The Scholomance - Tumblr Posts

Alright more scholomance posts. One of my favorite things about these books is how they set up the choice to do the good, heroic things. Every time that someone is faced with the choice to do something heroic or selfless, it’s put up against something easier that everyone else is doing.

When you get stabbed in the gut, you can use malia to fight off your attacker no problem, and no one would blame you for “cheating a little”.

When everything you’ve been waiting for is right in front of you and a terrible monster is behind you, no one would blame you for simply not fighting the monster.

Helping someone with magic means using the mana you’ve been producing and setting yourself back. Walking with someone to the shop means putting yourself at risk from mals so they have someone to cover for them. And in every case, no one would blame you for choosing not to.

I just appreciate that a big theme of this book is to simply be kind, but they never make it look easy. No one would blame you for choosing what’s easier, and that makes the moments where people choose to be kind or selfless that much more impactful.

“There’s no such thing as normal people,” I said, a desperate flailing. “There’s just people, and some of them are miserable, and some of them are happy, and you’ve the same right to be happy as any of them—no more and no less.”

Naomi Novik // The Last Graduate

I imagine it’s always easier to do something monstrous if you can convince yourself you aren’t going to, up to the last minute, until you do.

— Naomi Novik, The Golden Enclaves

She says it’s too easy to call people evil instead of their choices, and that lets people justify making evil choices, because they convince themselves that it’s okay because they’re still good people overall, inside their own heads.

Naomi Novik, A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1)

And yes, fine, but I think after a certain number of evil choices, it’s reasonable shorthand to decide that someone’s an evil person who oughtn’t have the chance to make any more choices. And the more power someone has, the less slack they ought to be given.

Naomi Novik, A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1)

I think one of the reasons why I love El as a protagonist so much is that yes, she never uses her powers to hurt anyone, and yes, she saves people’s lives constantly. But at the same time, she’s portrayed as a bit of a misanthrope- she doesn’t like most people (and has good reasons for that), is constantly angry, is probably the biggest cynic in the books… I just have so much appreciation for the fact that she isn’t shown as particularly noble or kind or any of those traditionally “heroic” traits, but is so fundamentally good. It isn’t natural to her or just part of her personality- she has to choose it, again and again and again. El is such a good example that being “good” or “heroic” isn’t a character trait, it’s something that you choose, and there’s no excuse for not choosing it.

Throw in the way Ophelia is described as being everything El knows she could be, if she ever went maleficer, and it makes an incredible comparison. Ophelia is how it would look like for El to write off goodness/kindness as something for someone else who has different choices or different ambitions. She literally wrote off her anima- her own conscience- as something unnecessary given her position in the enclave and what she wanted to accomplish. El and Ophelia both have immense power, both have capacity to do terrible things to accomplish their goals, but one chooses power and the other chooses people.

Even at the end of the books, Ophelia gets a fucking promotion, even though everyone knows what she’s done. El, on the other hand, is described as being a bit aimless, realizing her dream needs to be accomplished by someone else, and needing a lot of therapy. She wasn’t even able to stop the use/creation of maw mouths outright- compared to Ophelia, her goals remain unaccomplished. And El, being the angry bitter person she is, takes that with a massive fuck you and keeps choosing the right thing with all the spite and hope in the world. These books are a testament to what it means to choose kindness and it’s done so, so well thanks to El.

Just,,, non-traditionally good characters. They mean everything to me.

They don’t have any reason to care about us. We’re not their children. We’re the other gazelles, all of us trying to outrun the same pack of lions. And if we happen to be faster than their children, more powerful, their children will get eaten. If not while we’re in here, when we get out, and we decide that we want some of the luxury they have tucked into those enclaves for ourselves. If we’re too strong, we might even threaten their own lives. So they shouldn’t care about us. Not until we sign on the dotted line. That’s only sensible. You can’t blame people for wanting their own kids to live. I understand it, every last bit of it.

Naomi Novik, A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1)

"People are fundamentally good if you give them the chance" and "people would commit the worst of atrocities for the sake of their children" and "people would rather turn a blind eye to crimes" and "you have to give people a chance to be better" and "being good is making the right choice over and over again, not just one time" and "it's not easy making that right choice and you won't always recognize when it is the time" and "what is good for your children has a cost for other people's children" and "the choices our forefathers made still have repercussions to this day" and "it is our duty to stand up to oppression and ignorance and apathy" and and and

I just finished reading The Last Graduate (spoiler ahead) over the course of a day. And can I just say?

I’m fine and it’s fine and I’m sure everything is fiiiiiiine. I’m sure it’s fine!

Scholomance update! I’m on page 248 of The Golden Enclaves. Reaction under the cut.

😭😭😭

That’s more or less it.

"People are fundamentally good if you give them the chance" and "people would commit the worst of atrocities for the sake of their children" and "people would rather turn a blind eye to crimes" and "you have to give people a chance to be better" and "being good is making the right choice over and over again, not just one time" and "it's not easy making that right choice and you won't always recognize when it is the time" and "what is good for your children has a cost for other people's children" and "the choices our forefathers made still have repercussions to this day" and "it is our duty to stand up to oppression and ignorance and apathy" and and and

Happy (belated) Asexuality awareness day. Here are some of my favourite Ace headcannons:

Obi-Wan Kenobi (Star Wars)

Ryan Sinclair (Doctor Who)

Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games)

Paul Matthews (The Guy Who Didn't like Musicals)

El (Scholomance)

Magnus Chase (Magnus Chase)

The Doctor (Doctor Who)

Elyan and Leon (Merlin)

and that's just some of them :)

The scholomance is dark academia and the academy is light academia. This is a fact.

just finished The Golden Enclaves... one thing is bugging me.... so is Orion Lake's hair actually silver? I always thought that was weird from the very first time his hair was mentioned and possibly an early sign/foreshadowing that something extra supernatural was going on with him. Is he super platinum blond, super prematurely grey, or just born actually silver haired like LOTR elves can be?

which, given that El's full name is Galadriel, perhaps that last guess is close to the truth and it is a LOTR reference also.

Do you have any opinions on Scholomance?

I do! I like it a lot. I really enjoyed all three books, blitzed through them easily and was much more excited to see how the plots unfolded than I'm used to these days, as a jaded adult, and I also really appreciated them as works of craft.

Especially the first one, I spent the whole time being all 'wow!' at how simple it was. So easy to read, but no waste. You really need to know what you're doing, to get that kind of pared-down elegance of form to work and still fit so much content in.

Like these are dense, there's a fantastic stylistic minimalism that allows El's character all the space it needs to breathe by making absolutely every other thing and person in the whole novel also do character work for her, which is exactly where the first person voice shines.

Also great use of character perspective to make the pacing feel really natural, so the fact that the first book takes three weeks, the second book takes one year, and the third book is like. Five or so incredibly stressful days spread out over the course of a few weeks? Doesn't feel imbalanced.

I actually got distracted from the story a few times by noticing the strength of Novik's technique. 😂 This is a me problem, in itself it's the opposite of distracting. Very low-profile.

I think the Scholomance is a great example of how far you can go in specfic when you aren't cringing from the label 'derivative,' because the Scholomance books feel very fresh ad clean specifically because nothing in them is concerned with standing out as 'original,' whatever that's supposed to mean, only with being well-executed and suitable to its task.

Hm, maybe that's where Liesel was born, the intersection of the efficient narrative style and the vast proportion of the story that concerns the maximization of utility and the instrumentalization of persons by themselves and others, and the forces that incentivize these behaviors. Or maybe she's just the narrative counterweight to Orion 'Head Empty' Lake lmao. How's that for a principle of balance, Galadriel?

I really did enjoy how beautifully it was laid out, over and over, in dozens of shades of humanity, how no matter where you go in an exploitative system almost everyone is being driven by the same survival instincts.

Because I don't think I've ever seen made so cleanly clear why you just can't expect any person or small group of people, no matter their level of goodwill or status, to unmake one of these systems from the inside; how it's not a matter of people being bad but of every single person being very...small.

And then not retreating into the idea of a person who is Big coming and breaking the cruel system from the outside as some kind of panacea, because 1) that is terrible, even if it's necessary and done in the best way possible and 2) that's not a sustainable answer to anything. Getting a balance between the protagonist being able to effect change and not subscribing to the great man theory of history can be really tricky!

Also did I mention, I love El, and I love most of the cast, even the dreadful ones. How am I going around with this many feelings about Li Shanfeng who doesn't appear until the actual climax?

The romance murdered me a bit, but it took up no more space than it absolutely needed to do its job, and I respect that. Also I appreciated Orion as a love interest; Novik has a slight record at this point of a version of that style of male love interest who's like a caricature of Mr. Darcy but old, which was shaping up to be my least favorite thing about her body of work.

...Orion is kind of like if you took the human king from Spinning Silver and gave him an alignment flip come to think of it, so he's not coming out of nowhere. Lmao.

Which reminds me (re: romance character typing) I've heard Novik didn't want it to be known she was astolat, which this series has renewed my sympathies if so. Because if I were a published novelist I wouldn't want people going 'you know, that resolution was really emotionally satisfying! reminds me of that fic she wrote where optimus prime and megatron get stuck in a hole underground and hatefuck about it.'

I don't even like Transformers. That fic almost made me cry. Actually I suspect it reads better if you don't like Transformers because I'm sure it does not give a shit about canon.

Anyway, whoever pointed out that one of the things El has going on is she's Enoby (and we're going to sit down and explore what the true reason to put your middle finger up at preps is, and what are some constructive ways to channel that socioeconomic wrath, and what it means that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism) was right and I'm not entirely over that either.

Fucking love El's mom as a character. Spectacular level of parent relevance and usefulness. A+.

Aadhya and Liu are also characters who fucking delivered.

Re: minimalism though, I laughed at the start of The Golden Enclaves when I realized that none of the enclaver characters who'd gotten development in the the first two books were from London, the enclave El was theoretically shooting for when we met her.

Just to start this blog off right (by which I mean establish the high likelihood that any original content posts of mine will consist at least 80-90% of me throwing random headcanons and theories into the void for a wide variety of fandoms with little to no prompting), I figured I'd make my first real post by adding my two cents to a woefully tiny fandom I have recently found myself dragged into by the power of excellent writing. I read the first book in Naomi Novik's Scholomance series recently, was immediately hooked and read the second book as soon as I could get my hands on it, and now I have to wait until September to find out how the series ends in Book 3.

It's a small enough fandom that I've also already checked out what fanfic there is for it on ao3, plus the fandom tag(s) on tumblr now that I've made this blog, and... I am surprised? That no one seems to be talking about what I assumed was the most obvious theory by the end of TLG? About Orion?

I see some theories that he's a mal, and I can see the logic for that theory.

But... I thought it was obvious that he's a maleficer.

To be fair, a maleficer who is likely on track to become a mal. A very specific type of mal, moreover. The type of mal that, currently, we don't know where they come from/how new ones come to be. The type of mal that all the other mals run away from, the type of mal that is constantly hungry, constantly seeking to consume whatever's in its path.

And yes, Orion seems to be largely a decent person so far who does care about keeping other people safe in a somewhat detached and impersonal manner, but even that fits. After all, this type of mal doesn't actually kill its human victims. In fact, it keeps all its human victims alive... forever.

Putting my latest Scholomance series thoughts under a readmore. :)

Just realized one of the reasons I'm enjoying the Scholomance series so much so far. It gets pitched as this super grimdark fantasy response to Harry Potter, but it's really the opposite of that? It's so hopeful! It's honestly far more of a response to the idea of hopelessness in the face of overwhelming odds that you may not be able to ever fully overcome.

At every turn, we learn that the characters' actions come at a cost, even the heroic ones. And yet, the book says again and again that the right way to respond is not to give up, but to try harder to keep doing good. You fixed something, and it broke something else worse? Then it's your responsibility to fix that thing too! That caused yet another problem in another location? Then you work to fix that problem. You don't give up and stop trying. Maybe sometimes you lose, and maybe sometimes you have to make hard choices about how to get the most good out of limited options, but even then you still keep trying.

And sometimes it is hard! Sometimes in the process of fixing something big, you have to break something smaller! Sometimes you might not even know what the real problem is - you just see something wrong and start trying to make it better, and then you expose a much bigger flaw in the process. And the book acknowledges how easy, how tempting, how understandable it is to keep your head down and go with the flow instead of trying to solve problems that are bigger than you. But it also says, again and again, that it is better in the long run to face those issues and try to help other people, to prioritize kindness and compassion over individual survival and comfort, anyway.

The only way to truly lose in the long term is to give up, and to build your own short-term safety on the back of other people's sacrifices. When you work together though? When you do right by other people and convince them that it's worth it to build collective action focused on the common good? That's the only way to really fix things properly, to work together to make something better for everyone instead of just trying to make sure you're not the one around when and where the current system breaks.

And that's really beautiful to me.

Even in the midst of being Very Busy, I am still finding time to also be Very Sad at how few people seem to be reading Naomi Novik's Scholomance series. It is so good, and also I need more people to yell about this foreshadowing with! There are still 3 months until the last book comes out. I do not know how I am supposed to deal with this in the mean time.

Guys. Guys.

Orion? Is 100% a maleficer.

I know a few people have theorized that he's a mal, because he doesn't build mana, but that's only a tiny fraction of the foreshadowing we've been given for him. For one thing, he doesn't just get mana from killing mals, while never building mana through his own work. As he tells El, he "likes taking them apart and pulling the mana out of them."

You know. Like a maleficer.

He also can't be trusted with a two-way power sharer, because he'll just take all the mana he has easy access to without even thinking about it. In spite of that, he can be trusted with a one-way power sharer, because it's not having mana that he likes; it's taking mana that he likes (unlike mals, who take mana because they need it and aren't getting it any other way). He took all the power in the entire active New York enclave reservoir, and just walked around with it for a week not even using it; even his mom couldn't make him put it back. As soon as his dad made him the one-way power sharer, though, he dumped the mana right back into the shared pool, seemingly without a problem.

Then what happens right after he tells El this story? El power shares with him, taking a "carefully measured amount," and Orion "gave a gasp and shut his eyes, covering my hand with his and pressing it there a moment [...] he opened his eyes and stared at me and kept his hand over mine, mana flowing between us..." The mana flow doesn't stop, in spite of El's "carefully measured amount" of mana that she had intended to share, until Precious bites Orion and causes him to yank his hand away.

Of course, El thinks that Precious was trying to stop her from hooking up with a boy and all the risks that entails in the Scholomance. It's a good red herring, but I'm betting Precious was actually trying to stop her owner getting accidentally drained by a maleficer.

(On the topics of power sharing and Orion caring only about taking mana, not having mana - when he power shares with El in the first book after she kills the maw-mouth, he takes his power sharer off before he goes around looking for some mals to kill so that he can power share with El. This seems to indicate that keeping the mana is of such little concern to him that he might have automatically dumped the excess into the New York shared pool before he got back to El, if he'd still been wearing the power sharer.

We also see Orion appear overwhelmed with mana only once - shortly after he kills Jack. At the time, he doesn't seem to be wearing his power sharer because he'd been getting ready for bed before he decided to go bug El again, but when El half-jokingly suggests that he can put some mana in her crystals because he seems to be overloading his capacity, he seems relieved to take her up on it. Seems a bit weird, given Orion's capacity for holding mana... unless he took Jack's mana when he killed him, too.)

But one of the best bits of foreshadowing, one that is done so subtly that I am still impressed by it?

Orion has white hair.

Sure, it's usually described as silver... after he kills Jack. Before killing Jack, his hair was described as silver-grey.

Sure, no one seems to find it odd, but you know who else had somewhat unusual hair that no one found odd until she got accidentally surprised cleansed of her malia use? Liu, when she was a maleficer.

I've been rereading Spinning Silver and thinking a lot about themes across Naomi Novik's more recent fantasy works... and something just clicked about her Scholomance series.

Fuck.

Orion's been the villain the whole time.

His whole character represents the dangers in the intersection of apathy, privilege, and power.

He saves people without concern for balance, because hunting mals is the opposite of a sacrifice for him but he likes it being seen as something good. When his lack of thought starts causing a problem for the seniors who are about to graduate into the worst starving horde the school's ever had, it's El who has to think of a way out beyond, "Do what people tell him, kill more mals, and if he dies then it's not his problem anymore."

Once he and El are seniors, while she and the rest of their class are constantly frantic and on-edge, worried about graduation and how they're going to survive, Orion is slinking around being grumpy and distracted because he can't find any mals to kill. He even gets El and her alliance spending time trying to attract mals to him just so he can kill them and take their mana. He even blows off his classwork to the point that El has to repeatedly save his life from his own carelessness.

And at the end of TLG, just when things are looking great and El is *so close* to making sure that every last person made it out of the school, Orion shoves her out the door and chooses to stay behind because Patitude showed up and got him all shiny-eyed. Patitude didn't even show up until the very last seconds. If he'd run when El first called him, after everyone else was out the doors, they could have both made it out before Patitude got close enough to present the danger of its escape.

Orion wants to be the hero of everyone else's story, but deep down I suspect that's because he's afraid of confronting the fact that he's anything but.

El and her many moods; angry, angry, angry, and angry

bonus secret expressions below