#golden enclaves liveblog

[chetungwan]

I finished the Scholomance series and I am absolutely convinced that I understand it better than literally anyone else. This is directly related to my recent trip down Transformers fanfiction.

[number63liveblogs]

The Golden Enclaves, Chapter 15

I mean, imagine living with someone who’s able to see the future, and the outcomes of their own actions. You wouldn’t know if anything they say is because they actually mean what they say, or if it’s the thing that will lead to the outcome they want. Hell, we don’t really know if anything Deepthi says here is what she means, or if it’s what El needs to hear to be able to do whatever it is that she needs to do now that the war has apparently started.

But, like, from the point of view of emotional reality and thematically speaking of course Deepthi and all the rest of El’s family mean it when they say they accept her wholeheartedly. El has had to wield the power that she has without using it against other people, so that she doesn’t become like Orion’s mother. So, this is who she should aspire to be: someone who’s able to live with those she loves, who has to shoulder a huge burden but who’s happy and able to help people.

I also don’t actually like El throwing away New York’s power-sharer. There was a great opportunity for the symbolism that El, who was born out of a union of an Asian man and a Western woman walking into this war with a New York power-sharer and her family’s jewelry. It would have given her a certain kind of legitimacy to when she’ll attempt to mediate between the two sides, so that it doesn’t read completely like a white saviour narrative.

Although she was raised by her mother only, and she spent most of her Scholomance career on the English-speaking side, so she has a lot of that side already.

[tanoraqui]

I didn’t mini-liveblog The Golden Enclaves like the others, so here are my key thoughts:

what ORPHEUS & EURYDICE BULLSHIT—

Gwen Higgins MVP

at some point in her youth, Liesel watched the s6 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, specifically the scene where Xander talks Dark Willow down from destroying the world with a heartfelt monologue about friendship and a symbolic yellow crayon, and thought, “Yeah, that could be me!”, and I love that for her. Get this woman a yellow crayon.

I can’t find it now but I saw a poll asking what your top ugly sobbing moment for these books was, so let the record note that mine was, “He would have taken you up the mountain and holding you in his arms, leapt.”

I was totally comfortable with El in ratty, unwashed clothes in the Scholomance itself, but now that she’s out, I DO keep involuntarily imagining her dressed as her honored inspiration Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way.

Orion gets to stay at the school that he and he alone loved his time at, and protect all the magical children of the world…there are going to be students, starting with the freshmen class they already saved, whose only experience of the Scholomance includes the fierce guardianship of Orion and El… 🥹 😭 ❤️ I hope he gets some lame but appropriate and punny title like “Custodian.”

[sonntam]

I really like how El looks at the London enclave and feels the deep pull and awe at the beauty of it.

To a much lesser degree, it is a lot like going through a beautiful house built in colonial times, looking at a lot of good artisanship and KNOWING where the money came from.

On a somewhat bigger degree, it's like walking through Europe and knowing how unbelievable beautiful, pretty, tidy some towns are and this is a walled garden where some people literally die to get in.

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

If you ask! Rather than demand!!! If you ask! If you look for home rather than power! If you do things the proper way rather than cutting corners!!!!!! You have to ASK!!!!

[number63liveblogs]

Thoughts on The Golden Enclaves

It’s kind of funny that the cover of the book called it “lesson three of the Scholomance” when El visited the Scholomance twice. But I do understand why Astolat chose to make that the name of her series, considering that the school is the most logical thing to name the book after, especially when the main character’s full name is an allusion to a much more famous book, and her nickname is very generic.

Anyway, El was still the highlight of the book. The only thing is, I would have liked to have a little more clarification on how unreliable of a narrator she was. I still think people didn’t hate her as much as she thought they did, she just suffered from a few very traumatizing instances and racism, and because of that she didn’t reach out to people and kept assuming the worst of them. Hell, even in the last chapter she was surprised that Liesel was willing to let go of her plan to avenge her mother, and instead chose to help El in saving indie kids around the world.

Overall I did like the book, although I think the fact that I was certain that Orion was going to be fine by the end contributed to that. I’m certain that I would have been pissed if I had been expecting a tragedy and a mourning arc instead.

I’m also thankful that for once the main character wasn’t brought down to normal by the end. She was allowed to uncomplicatedly just make the world a better place, which I think was the best way for her character arc to end, and the story I wanted out of this one.

[number63liveblogs]

The Golden Enclaves, Chapter 17

El is right, Ophelia got everything that she wanted. But I think it was needed for the ending to work, because there has been so much talk about balance that if El won and Ophelia lost there would basically be a need for someone to come and restore balance. But this way, with both Ophelia’s machinations and El’s parents’ wish coming true there is some kind of balance and we can believe that the world is able to continue this way.

Sure, there are still open questions. Is Orion still immortal, and if he isn’t what will happen once he dies? What happens when El dies, she definitely isn’t immortal. And it kind of sounds like the “shelter all the wise-gifted children of the world” might be affecting Orion just as much as it does the Scholomance itself. But because it’s close to how El thought of Orion’s personality she doesn’t remark on it.

El and Orion really should have had, like, one single conversation about where their relationship is going, especially regarding Liesel. But I do see why it wouldn’t fit in the pacing of the last chapter. The last scene very deliberately El and Orion having a relatively light-hearted discussion about the future.

Finally, I find it kind of funny how much of a non-entity Chloe became in the last book. She was there for, like, three seconds and we didn’t even hear how she reacted to the new domina of the enclave she lives in being a maleficer. She really pushed herself into El’s orbit, and El dropped her as soon as she could.

[number63liveblogs]

The Golden Enclaves, Chapter 13

Okay, is it just me or is the implication that El is the one “attacking” the enclaves? I mean, a maw-mouth is made at the same time as an enclave, so it wouldn’t be that weird for them to be somehow metaphysically connected. And each “attack” against an enclave has corresponded to a maw-mouth that El has killed: Bangkok was attacked while El was in the school, where she killed a maw-mouth in the first book, London was attacked shortly after their own students graduated, when El murdered the maw-mouth that almost ate a boy, and Beijing was attacked while El was saving London… by killing a maw-mouth.

If that’s the case, it would make things easier for El, in a way. There’s no villain to catch, and El has hell of a bargaining chip: I doubt anybody’s going to stop her from killing maw-mouths.

On the other hand, it could a tremendous psychological burden for her, to have to make choices between saving the people who are stuck in maw-mouths, and the people who rely on enclaves to survive.

I wonder if she will, at any point, wonder if any of the people who have been turned to maw-mouths did it consensually. It isn’t even hard to imagine, considering El’s father basically made that choice. Not that it helps any in the larger scale of things, because the first victim isn’t the only one who has to live in there forever.

[number63liveblogs]

The Golden Enclaves, Chapter 16

Okay, I do not think that Orion is going to lose his powers, because the law of balance has been repeated so many times, and on if Orion is going to lose his powers El is going to lose them too, and El still needs to murder all the mawmouths and put up all golden enclaves. Also I personally dislike the characters losing their powers at the end of the story.

I do wonder if this also saved all the other enclaves that were sitting on top of the mawmouths that Fortience had eaten in its long history, or if they had already been digested to the point where they no longer supported enclaves.

Also, Li Shanfeng is a fascinating person, and it’s a shame that we got this little of him (presumably, I don’t think there’ll be space for more of him in the last chapter). Sure, he’s done horrible things, but at the same time he comes off as very sympathetic. Like a person who has done the best he could have, with the cards he was dealt.

But of course he’s old and a seasoned diplomat, so even if he personally voluntarily took part in saving Orion when he didn’t have to it could be just because being on El’s good side is going to be very useful.

[number63liveblogs]

The Golden Enclaves, Chapter 14

Oh poor Orion. It doesn’t matter that he killed those people because they would have killed El in turn. He feels like he’s tainted and the only thing he can do is kill.

I don’t know if going to his parents is going to help. The letter his mother sent downgraded my opinion of her severely, and his father is pretty likely an enabler for whatever his mother’s up to. On the other hand, it’s pretty likely that his mother knows precisely what’s going on with him, as he pretty much said that he wasn’t a magical construct that became a mal, but a mal from the beginning.

El’s second golden enclave also went really well, considering. And that’s good for the future, everyone can see that her idea is viable, as she is going to continue killing maw-mouths (ha, called it).

On the other hand… It will work for now, while El lives and is able to cast the spells. But what about when El dies, are people going to dig out the “modern” enclave spells again? They aren’t going to wait for hundreds of years for someone like her to show up, there needs to be a sustainable way to create more enclaves as the population grows and it needs to happen before El dies.

[number63liveblogs]

The Golden Enclaves, Chapter 12

We’ve met El. She’s an extraordinary person. I only wish I’d found her sooner. But you found her yourself instead. I know she’s afraid of me. But she’s not afraid of you. That’s a gift. I don’t think you need me to tell you to treasure it and be careful of it.

This sounds very much like “I would have liked to have found El before she was powerful enough to be a threat to me, but fortunately you seem to have an avenue to use her to further your means, please use her well.” Like, I said that I wanted to believe that Orion’s mother has noble goals, but this whole thing just sounded so smarmy.

I also think that I have guessed at least some of what is going on with Orion. Clearly his mother did something to him, and how he’s at least partially a magical construct. And we were told, when Magnus tried to kill El and when they were trying to figure out how to repair the cleaning equipment: magical constructs tend to become mals if they are left running too long, or if they can’t get mana from the source they were supposed to get it from.

So, my guess would be that Orion’s mother glued a magical construct onto his soul or something, and that has turned into a mal, and Orion realized it during the graduation. It would explain why didn’t want to come back, and how he wasn’t surprised that his mother was a maleficer.

But most likely that will be put on the back burner while we instead have some reveals about what’s wrong with enclaves.

[number63liveblogs]

The Golden Enclaves, Chapter 11

El has been thinking of her mother a surprisingly small amount. And like, it makes sense considering that revelations that they had the last time they saw each other, but… she should have come to her mind back when she was trying to find a reason to come back out of the Scholomance.

But I’m glad that at least they’re back together now. El needs an adult she can trust in her life, considering what she’s been through.

And they did get Orion out, and I’m kind of sad that we didn’t see the details for how they did it. If for no other reason than seeing how Orion himself reacted to leaving the Scholomance, if at all. I think it would give some insight into why he said that they shouldn’t have gotten him out here. After all, I don’t think anyone else except El could have made him do it.

But he didn’t put up a fight after he recognized El. He could have run, or he could have fought back, but instead he followed El at a literal arm’s length. So he must, at least on some level, have wanted to come back with El.

And that makes sense, obviously, it’s the wanting to stay that doesn’t.

[number63liveblogs]

The Golden Enclaves, Chapter 10

Ha, I was right about Orion being alive!

And he clearly has some very heavy duty psychological damage, but fortunately that’s precisely what El’s mother is the best at.

Although that would be too easy, wouldn’t it? El’s mother’s specialty can, after all be used to show the reader that what’s wrong with Orion is something that even she can’t do anything about. She is still just one person who can’t do everything.

Something fucky is going on. The school does have the faculties to keep hundreds of children alive, so it shouldn’t be hard for one person to survive there for two weeks. But it didn’t sound like the cafeteria was used by Orion.

What has he been eating? Why hasn’t he been fixing his clothes, when he should have had plenty of mana, considering that he wasn’t giving it away to other New York children anymore?

And why didn’t he want to leave?

It looks like he has stopped attacking El for now, but there’s still a chance that the reason why he didn’t want to come with El to begin with hasn’t changed, and El has to drag him out. Which could cause huge issues, depending on what the reason is.

[number63liveblogs]

The Golden Enclaves, Chapter 9

I found myself feeling protective of El’s choices, here. She can fuck Liesel just for physical release or because she thinks Liesel’s hot, as long as any nonmonogamy is done ethically. And also the Scholomance was an extremely high stress and high stakes environment, and people are often much more pleasant to be around when they aren’t competing over everything and under a tremendous amount of pressure.

But Aadhya is just looking out for El, and jumping straight into a relationship right after the apparent death of her first ever boyfriend, and with someone who’s basically in a political marriage, is not the healthiest pattern, especially when I doubt that Aadhya has noticed El’s physical attraction towards Liesel.

We’re also just about to get answers in the Orion plot. Now, it might be that the answers are going to be that everything is much more complicated than they thought. If nothing else, they’ll have a base to build plans on.

I’m just planting my flag in the “Orion is still alive” camp, and manifesting it true with sheer power of shipping.

(I just hope that the book doesn’t completely derail into a relationship drama if Orion is really alive, there’s still a whole enclave killer to catch.)

[number63liveblogs]

The Golden Enclaves, Chapter 8

The thing is, I want to take Orion’s mother at her word. Her at least trying to be an ethical maleficer would be an interesting contrast to El’s steadfast refusal to budge an inch. And something going wrong with whatever Orion’s mother is scheming could be an important reminder for why El’s the way she is. Or it could be that nothing goes wrong, and we’ll get an arc for El that she needs to accept people doing bad things for good reasons, although I don’t think that’s where we’re going based on what has happened previously in the story.

And I want El to grapple with the dilemma of having to choose either keeping Orion’s mother’s secrets or revealing that she’s a maleficer to everyone, which she won’t have to if she’s just straight up evil and someone who needs to be disposed of for everyone’s safety.

I also want to say that this chapter again increases my belief that Orion is going to survive to the end of the book, but I do admit that a big part of that is that I want to see Orion react to both El’s reaction to his mother and the revelations themselves.

[number63liveblogs]

The Golden Enclaves, Chapter 7

She turned when I came in, and there wasn’t any more difficulty seeing where Orion had come from.

She was a maleficer.

Well. Orion’s mother being behind the attacks would make sense, for example the escalation in attacks right after graduation could be response to how New York was supposed to have Orion but doesn’t, they have much less magical power than they were supposed to, and timeline was moved forward.

It would also cement down everything El believes about the enclave system, with this kind of rot at the core of it, and I’m not certain if that’s what the story is going to do with it, if there’ll be a wholesale condemnation of the practice or if El will just make reforms.

I also think I might have to let go of my insistence that Orion is still alive. If the possible enclave war plot gets resolved this early there might still be space for a whole mourning process, especially as El has a possible replacement romantic relationship lined up. She did, after all, insist that she wasn’t into Orion too.

On the other hand, they can’t have a fight here, where there are people around, and most likely they aren’t getting any information about or help with Scholomance out of Orion’s parents, because there’s no way El would work with a maleficer.