#el higgins

[pitviperofdoom]

There's nothing sexier to me in fiction than characters that take integrity to its logical conclusion. Characters who understand and accept that Doing Good is not grand heroism but thankless drudgery, who get dirt and blood and vomit under their nails in the name of kindness, who look hatred and cruelty dead in the eye while throwing themselves into acts of compassion that no one will ever know to thank them for.

[tanoraqui]

recent Scholomance graduates in the battle at the end of book 3 like, “Shit man, this wizard war is fucked. I just saw a guy clap his hands together and say ‘the ten hells’ or some similar shit, and every one around him turned inside out, had their tibia explode and then disappeared. The camera didn't even go onto him, that's how common shit like this is. My ass is casting frostbite and level 2 poison. I think I just saw El Higgins show up and start yelling at people to stop killing each other before she turns them all to stone. I gotta help her.”

[rebuke-me]

thinking so hard about the mothers in scholomance

el was raised by gwen higgins. gwen higgins, who has an affinity for healing, who values hard work and doesn't discriminate who deserves to live. she's a healer in the basest sense. everyone who wants something from her, who is brave enough to ask, deserves to be cared for and loved. she loves el so much that she instills that love into el, pouring affection and care and guiding her towards kindness as a choice. it's the main reason that el isn't a mass murderer. because her mother wanted a child, and got a weapon, and loved her all the same.

orion was raised by ophelia rhys-lake. ophelia, who pulls malia, who wants to be as powerful as possible, who sees power as a shield against the worst of people. the ends justify the means, and she's willing to sacrifice humanity (her own, and her child's) for the power and control she can wield. she loves orion, and that's also why he is the way he is. she doesn't want destruction, she wants protection, but thinks that the only way to stop herself from being completely destroyed is to wield destruction herself in quantities she can control. she makes orion into a hero, because she wanted a weapon, and got a child, and loved him as both.

even their nicknames for their children are indicative of this dynamic. my darling girl: affectionate, loving, cherished. it has nothing to do with what el can do; it's merely affection, placed on a person, because they care. my star boy: bright, affectionate, but dangerous and powerful. there's a distance there, keeping orion at arm's length. you love the constellations, but too close and you'll get burned.

both ophelia and gwen got weapons, got violent dogs to care for. ophelia gave praise, training, a guiding hand towards protectiveness. gwen merely gave love.

[ongoing-catastrophe]

El Higgins will always have a special place in my heart for having the worlds strictest and most generous set of morals and hating it the whole time

[eidolonetchings]

Thinking about graduation allies in Scholomance- we're told that those alliances last beyond the school because you owe them your survival, and we see it briefly in The Golden Enclaves- you treat your kid's allies as honored guests, maybe even as if they're family themselves. If I remember correctly El implies she recognizes the word for ally even in languages she doesn't speak, so we can assume it's something other students know as well, even if they aren't language track.

And if you think about it a little- isn't every student in The Last Graduate part of one big graduation alliance? The whole senior class did practice runs and graduation projects together. The entire school trusted their survival and future to El and Orion and Liesel and Liu and every single other student who stayed in their line and group instead of running as every fucking mal in the world streamed past, holding their shields and sharing their healing. And even the class before theirs- the class in A Deadly Education who thought they were doomed and then got to run through an empty, freshly cleansed graduation hall- wouldn't all of them consider El and Orion and the others on the repair mission as allies?

And thinking about it like that adds another layer to the end of The Golden Enclaves- where even in the middle of a fucking enclave war, everyone in her year walks away from their enclave to follow El, trusting and supporting her the same way that Liu and Aadhya do. Because, as the books say, graduation alliances can be the most important relationship of a wizard's entire life, and El is the one who got them out.

And if you think about it like that- that every wizard in a certain age range would see El and Orion that way, if they thought about it- then I think it's part of a minor arc in the series: El starts as someone who is welcome nowhere, and becomes someone who is welcomed everywhere. She isn't welcome in the commune that loves her mother, or her father's family, except for her mother there is nobody who will do anything to help her, even when she's an elementary schooler alone in a yurt screaming in terror- and then she is someone everyone welcomes but only because she's connected to Orion- and she ends the series as someone who people will do anything to help, even walking away from their enclave allies or going into a place in the void that's supposed to fall, who will be welcomed by anyone except for the people making mawmouths.

And also, all the other seniors count as allies to each other, because they all worked together on the plan to graduate- and the Scholomance made sure that all of them did the work- which means all of them have a lot of connections across the globe. Which makes it much harder for any of the new generation of wizards to take the easy but cruel choice, the choice the books are all about rejecting- "I can be safe and have all the things I want, if I do something that has horrible impacts on other people far away from here, outside my community, who I will never see." For the last graduates of scholomance, those far away people are your community, and you have seen them- and now you have other options to be safe, which don't require causing suffering for other people. So that's another way that the one big graduation alliance made the world a better place, in addition to all the other ways it did that, by choosing to reject the systems in place and help everyone, even though it was harder than only caring for yourself.

[hyperfixations-and-hecticness]

The thing I love about El is she is both so incredibly astute and so incredibly thick. She clocks that Orion is linked to the Hands of Death wipeout on page 12 yet she takes the whole book to realize he’s trying to date her.

[ao-ihinata]

El : I'm not going to get attached to the freshman in my homeroom

Also El : gather 'round class, who can tell me the mistakes this "mal" made when chalking up this hex ??

[forestfantome]

not using generative ai as a college student is the real-world equivalent of being strict mana in the scholomance universe