#the last graduate spoilers

[potatoobsessed999]

WAIT. Waitwaitwaitwaitwait Scholomance series realization!!

Using malia creates mals. A little bit of malia creates little mals, a lot of malia creates big mals. Right?

The very littlest mals are the agglos, and they’re so small and insignificant as to be considered harmless. Nobody really minds about them. At worst they’re minor pests.

BUT then it turns out that the agglos were what broke the cleansing machinery in the graduation hall! The very tiniest and most seemingly harmless acts of malia - that is of exploitation, of using other living beings - were what paved the way for the bigger ones to cause all that devastation! Literally eating away at the defenses set up against them!

I am so obsessed with these books y’all. Naomi Novik is on a level I cannot even comprehend.

#scholomance series #scholomance spoilers #the last graduate #the last graduate spoilers #i am OBSESSED i tell you #incidentally this adds fuel to my theory that el is wrong to think it’s ok for others to compromise a little with evil - just not her #i mean if she does it it’ll have a way bigger effect bc she’s so powerful #but it always has *some* effect #and that adds up #and bc it’s so incremental people don’t even notice it’s doing so #until suddenly your metaphorical mortal flame generators have broken down

[pencil-for-a-dog]

THAT MOTHERF*CKER, HE THINKS I CAN BUY THE NEXT BOOK.

IF EL DOESN'T GET HIM I'LL KILL HIM BEFORE THISE SH*TS

#a deadly education #the last graduate #the scholomance #THAT BITCH OF #Orion Lake #Spoiler of The last graduate #i think #THAT BITCH SHOULD HAVE ESCAPED #NOT STAY WITH PATIENCE-AND-FORTITUDE #WHY #DID HE LIKED MANA SO MUCH #oR HE HAD SEX WITH EL AND SAID 'OH YEAH I CAN DIE IN PEACE NOW' #THE BITCH WAS PLANNING IT #HE TRIED TO SPEND WITH EL SO MUCH JUST BECAUSE HE SAID I'M NO GOING ANYWHERE #AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA #spoiler #a deadly education spoilers #the last graduate spoilers #THE FUCKIN NAME SAID IT

[dawn-the-rithmatist]

🚨🚨Spoilers for The Scholomance books!! 🚨🚨

I am so in love with Naomi Novik’s commitment to having her two main characters be Weird. I feel like so many novels start with “look how WEIRD and STRANGE this character is” and then walk it back from there until you see that they’re actually Just Like Everyone Else. (Prefacing this with the fact that weird is not said disrespectfully in any way, I heckin love these weirdos and think that weird people are the best people.)

The Scholomance doesn’t do that! First we get El, and it seems like her arc is going to be about overcoming her “evil sorceress” prophecy. Maybe she’ll use the power of friendship to trade for Not Evil spells, or she’ll convince the school somehow to give her other things. Either way, the narrative is set up so that we expect her to actively work against it. But that’s not the case!! We instead see her start to lean into that thing that makes her terrifying and unapproachable. In TLG, she’s throwing off killing spells left and right, and by the end she’s making plans around super volcanoes in the exact way she swore she’d never do at the start of the series. She’s still a good person, and she’s constantly learning to be better, but she doesn’t sacrifice her “weird” to do it- she just learns how to use it the way she wants, instead of how she’s expected to.

Then we have Orion. ORION IS SO INTERESTING. He’s clearly the knight in shining armor. Obviously Not Like Other Guys, but in a way that makes him an unapproachable hero rather than an unapproachable villain like El. At first, we expect to see over time that he’s just like everyone else- he’s lonely and isolated from the hero worship, he’s killing mals for the sake of friendships, etc. BUT INSTEAD WE GET THE OPPOSITE. Orion, instead of becoming more personable, gets WEIRDER. He’s faced with these reasons for killing mals and he replies with the fact that he simply. Does not care. He does it for fun and throws himself into danger because he wants to, even though it’s the last thing anyone else in the scholomance would want for themselves.

They don’t get less weird. They find people who love them in their weirdness, but they never back off from it- in fact, they continue to get weirder up through the end of the book. And that is so, so refreshing.

#whoops that got wordy. have some brainrot #the scholomance #a deadly education #the last graduate #el higgins #orion lake #the last graduate spoilers #a deadly education spoilers #long post #dawn speaks

[knight-of-skyloft]

"...but I saw Yaakov go past with his head bowed and rocking slightly, wearing a beautiful worn prayer shawl whose fringe was shining with light, his lips still moving even as he walked, and when he passed me, he looked up and I felt a warmth like the feeling of Mum's hand stroking over my hair, calming and steadying." (The Last Graduate p. 377)

Jewish observance being portrayed as warm and comforting and good instead of archaic and foreign and restrictive is literally everything to me.

#and yaakov's queer #he's queer and jewish and he looks up as he's davening and it's warm and good and beautiful #the last graduate #the last graduate spoilers #the scholomance #the scholomance spoilers

[rotationalsymmetry]

OK so having slept after finishing the last graduate with no idea how the golden enclaves starts (spoilers for the first/speculation about the latter):

I can see three general possible ways things might go from here.

One, the most straightforward narratively from the way TLG ended: El gets shoved through the portal, Orion gets shut into a school that's about to eat itself, Orion gets to have his epic ultra boss fight until he wins or gets eaten or dies in the void or goes mad in the void, we'll never find out which. Presumably El will have a lot of distress over this.

Downsides: does not offer clear direction for what actually happens in the entire final 1/3 of the trilogy (that's more the sort of thing you have at the end of a story), doesn't really explain El's mum's warning, if we can trust El that her mum wouldn't give that warning for avoiding pain alone. (Unless El is pregnant and the warning related to that. But damn, El's mum warning her about getting pregnant while in the Scholomance would have some really weird implications for their relationship. It's not unusual for a woman who got pregnant young to not want her daughter to do the same, but...I have trouble seeing El's mum specifically addressing that concern in that way. Especially since it's not like Orion was the only boy in school. Except maybe if there's something weird about the pregnancy due to the circumstances, but I'm hoping we're not going in a magical/cursed/supernaturally very scary pregnancy direction.)

Two, El finds a way to either keep herself from getting thrown out of the portal -- finding something to literally or magically grab onto -- or somehow manages to get back in right after. The door closes, and they're both trapped in the void with a bunch of mals. In an exploding school. I actually really like this idea? It might get very surreal for a bit. But it also might mean that there was a reason the school was rewarding El for learning so much about the golden sutras while still in school -- and the school was pushing her to do that, that double independent study -- when El was fully aware that the sensible thing to do was to focus on survival for now and the sutras after graduation.

Especially since, while the phase spell was used near the end of A Deadly Education to patch up the hole in the walls, as far as I can tell the sutras weren't even slightly used after New Year's. El used the Mandarin (I assume, for some reason it was all "Mandarin" and "Shanghaiese" in book 1 and then all of a sudden "Chinese" in book 2? Kind of hoping that's a different editions issue because why would you do that??? Like I can understand simplifying things, but pick one or the other and definitely don't go from the more subtle/nuanced approach to the dumbed down one, that's just wrong) that she was picking up mostly to speak with the freshmen more than she used the Sutras in the last half of the year. Including that plot hook where she was getting really excited about the most recent spell she was on and then we never found out what it was because then she had to hurry to breakfast and then that was it for classes for the rest of the year.

Anyways. Advantage: maybe use the sutras to build new enclave from the shattered remnants of the exploding school in the void? Without dying or getting eaten or going mad, somehow? It'd be weird but cool. Plus it provides direction for the book, and lets our fascinating couple be together. Although it would mean we don't get to meet El's Mum Higgins for much longer, which would be terrible. It would also explain the Word Of Mum since presumably getting caught in an exploding school full of mals that has been cut off from the real world and is floating in the void, is something a parent would consider a negative outcome for their child, and it only happens because El is emotionally attached to Orion. (Maybe. Or maybe she'd try to save him anyways, idk.)

Third option: El manages to yank Orion out. This has most of the disadvantages of option one (no direction for where to take book 3, kind of anticlimactic) plus doesn't even have Angst unless El does something Evil to do it and it fucks up their relationship, El's relationship with herself, and El's relationship with her mother all in one go. Like either pulling mana from Orion against his will, or maybe mind-controlling him (we know she has mind-control spells.) The part of my brain that loves feeling awful really likes this suggestion. I'm not sure where it would go from there though.

Part of me really, really wants to see El have a descent into honest to god evil at this point. I'm pretty sure the story isn't going that way, El's done such a great job of walking towards the light and resisting even the smallest step in the other direction. And I suspect thematically the book is supposed to be "fuck what people expect you to be, YOU get to decide that" which wouldn't really work if El goes evil after all.

Anyways: advantages: high angst, would explain mum's warning; disadvantages, do we actually want that much angst? also, where would the title fit in?

(I was going to bed when the title of the second book, which had seemed pretty straightforward throughout the whole thing (El is last graduate because she's going out last to save everyone and is also destroying the school, so no more graduates after her) really hit. El's the last graduate because she graduated and Orion didn't.) (Well. If option 1 plays out anyways.)

There are a couple questions that are very important here, namely, what the fuck is Orion thinking? And, what was El's mum thinking?

It's possible that Orion was thinking that he had to fight the mawmouth from hell to keep it from getting out, even though El didn't think that. Or that he thought there was some risk to El's plan and he wanted to make sure the mawmouth from hell didn't get out. We don't actually know what his perspective was here. I think it's somewhat more likely that Orion knew he could get out safely and chose to have his epic boss battle instead. It's more than adequately foreshadowed. We know Orion loves fighting mals, believes he's invincible, and has never once expressed the slightest interest in backing down from a challenge (and has generally been resistant to El trying to get him to back down.) El tends to see that as a martyr complex thing, but in the graduation hall she realizes it's not, he really does like fighting mals just that much. She also concluded he could learn to like other things as well, but she did figure out that yeah, he really does enjoy this stuff, a lot. Orion walking away from the biggest boss fight ever would be like an Olymplic athlete who's been training to be a swimmer or whatever from toddlerhood just...walking away right before the finals. Your life wouldn't make sense after that. Orion is not primarily motivated by protecting people (if he was, he'd be happy at the lack of mals in the first part of the year) he's directly motivated by the fights themselves. So it does not matter that he doesn't need to fight the mawmouth to protect anyone. Fighting the mawmouth is its own reward. (One worth presumably dying over.)

El's mum: I do not know, this really hasn't been answered yet. I'm inclined to trust El that the warning wouldn't be about pain alone, El's mum seems the type to encourage her child to make her own decisions unless there was an overwhelmingly important reason not to. Telling her child to not fall in love to avoid heartbreak is the exact opposite of what someone like El's mum would do. She's probably told a zillion grieving people that grief is love that has nowhere else to go (or whatever), that it's a healthy thing and part of being alive. There is no way she'd want El to be alone her senior year rather than close to Orion just because Orion wasn't going to make it, she's not that kind of person.

Whatever is going to happen, it's going to be worse than Orion dying/getting lost in the void or Orion being unable to forgive El for pulling him away from his big boss fight.

Or, it's not going to be about El and Orion's relationship at all. It might be that while the Scholomance thought what they were doing was right, that there will be Unintended Consequences to the world of them destroying the Scholomance and a metric shit ton of mals in the process.

And I just realized a fourth option. That in getting Orion out, El manages to also undo their hard work and let all the mals pour back out too.

But that doesn't make sense either. El's mum doesn't do the lesser evil. She wouldn't let Orion die to save other people's lives, and she wouldn't want El to do that either. So while I could see that happening as a plot point, I don't see that explaining El's mum's message. Dammit.

I think the message only makes sense if El's connection to Orion results in her doing something evil/going down the maleficer path, at least a little bit, or at least El's mother thinks she is likely to. Or maybe if there's some evil that isn't caused by a lesser good. But not if there's a greater evil caused by saving one person.

I don't know.

Or maybe El has fundamentally misunderstood her mother. That is definitely possible. The parent a child sees is not the whole adult, and realizing your parent isn't as perfect as you thought is a very common coming of age experience.

#the scholomance #the last graduate #the golden enclaves #the last graduate spoilers #scholomance spoilers #the ending of the last graduate #please do not tell me what happens in the golden enclaves #I'll get there soon #I'm utterly fascinated by what I got right #about the last graduate #and what I got wrong

[what-about-second-tmblr]

Okay I’ve barely been active in tumblr lately much less this fandom but

Have we already kicked around the “maybe the reason Orion is *like that* is because he got the same prophecy El has” theory?

#the scholomance #the scholomance spoilers #orion lake #galadriel higgins #the last graduate spoilers #the last graduate #a deadly education #a deadly education spoilers #spoilers ig?

[sixofravens-reads]

Finished The Last Graduate! It went in a dramatically different direction than I thought it would, and I'm glad El finally found a way to make her destructive tendencies work instead of constantly fighting herself. Also love the idea of the Scholomance as a building with consciousness. I love any building with a consciousness tbh.

#now onto The Golden Enclaves #cannot believe I'm on track to finish this series and A Strange and Stubborn Endurance over the long weekend #it helps that I've been sick and all i want to do is lie around and read #scholomance spoilers #the last graduate spoilers #thinking about reading

[aridotdash]

I posted 25,834 times in 2022

That's 7,297 more posts than 2021!

71 posts created (0%)

25,763 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@resplendent-ragamuffin

@frostedpuffs

@broosepayne

@everythingfox

@skyhon

I tagged 1,728 of my posts in 2022

#ml spoilers - 236 posts

#stormlight archive - 216 posts

#stormlight archive spoilers - 185 posts

#rhythm of war spoilers - 98 posts

#prev tags - 81 posts

#oathbringer spoilers - 70 posts

#ml s5 spoilers - 35 posts

#tlt - 33 posts

#cr spoilers - 31 posts

#unreality - 30 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#inspired by the guy next to us on an international flight who spent the entire flight coughing without covering his mouth or wearing a mask

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

What's with detective shows and having a roller derby episode? Elementary, Psych, and even Murdoch (which is set in 1900 Canada)

65 notes - Posted May 24, 2022

#4

Hey tumblr ad algorithm? It's Erev Pesach and I super duper promise you that I'm not interested in a Christian prayer app.

89 notes - Posted April 15, 2022

#3

175 notes - Posted February 12, 2022

#2

brandon sanderson: i wonder if it's possible to make people angry with happiness?

311 notes - Posted March 1, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

30-year-old me at my 25th seder in a row as the youngest:

448 notes - Posted April 18, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #the scholomance spoilers #scholomance spoilers #the last graduate spoilers

[innerteenager]

Hot take: Naomi Novik’s Scholomance is all tell and no show. Galadriel’s narration makes interesting things feel boring and distant. I also feel occasionally blindsided by things like Liesel in the Golden Enclaves.

I will admit the end of The Last Graduate was extremely effective.

I also think the narration deliberately obscures the significance of the plot. This is more unusual than a traditional YA narrator, but it slows my interest as a reader.

I am listening to the series via audiobooks, so some of this could be the style choices of the voice actor.

#the scholomance #the golden enclaves #scholomance spoilers #the last graduate #the last graduate spoilers #a deadly education

[crescentfool]

reunion 🌸

#persona 3 #persona 3 spoilers #minato arisato #makoto yuki #ryoji mochizuki #aigis #ryomina #lizzy does art #HELLO EVERYONE!!! march 5th is upon us again so i bring... my contribution for this year. my third year drawing for it! #i made the thumbnail for this a few weeks after last year's graduation day #i thought it would be fun to lean into the ryominaigis angle of graduation day (you could read this as minato/aigis if you like- #but i feel like most people would read it as ryoji/minato) #IN ANY CASE working on this made me very emotional over this game :') (specifically minato) #i really enjoy how p3 ends it's such a nice way of wrapping up the narrative's messages and themes #working on this. minato's kindness was at the forefront of my mind throughout the piece #and i really wanted to capture how. ultimately it was his decision to sacrifice himself- to do the great seal #while to an outsider's perspective it is. sad that minato passes. i think becoming the seal is something that minato- #actively welcomes. in the same way that death (ryoji) is a comfort to him because death was housed in him for Ten YearsTM #AND I ALSO GOT REALLY SAD OVER AIGIS TOO. i still get fucked up over how in fes's animated cutscene for 3/5 they portray- #her as human and not drawing the robot parts so i wanted to do something smilar here... #but also i am very sad on aigis's behalf because she discovers her humanity through minato and realizes what she- #wants to do and then. well. minato is like. he's ready to pass on (even if he's scared) and im like. OH MY GOD THIS TRIO GETS ME MESSED UP #this was more coherent in my head LOL BUT ough i like drawing p3 and working through my feelings about it... #anyway! happy (in quotations) march 5th. i love this game to bits. it's so fun to draw for this day every year and see how i've improved #if you've read all this thank you :) lizzy appreciates you all very much. mwah! <3

[blue-ishgrey]

So… Orion Lake is gonna end up evil right? This is a strangers to lovers to enemies story?

#the last graduate spoilers #Naomi novik spoilers #but like that’s why El was warned away from him #not because he’s going to die terribly but because he’s gonna end up evil #maybe even via his strong feelings for her

[viridializard]

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

#no spoilers please I'm only halfway through the last graduate #galadriel higgins #guo yi liu #aadhya scholomance #the scholomance #scholomance fanart

[izzenithal]

this is their whole dynamic and i love them for it

#the scholomance #naomi novik #orion lake #books #the last graduate #a deadly education #my art #fanart #I’m only on book 2 #so no spoilers please!!! #el higgins #galadriel higgins

[2ndwind]

*chuckles* I’m in danger

#i’m alive again #spiderverse spoilers #across the spiderverse #spiderman across the spiderverse #spiderman #across the spider verse spoilers #procreate #prowler #ngl glad it was delayed #was dying in grad school last year #i finally graduated #and can now draw whatever the heck i want again

[dawn-the-rithmatist]

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.

#thank you for coming to my ted talk #the golden enclaves #the golden enclaves spoilers #the scholomance #a deadly education #the last graduate #the scholomance spoilers #dawn speaks

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

I need the 12 year old Rangi with her mother lore dropped like yesterday FC Yee. Don't leave me hanging. TT0TT

#rangi #rangi sei'naka #rangi seinaka #hei-ran #hei-ran sei'naka #hei-ran seinaka #please theyre so funny TT0TT #is it because she didn't have military rank until rangi was like 14 or something???? jfdkls;jfa #i'll take like 8 fics of them bickering please #screw it spoilers #shadow of kyoshi spoilers #shadow of kyoshi #i know i talked about this before but that was my first read through! TT0TT I'm taking a second look! #i have more thoughts now! #did rangi go on travels with Yun before? i feel like she must've once or twice #she mentions going to other places in the earth kingdom #i need to know #did hei-ran not give her shit during that time? (she must've) #i need a series of rangi/hei-ran travels pre Yun and during yun kaljsfdlkjafsakf #rangi must've graduated at like 12/13 and then finished the junior corps at like 13/14 then she meets yun/kyoshi #wait where does Rangi/Hei-ran sleep? Kyoshi lives in the estate #do they not live in the estate? #please tell me Rangi/Hei-Ran are on an indefinite camping trip in a tent right outside the estate TT0TT #please that'd be so funny akljdfskjf;a #it'd explain how Kyoshi had never seen Rangi in normal attire too fkdasjdflf;k #please I need Rangi/Hei-Ran to be just such CREATURES! #ok ok last post for awhile #(don't mind the random meta/analysis in the tags on the pre Kyoshi novel events TT0TT)