuck the cost, I will pay it (off of the backs of those ones). Because the modern enclaves ARE paying it, because their children are Theirs and what wouldn't you do? (A lot, actually, it turns out, if you had to do it with your own hands, eyes open and ears unblocked)

The way that most of the contributors to an Enclave need the wool pulled over their eyes (literally!!) so they cannot even register that the gift horse HAS teeth, because then they might see what horrible gore is stuck in them. They just want to save their children, and the cost is so high - but it's so removed, so, is it really even real? And El's the cosmic foil to that, the one who looks at it and goes "no, that's real. You have to pay it yourselves you can't defer the cost." Even before she works out that the price is higher than the first sacrifice (which is. Horrifying enough on its own), she's desperately trying to get to one of Hers and she can't pay the cost to save Liu on her own, she needs them all to buy in, and she taps into everyone's collective selfishnes and gives them an out and they have to work for it but they take it and they do the work! They pay up front! They try to make some fucked up reparations!

And that selfishness, of El's audacity to even dare question the system, but also most people's basic selfishness (wanting to keep yourself and your children safe and to do it without all the blood on your hands) - that's what's going to see them all through, together.

[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!)

[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

[kaetor]

You're already dead. But stay anyway

cried while reading the end of the golden enclaves so obviously I immediately got to drawing. everyone go read the scholomance series by naomi novik

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Coronabeth Tridentarius/Judith Duteros- The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir

Galadriel “El” Higgins/Liesel- The Scholomance Series by Naomi Novik

Viv/Tandri- Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree

Tommy Fairfield/Carter Batudev- Crushing It and Winging It by Jen Desmarais

[hmslusitania]

JUST REALISED the conclusion of the last graduate is very intensely “alright gang to save this school we’re gonna have to put on the best talent show the Scholomance has ever seen”

[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]

MORE SCHOLOMANCE. MORE SCHOLOMANCE!

ATTENTION EVERYONE, MORE SCHOLOMANCE!!!

[theskyexists]

The upset about the poly elements in the golden enclaves is especially funny when one considers that the first established romantic relationship ever mentioned in a deadly education is a classic two boys fighting over a girl love triangle that turned into a trio and alliance

[tanoraqui]

I’ve started reading the Scholomance books—okay, I’m 2/3 of the way through the first one—and my favorites parts so far are

How utterly completely fucking bizarre El and Orion’s relationship and every single interaction in it looks to every single outsider

Aadhya’s “fuck it, we ball” attitude toward El

[pangaeaseas]

gotta love the structure of scholomance. it is in my opinion such a well structured trilogy. now i've read a lot of this author's work inc. most of temeraire (gotta read spinning silver and uprooted at some point!) and I know that often it doesn't follow the most predictable pacing--twists come when you don't necessarily expect them and the series could have gone rocketing off in any number of directions. but this isn't temeraire and it isn't a novella, it's a trilogy, which demands careful thought to what function each of the three books serves, and in my opinion does this very well. (actually reminds me somewhat of the hunger games but not going to elaborate and not a perfect comparison)

so. book one. book one must do something very crucial in any trilogy which is that it must set up the main conflict, set up the characters, and most crucially sell us on the premise. and A Deadly Education knocks the premise out of the park, even as it sows the seeds of destabilizing that same premise. It also gives us a book-length character arc that begins El and Orion's growth. It makes the rules of the world, so the rest of the trilogy can break them.

book two: we know what the scholomance is. We expect the main conflict to be El and Orion having to graduate, because we've just spent a whole book doing that. Personally I was expecting some kind of twist with the graduation, but not the scale of that twist: I expected the first twist, not the second. anyway. so book two serves the important purpose of UNDOING the premise. we know how this world normally functions. Now let's change it--and also get El and Orion to the places they need to be. This also means that their relationship has its honeymoon period, because book three needs them to have loved each other.

book three: we're changing the world. of course not the way we expect. and a good deal of the lore info needs to be dropped here because they are finally out of the initial premise, the scholomance itself, and now we need to see the rest of this society. (and then tear it down). and also resolve the plot and character threads dangling since book one, such as the prophecy. the main premise has been altered and executed, it now must be expanded. and then it has to come to some sort of resolution. happy ending, except the work isn't done, and it will be the rest of their lives (take that harry potter epilogue). there is no main villain to be defeated the villain is like their magic system. the selfish nature of humanity. everyone lives, because this whole series is about no one deserving to die.

each book/act does its job very well in making the series work.

ok so this isn't particularly groundbreaking or coherent meta but I just love this series and I love how the structure works so :/ here you go.