Huh turns out JK is even less creative than we thought and maybe/prolly cribbed off some (A LOT) of the concepts from Ursula K Leguin's works.
Huh turns out JK is even less creative than we thought and maybe/prolly cribbed off some (A LOT) of the concepts from Ursula K Leguin's works.
Random thought about "wizard schools" in fantasy works but I think its kinda cool to have a contrast between a militarized wizard academy and individualized wizard tutors out in the world.
Howls Living Castle did this kinda and I liked that contrast and also how using magic in the way the military wizards did it destroys your humanity.
Feist's Greater/Lesser magic dichotomy also does this.
Lesser Magic has to be taught by an individual master/student relationship, but it's also the only way to make magical devices and do most of the more useful things, while greater magic require systemic teaching and is extremely flashy and destructive.
The Commonweal also has building the first wizard school as a main plot, after centuries of individualised teaching that inevitably makes already fairly unstable wizards slightly and unpredictably mad. (The alternative being either "very mad" or "mass extinction event")
I think the Recluse books do this. There's an extreme thermocline between order and chaos magic, with order being taught formally, but then it turns out to be complicated.