#tf's relationship to his magic is one of the most important points in my wip so I have like... Thoughts and Feelings about it haha

[vaguely-concerned]

Do you think TF ever gets headaches (not talking about Graves) from teleporting around? In Burning tides is described as building pressure, so maybe if he does it too much or too quickly it backfires and gives him a migraine?

ooh good question! it is kind of interesting that Burning Tides also tells us you can actually feel the building pressure around him in enough of a radius that Graves has often found himself inside it.

I will say that from the way I conceptualize the way his magic works in my head, I think he's mostly immune to the physical drains/effects himself; what it starts to eat away at and change is more something that happens deeper down on, like... a soul sort of level lol. this is really hard to explain because I've never written it out consciously before, but for me it's kind of thematically important to underline that he ~*has all the cards*~ in the situations where he uses them, and that other people may be affected by the consequences of his actions with them but he's kind of the untouchable point in the middle of the seesaw -- none of it truly touches him. which essentially is a metaphorical extension of his trauma responses, right? he wants to be out of reach and unaffected by the world, predicting it ahead of time and able to be Out Of There with a single thought at any point, and that's exactly what the cards give him.

...but then there's a cost to pay for holding that sort of control over the world and yourself. he invests a small part of himself in it every time. so if he tried to overdo it in a short span of time, each time he'd need to dig somewhere deeper inside himself to find that place to build the wave/pressure of the magic from again, until he starts to feel himself wear... thin somewhere in there, and the people around him might suffer more actively for it. (well I did say metaphorical extension for his whole deal right lol.) like it does 'fill back up' if he lets it rest for a while, but it can also gouge in something like a wound if he keeps digging and doesn't back down and it'd take longer to heal.

TL;DR: I think if he started really overdoing it Graves might start to get migraines, and TF would just feel himself fade and drift away from himself and the world in a very scary and scarily imperceptible, gradual way, and most of the time he avoids it on a very instinctual, survival brain sort of level because just a little magic often goes a long way without starting to risk that. (and the times when he doesn't shy away from it are basically when he's doing some bad coping mechanisms, especially when he's on his own)

(Graves probably does provide him with plenty of normal run-of-the-mill headaches too tho you are very right fsdhklhfal)