Been reading the Broken Earth trilogy (ITS REALLY GOOD BTW YOU SHOULD READ IT), finished the second book last night, and something I found interesting was how the orogeny (earthquake magic for those who haven’t read) schools, the Fulcrum, is portrayed in books 1 and 2. There’s something about how Fulcrum teaching actually limits your range of orogeny, how self taught orogenes have abilities Fulcrum students never learn, and how the mindsets the Fulcrum instills actively prevent orogenes from conceptualizing their abilities in certain ways. A character even says at one point in The Obelisk Gate that she has no right to judge non-Fulcrum orogenes by Fulcrum standards as their tests are basically meaningless to someone who hasn’t spent time in the Fulcrum.

It’s a super interesting look and commentary on education, because of course the Fulcrum isn’t made to advance orogeny but is a tool of oppression against orogenes to ensure they fall in line and won’t cause trouble (the real world parallels are clear lol). No Fulcrum trained orogene is meant to be anything more than a slave, so shifting my perspective on it from ‘a horrific institution but without it orogenes have no chance to be able to control their powers’ to ‘a horrific institution that ensures orogenes will never learn what they’re really capable of’ was cool to feel real time. When your perception of the world is limited by the character’s POV and then you learn and discover along with them… that’s the good stuff.