#deepthi sharma scholomance

[crossedwithblue]

The Sharmas, and vegetarianism in India

I just finished the books and this stood out to me. One side of my family is Jain, a small religion philosophically very similar to Buddhism, with a similar emphasis on nonviolence and the complete avoidance of harm to any human being. This includes:

No meat, obviously. Eggs are also excluded (as in the more general Indian definition of vegetarianism) No root vegetables, even, because you have to kill the whole plant to get them. Interestingly, non-lethal animal products are fine - milk, honey, wool - so it's not the same as veganism. I'm not sure what the position is on the hidden life-cost of milk i.e. the death of male calves because it's a waste to keep most around. This is common enough that retaurants will have 'Jain options' on their menu/allow you to request a Jain version of a dish, and it's a widely understood dietary requirement (though most people in India seen to think Jainism is a branch of Hinduism. It's not, it's a completly splintered-off heterodoxy, but we don't need to get into that).

They also don't use leather or silk since that does require death to produce, though my granny does have a 'peace silk' sari that's made without boiling the cocoons.

No eating after sunset and no eating food kept overnight, because they had some concept of germ theory and knew that bacteria bred more after dark. Pre-fridges, this is generally a pretty good idea in a hot country, anyway.

A yearly ritual where you meditate and ask forgiveness from any creature of any kind that you might have injured, deliberately or not. It's meant to be an acknowledgement that you've done wrong and a meditation on forgiving other people because everyone's fallible. You also exchange this with anyone you can - friends, family etc. I have very very mixed feelings about this one, how valid and meaningful it usually is in-practice and its actual effect on most people's mental health, but I'll leave that out of this post LOL

In the same vein, a prayer ritual you do at the temple where you repeat the same request for forgivness while repeatedly moving from a standing position to kneeling and prostrated with your head on the floor, the gradual standing - kneeling upright - kneeling fully - completely prostrate timed to the lines of the request. As my mum pointed out, it's also pretty good exercise, like a slowed-down bungee squat that's also gentler on your joints. I can picture El doing it for mana.

If you thought this was intense enough, the monks and nuns take it to another level. They eat nothing but boiled vegetables, lentils and grains, and I believe are not allowed to wear any clothing but what is purely plant derived, so they are closer to veganism in that sense. They have little brooms they use to sweep the path ahead of them to avoid stepping on insects (which, since they spend a lot of time on the road physically walking from place to place, presumably slows them down as much as you might imagine. They wear masks over their face to avoid inhaling small insects and keep out bacteria as much as possible (presumably the tiny insects are more of a concern if, again, you're pretty much sleeping out in the open in a rural area).

Not Jain any more, but upper-caste Hindus from some regions, essentially the priest caste, are also pretty strict vegetarians to the point that they're quite snobby about it. They are vegetarian because they consider it necessary to ritual purity, and look down on people who aren't - according to my mum, who went to uni with a lot of people like that, the reason why they accepted her relatively easily was because she was also a very strict vegetarian. I'm not sure if those guys avoid root vegetables too - mum had to start eating them at uni, anyway, because she would have struggled for food otherwise.

The Sharma family's insistence on strict mana reminded me of these practices a lot. They won't use any malia because you cannot get it without deliberately causing harm to another living being, even if that's just a blade of grass. I don't know if Novik was aware of this but it's pretty plausible and if she was, it adds a lot of context to her making El half-Indian and giving her paternal family similar beliefs. My headcanon is that they are indeed Jain - there's a pretty big community in Maharashtra/of Marathi origin.

[bartinahoneypotsimpson]

Maybe El becomes Galadriel Higgins-Sharma in this spin-off.

This happened post-series,and no one can convince me otherwise.

AND STILL IN THAT TOPIC……. somewhere else on the spectrum, you also have Deepthi. I think Deepthi works so well as a balanced point for El, of where she can fall within the Greater Good spectrum. 

She has Gwen’s example on one side, of never justifying evil deeds. And Ophelia on the other, of justifying any evil deed for the greater good. And here she is, smack in the middle of it, because the existence of mawmouths clinches her in a position where she’s going to do evil no matter which way she chooses, so how does she choose?

If Ophelia is El’s dark future, I think Deepthi represents her hopeful future. El can’t ever be Gwen on account of the nature of her magic; instead she is much more like Deepthi, immensely gifted and immensely burdened, and all she can do is choose, and find a way to be content with her choices.

[SHARMA SPINOFF WHEN????]

[ruinconstellation]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Scholomance - Naomi Novik Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Scholomance (Scholomance) Additional Tags: sentient building, Worldbuilding, POV Nonhuman, the canon is the warning, Canon-Typical Death Rates, Canonical Character Death, School Summary:

The Scholomance watches its children die, in direct violation of its charge, for a hundred years and more.

by @raspberryhunter

[djinmer4]

Scholomance Random Thoughts

(Wall of text, you have been warned.)

What if the prophecy is much more drastic?  Cast down enclaves is the start of it, we don't hear the end.  What if the real prophecy is that El ends up destroying magic entirely? 

Why would that be a possibility (other than my love of TV Tropes)? Let's say El does manage to break the enclaves' power by destroying mawmouths (going by the theory that mawmouths are connected to enclave creation) and providing everyone with Golden Stone enclaves.  She's already managed to trap a significant portion of the world's mals, in an area where they'll be food to either Patitude or Orion, so it doesn't seem that farfetched that she could accomplish her dream.  How long will that effect last?

In the book, they say the mals will be back to the same levels in three or four generations.  What one idiot has done, can and will be copied in the future.  The same will happen with modern enclaves, after all, once a spell exists it never goes away and there will always be people willing to sacrifice others for their own benefits.  Maleficars, Todd Quayle, heck it happened already the first time.  People had the Golden Stone enclaves and switched to the modern version because those enclaves were bigger (and possibly came with even more perks).  Once enough of that happens, how long will it take for people to come up with another Scholomance, and who knows if that one will turn out as benevolent as the one in the book?  Most constructs head in the opposite direction, it's almost a miracle that the Scholomance actually did give their children back at all.

What would be El's motivation?  Disgust at the current practices, nurtured into her by her mother.  The fact she lost bother her father and her lover to the results of those practices.  A hero complex almost as big as what other people think Orion's is.  And finally, just the sheer interest of safety for the future generations.  There are plenty of terrible places in the world, but the world average survival rate for children is almost certainly higher than 5%.  Forcing everyone to be mundane (and immune to mals) might actually improve everyone's life expectancy.

Other evidence?  If it had just been that El was going to break the power of the enclaves, I think her paternal family could have put up with that.  Especially given her great-grandmother's (I think I got the generation right?) penchant for forseeing happy futures.  If El breaks the enclaves (probably violently) but creates the Golden Stone enclaves to take their place, I'm pretty sure her vision would have included the last part.  They're currently not in an enclave and they're strict mana, I'm sure waiting a little longer to be able to get their own safe space when El grows up would not have been an impossible challenge.  And while breaking the enclaves would not be great for others, I think it would come down to net benefit and they could also accept that, maybe even using Deepthi Sharma's vision as a way of getting other enclaves ready and smoothing the transition.  If nothing else, they probably would have taken time to try to calm down and come up with a solution because they really, really wanted both Gwen and Galadriel.

But instead, they try and kill Galadriel the very same night.  What if the vision ends with something about her destroying all magic forever, permanently?  Maybe something that sounds like she ends up killing all magic users perhaps?  And there's no silver lining to that one because Deepthi can't see into a time where magic doesn't exist.  As far as they would know it's not just a way of life, it would be a complete apocalypse.  No idea if any of the wise-gifted ones would even survive without their magic (or if Galadriel kills them all before hand).  Wouldn't that be worth breaking their principles and killing her?

[sandange]

El knowing the exact history of all her terrifying spells and how she's bending the purpose to not kill people and drain their souls and suchlike isn't quite a gag, but it's a consistently repeating thing with her that I like. Also, Never Ambush The Protagonists. Even if it works in the moment, it doesn't end well.

Oh hey, it's Zheng, the little cousin who became one of El's little passel of freshmen! I wish we got more characterization with them, El playing unwilling mentor to a bunch of kiddos is a very fun mental image.

"I'm tired of demons in my house". Well that's not making the Foreshadowtron 4000 make interesting noises.

...I want Ophelia Rhys-Lake to be in this room with Liu and her family and tell me exactly how the fuck this Omelas shit is the lesser evil.

I'm reminded of a scene from Mercedes Lackey's The Fairy Godmother, where the protagonist and future godmother and her teacher discuss this phenomenon. Stories like Fair Rosalinda or Rapunzel sound romantic and sad when it's a story from long ago, far away; it's another thing when it happens to your neighbor, your friend, your sister, your daughter, right now. "Not in my kingdoms."

El, you really don't grasp just how big an impact you've made on your former classmates, even the ones you don't know or like very much.

EVEN AFTER NEARLY BEING CRUSHED INTO A MAWMOUTH LIU HEARD EL AND CALLED THE INCANTATION BACK TO HER I HAVE NO NOTES 1000/10

Orion, on one hand I get being freaked out and hoping the person who did...this to you can fix it, but I wouldn't trust someone who has you full of mindwhammy hooks basically lining your brain.

El, don't get mad at your press agent, Aadhya is putting her years of networking to good use here, we all know she's your bestie because she's practical like that. And finally, Ibrahim gets to be relevant beyond being an Orion fanboy!

I really like how the different enclaves are clearly both part of and yet separate from the cities they're in. New York is intrinsically different from Beijing, which is different from London, which isn't like Dubai. Cities 100% have different vibes to them, even if they're similar in other ways. Boston doesn't feel the same as New York, or Los Angeles.

Yes, you count as friend to Nadia too, El. You're giving all these people a hope they likely never thought they'd get to have. Not to mention everything else you've accomplished by now.

For someone who complained endlessly about her mother's way of getting through the world, it sure seems to be working for you, hon.

I don't think El realizes how badass she is here. "The attack's happening in half an hour, talk to you later, bye!" over the phone, and then killing the mawmouth off camera???

"This is the only one where you ever came home" and "There was no future in which he let me save him" says So Goddamn Much about Deepthi I can't put it into words. That's how you handle a Terrible Prophecy.

The opening moments of El furious as she does everything she can to try and drag Orion out of the Scholomance is giving me flashbacks of 1. Susan in Thief of Time outraged at Lubsang Ludd"You...𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘰!" and 2. Annabeth Chase judo-flipping Percy when they're reunited at New Rome.

Just the most powerful "How fucking dare you, you goddamn idiot!" Tsundere outrage, with the added spice of "That's 𝘮𝘺 goddamn idiot!" fueling the fire.

El, honey. What, did you think Liesel would do when you forgot to check in? She's not a wait and see person, she's more likely to kick the door down and demand an answer, you know that. (also I think the audiobook narrator got a better handle on Liesel's accent in this one, she sounds more consistently German now.)