I was talking to a friend while catching up with the flight, and I’ve finally figured out what made me uncomfortable with the kingdom shutting off the ‘art’ department.
It’s the blatant ignorance of passion when thinking about improving magic.
The Academy has been compared to a military school so many times, it’s the strict rules and regulations of both the students and the magic they use. It’s the secrecy of the institution, that keeps important information from the students. It’s the fact that the students are constantly told nothing and expected to know everything. And finally it’s the fact that they are being told there’s only ONE way to do things, to do magic.
From what we have been told by the professors, there are only set rituals, but why? That can’t be all, to learn is to experiment, but they aren’t giving the students a safe place to experiment, so corrupted rituals happen.
I believe the ‘art’ department was more than that.
Art is an experiment, first and foremost. Art is used to strengthen your creativity, to explore and express what your brain is processing. Every fiber of you goes into your passion, and to me, everything that someone could be passionate about IS art.
Art is subjective, but I believe anything you put love and passion into is art, and art is a basic human understanding, it’s been here as long as hunting has. As long as emotion has.
Kingdoms and governments that ban art, that ban creativity, are always authoritarian in nature. I’m not kidding. So many of the student body can’t read, so art would be the best way to get history across. And banning that means you have to get it from places of authority. That commonly lie.
To be perfectly honest when art is banned it normally means artists are telling a tale that the figures of authority don’t want shared. That they want covered up.
What was happening in the art department that the kingdom wanted to cover.
Another link to this is the fact that we’ve heard nothing about Eloise’s predecessor. The art mage. What happened to them? What links did they have to the art department?
But going back to my original point. Experimentation!
Eloise, Jojo, Melinks, are all mages the will need to learn art to get better with their magic. Like. Fundamentally. Their magic is inextricably tied to the arts. And the Academy knows they’re going to be housing them, so why stunt their magical development?
I don’t know how to end this, just it’s entirely suspicious that they cut off an entire section of the academy, that is needed for the students magical development, for no reason? (The king dying is not a good reason)
