History Literature / TheScholomance

* AllTheOtherReindeer: El's powers give off some kind of aura that appears to make her feel wrong--people naturally dislike her without really knowing why. It would be BullyingADragon, but she takes pains not to use her PersonOfMassDestruction powers.

* WizardingSchool: The Scholomance is a much darker take on the trope than the average, but is in line with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholomance the real life legends about the Scholomance.]]

* MagicIsAMonsterMagnet: The entire reason why the Scholomance exists is to give its students a fighting chance of seeing adulthood without getting eaten by a passing mal. The survival rate for the students might only be around 1 in 2, but that beats the 1 in 20 odds of anyone not lucky enough to get in.

* EverythingIsTryingToKillYou: Between the horde of mals and the school's deliberate efforts to prey on the unwary, it's no wonder half of those who enter die.

* BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil: According to the Principle of Balance, anything magical that upsets things too much will cause a countering effect. A coven of evil wizards kills a thousand of their classmates? The next year an evil wizard slaying hero is born. An unparalleled beacon of purity and goodness exists? Her daughter is prophecized to cause mass destruction and havoc.

** This trope gets put to use by The Scholomance as a way of generating power.

* OddCouple: Galadriel, an independent loner who lives in a yurt in the middle of nowhere and whose magic is trying to make her the most vile dark wizard in living memory, and Orion, an enclave kid whose mother is next in line to lead the most prestigious enclave in the world and whose magic makes him an ideal dark wizard/monster slaying hero. Just about the only thing they have in common is wishing people would judge them for themselves and not their preconceived notions of what they are.

* WizardingSchool: The Scholomance is a much darker take on the trope than the average.

* BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil: According to the Principle of Balance, anything magical that upsets things too much will cause a countering effect. A coven of evil-wizards kills a thousand of their classmates? The next year an evil-wizard slaying hero is born. An unparalleled beacon of purity and goodness exists? Her daughter is prophecized to cause mass destruction and havoc.

* BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil: According to the Principle of Balance, anything magical that upsets things too much will cause a countering effect. A coven a evil-wizards kills a thousand of their classmates? The next year an evil-wizard slaying hero is born. An unparalleled beacon of purity and goodness exists? Her daughter is prophecized to cause mass destruction and havoc.

* WhatYouAreInTheDark: El's decision to [[spoiler:go after a mawmouth on its way to the first year dorms, rather than publicly but needlessly helping the enclave kids during a mass mal incursion]] firmly cements her status as BadPowersGoodPeople.
* WillfullyWeak: El is a strict mana user, because if she ever let herself use malia she wouldn't be able to stop herself from killing everyone around her.

* VitriolicBestBuds: Orion and El settle into this dynamic fairly quickly. It gets to the point that Orion's first reaction to El being overtly nice to him is to wonder what he did to make her mad at him.

* TeenageWasteland: Averted. Despite being entirely made up of kids aged 14 - 18, things generally stay civil in the Scholomance. It helps that the school is dangerous enough on a normal day that no one is particularly eager to add fellow students to the list of things openly trying to kill them. There still might be students ''secretly'' trying to kill them, but they're more of an occupational hazard.

* TheDarkArts: Pulling malia.

* HunterOfMonsters: Orion's affinity and temperment make him ideally suited as one. He is even able to pull mana from his recent kills.

* MalevolentArchitecture: Downplayed - it's more like Obnoxiously Inconvenient Architecture. Being built in a pocket dimension makes the school's layout somewhat suggestible, and one of the easiest ways for the structure to reinforce itself is to make sure the students focus on how miserable it is to get from place to place.

* VitriolicBestBuds: Orion and El settle into this dynamic fairly quickly.
* WhatYouAreInTheDark: El's decision to [[spoiler:go after the Mawmouth, which nobody believes a lone student could do, rather than publicly and flashily save the enclave kids from a mass mal incursion]] firmly cements her status as BadPowersGoodPeople.
* WillfullyWeak: El is a strict mana user, because if she ever let herself use malia she likely wouldn't be able to stop.

* GeniusLoci: While the exact degree of intelligence is up for debate, there is something in the school that lets it judge circumstances and change itself to suit the needs of the moment... [[MalevolentArchitecture however it might see them.]]

* MalevolentArchitecture: Downplayed - it's more like Obnoxiously Inconvenient Architecture. Being built in a pocket dimension makes the school's layout somewhat suggestible, and one of the easiest ways for the structure to reinforce itself is to make sure the student's focus on how miserable it is to get from place to place.

* MalevolentArchitecture: Half the reason the school is so deadly. It's part of how the school gathers the energy it needs to power itself.

* Bizarrchitecture: The Scholomance's layout is only possible because it was constructed in a pocket dimension. Notable features include floors spaced a 15 minute walk apart, plumbing and air vents wildly miss-sized for their apparent needs, and walls and ceilings made of a featureless void that drives those who enter it mad.

* MysteriousParent: El is very set on keeping her relationship to her mother a secret from her classmates.

* AwesomeButImpractical: El's affinity is for death and destruction, which the school is more than happy to nurture and indulge. This does lead to certain drawbacks when she's trying to do mundane things, such as find spells to clean her room or create water from thin air.
* BadPowersBadPeople: El has gone to great lengths to avert this trope, to the point where it practically defines her as a person.
* EmbarrassingFirstName: El is short for [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Galadriel]]. She's heard all the jokes.

* SafetyInMuggles: The best bet for anyone not lucky enough to get into the Scholomance is to find the largest concentration of muggles they can and never leave it. The collective disbelief of normal humans might prevent magic from being used reliably, but it also negates the majority of a mal's powers.
* TeenageWasteland: Averted. Despite being entirely made up of kids aged 14 - 18, things generally stay civil in the Scholomance. It helps that the school is dangerous enough on a normal day that no one is particularly eager to add fellow students to the list of things openly trying to kill them. There still might be students ''secretly'' trying to kill them, but that's more like an occupational hazard.
* WillfullyWeak: El is a strict mana user, because if she ever let herself use malia, she likely wouldn't be able to stop.

* TeenageWasteland: Averted. Despite being entirely made up of kids aged 14 - 18, things generally stay civil in the Scholomance. It helps that the school is dangerous enough on a normal day that no one is particularly eager to add fellow students to the list of things trying to kill them.

* IncorruptiblePurePureness: El's mother, Gwen Higgins, is famous for her healing and protective spells, her generosity, and her near total refusal to commodify her talents and abilities.

* WillfullyWeak: El is a strict mana user, because if she ever let herself use malia, she likely wouldn't be able to stop.

* EmbaracingFirstName: El is short for [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Galadriel]]. She's heard all the jokes.

* MagicIsAMonsterMagnet: The entire reason why the Scholomance exists is to give the students a fighting chance of seeing adulthood without getting eaten by a passing malificeria. The survival rate for the students might only be around 50%, but that beats the 5% survival rate of anyone not lucky enough to get in.