As my husband put it: it's magical boarding school as an allegory for chattel slavery.
So apart from the bit where they kidnap magical children and imprison them in a horrible school full of torture (physical and magical) and unreasonable competitions to train them into using their powers for the benefit of the authorities rather than to overthrow their torturers, they also force breed them as soon as they reach their teens in order to make more magical children. And if the magical children fail the horrible ordeals, either because their magic isn't strong enough or they are not compliant enough, the school arranges for them to have brain surgery that leaves them completely paralysed, and then hooks them up to machines that make use of their magic in a way that involves the kids being conscious and in excrutiating agony at least some of the time. I suppose technically that last bit doesn't happen *at* the Fulcrum, but it's a direct result of the Fulcrum's policy on handling failure.
There is actually some boarding-school-story stuff going on amongst all this horrifying torture, but it's admittedly a fairly minor part of the plot.
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TW: all the child abuse
Date: 2019-05-10 11:18 am (UTC)So apart from the bit where they kidnap magical children and imprison them in a horrible school full of torture (physical and magical) and unreasonable competitions to train them into using their powers for the benefit of the authorities rather than to overthrow their torturers, they also force breed them as soon as they reach their teens in order to make more magical children. And if the magical children fail the horrible ordeals, either because their magic isn't strong enough or they are not compliant enough, the school arranges for them to have brain surgery that leaves them completely paralysed, and then hooks them up to machines that make use of their magic in a way that involves the kids being conscious and in excrutiating agony at least some of the time. I suppose technically that last bit doesn't happen *at* the Fulcrum, but it's a direct result of the Fulcrum's policy on handling failure.
There is actually some boarding-school-story stuff going on amongst all this horrifying torture, but it's admittedly a fairly minor part of the plot.