#we can have the academic trauma once we are done with academia

[actual-changeling]

trying very hard not to lose it over classes starting again on monday

[astrum-aetherium]

Could you elaborate more on Camilla? It's for... research purposes, an innocent research and without second or third intentions.

all too gladly — like other TSH figures, she is extremely complex and therefore interesting to dissect. i don't know how much time you have, which is why i will offer you a mere general overview of my opinions on her character. once again, sensically — tw for incest. goes without saying when it comes to her, unfortunately.

i appreciate her as a character and likewise sympathize with her greatly. in my eyes, she is an unfairly dismissed longtime victim of incest who has settled into that cycle of abuse so deeply that the reveal thereof doesn't even shock most readers — i've seen far too many people admitting it "made sense" or "was expected" for charles and camilla to be romantically involved with one another, which we can only owe to ms tartt herself, who strangely saw to that with striking intricacy via her writing. why — i may never know. dark academia, flawed characters, we're not supposed to like them, elitism, wealth — i know, i know, i know. it's still so utterly strange to me.

in addition, as the only woman in a close-knit circle of men (who are already far too privileged for their own good, predominantly heteronormative, and outspoken creatures of their time — specifically bunny), she is obviously the only one being gone after by nearly everyone. henry, her own brother, richard, even francis (on a singular occasion, but didn't he say she was the only one he ever questioned his sexuality over?), and possibly bunny, had he not been in a relationship and scared shitless of henry toward the end? plus, she is portrayed to be an indirect catalyst for the final traumatic event in the book due to being involved with both charles and henry. now, i do not attribute any fault to her, as she certainly has her own reasons to still be in that position (listed below), and what charles and henry did is their own fault and therefore between the two of them only. never blame a woman for a disagreement sparked between men, even if she was indirectly involved.

because of this depiction, i would even go as far as labeling her a "manic pixie dream girl", especially because she is described as so ambivalent and enigmatic in the novel. it truly seems to me that there are very few consistent characterization points in regard to her in the book. it's always either — oh, she is so clever and beautiful, so divine, and she amuses us all, and she is the mediator; or, oh, she is so secretive and has a palpable air of mystery, and must be hiding so much behind that pretty face and sad eyes. very manic-pixie-dream-girlish, if you ask me — but we know whose fault it is (hint: she was born on december 23rd). and yes, she does entertain the attention of most of the men interested in her, but then again, i elaborated on this matter in my post regarding her relationship with henry: i am fully convinced that she is not attracted to men whatsoever, neither romantically nor sexually, and engaging some of them is just a trauma response to partaking in incestuous activity and finding herself in an environment predominantly defined by men. i have a feeling that internally, she's longing to break free from all of it in whichever way possible, and she deserves to.

there's just no justification for not feeling bad for her in this case. camilla is done so dirty by the author of TSH in the way that she is misportrayed, it ails me. she constantly finds herself being objectified and disregarded, recognized and emphasized not for her academic skills and knowledge, but for the fact she is a beautiful, mystifying woman in a circle of intelligent, preposterously pretentious men. annoyingly, she is some sort of "feminine relief", the concept whereof outright vexes me. honestly — the way richard speaks of her sometimes (and yes, i know, it's meant to be like that, as he's an unreliable narrator and a young hormonal man on top of that, but nevertheless) is just outrageous. she is a victim of incest trapped in a position where she cannot communicate with anyone but her abuser and his male friends. is it ever mentioned that she entertains female acquaintances? i cannot recall, and that should be sufficient proof. the confinement she must feel, both in her interpersonal position and in her femininity, must be insane. she deserves so much more.

i want her to leave most of them behind, specifically those who have never seen her as anything other than an object of desire — even charles (who has fled anyway!) — and move somewhere to the warm south into a remote country cottage with a gorgeous, gigantic garden which she would tend to daily, and drive out into the city every now and again for groceries and bookstore strolls. a miss honey type, you know? hell, she could have a wife. a cat or a dog. horses or cattle, even. as far as i'm concerned, she could even see francis on occasion for a paired vacation or a lunch date here and there. i feel like they have the best shot at developing the healthiest bond, despite their shared trauma.

all in all, i think it's obvious that i have the biggest soft spot for her and am therefore convinced that she deserves nothing but the best. she was done quite dirty by ms tartt, and all the characters she ever shared a space with. i only sleep soundly at night knowing that she is very much fictional.

[skaldish]

(Discerning Dubious Heathen Resources: A Guide by Skaldish)

Not all Heathens are academics, but we all want to develop a fulfilling practice. For most, that means learning from books, articles, and groups. But how can we be sure a resource is credible? And how can we separate the useful from the dubious?

Fortunately, discernment is pretty easy once you know what to look for. Here are some signs that your Heathen resource may be dubious:

It Lacks Source Transparency

Some Heathen resources will dive into “How to be a Heathen” without mentioning where their information comes from, which can dupe you into believing it’s something it’s not. A transparent resource will acknowledge its information’s origins, whether it’s from a person’s personal practice, a living folk tradition, reconstructed from old texts, etc. This can be done through citations or disclaimers.

Should you throw out resources that aren’t open about their origins? Not necessarily. But it does means you can’t fully trust what that resource is leading you to believe.

It Frames Heathenry as a High-Demand Religion

@north-of-annwn introduced me to the concept of a High-Demand Religion. To quote:

A religion can be considered “high demand” if it involves any or all of the following:

Intense demands of time and resources

Emphasis on leadership

Orthodox belief

Scriptural inerrancy or literalism

Strict behavioral codes including rules of diet, dress, tithing, education, sexual practices, media and technology use, language, social involvement, and marriage.

(Myers, Summer Anne, “Visualizing the Transition Out of High-Demand Religions” (2017). LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations. 321)

Not all religions act like high-demand Christianity. Heathenry, with its origins in folkloric practice, isn’t inherently a High-Demand Religion and is not required to look like one.

It Conflates Healing from Christian Trauma as Heathen Practice

Trauma caused by Christianity is very real and deserves proper attention and space. However, it’s not a cultural staple of Heathenry, nor is it even an experience shared by all Heathens. A good resource will help you foster an identity wholly separate from Christianity, not in direct opposition to it.

It Suggests Heathenry has a Certain “Look”

I’ve rarely seen a resource state it’s the “one true way”, but some will definitely talk as though they define what all of Heathenry is, or at least their sect of it. In reality, Heathenry varies between groups and has pretty much always done so...and the values of one group do not define the values of all Heathenry. This is why pulling from multiple sources and authors builds a stronger foundation for your practice than using just one.

It Contains Morally Questionable Content

A part of me is baffled I’m even writing this, but you’d be surprised the kind of bullshit authors will parade around. Prime example: Galina Krasskova portrays Loki as a pedophile in one of her devotionals because she has UPG that his wife Sigyn is a child bride.

This goes for all paganism: Mystical experiences are not a “Get out of Jail Free” card for accountability. You’re allowed to hold authors accountable if their content is questionable.

It Overstates Academic and Historical Merit

The opposite of lacking source transparency is the idea that a valid Heathen practice is one built ONLY upon historical or “pre-Christian” evidence, applying even to UPGs. It makes academic prowess the proof of faith, rather than practice or even belief itself. It also discredits modern Heathen practices and lineaged Heathen practices that were passed down from historical ones.

Academia itself isn’t bad, and academic papers are some of the most reliable sources on Heathenry out there. But anyone treating academia as the source of legitimacy for a Heathen practice is operating off of a standard not required in Heathenry.

It Contains White Supremacist Dogwhistles and Virtues

We knew this one was coming. Let’s take a few examples for a speed run:

Emphasis on bloodlines/heritage/race

The Nine Noble Virtues

Claiming Heathenry is a closed religion

Implies a shared experience of whiteness

Emphasis on War Culture

Glorification of Ragnarok

Glorification of Valhalla

Obsession with Vikings

Idealization of Odin, demonization or pointed absence of Loki

Chosen vs. Unchosen, Us vs.Them narratives

Innangard and Utangard (requires context)

Odinism/Odinist

Tribalism/Tribalist

Folkish, Volkische, “the Folk”

“Metagenetics”, “Blood and Soil”, “Heritage not Hate”

Nordicism

Social issues are “politics” and “politics don’t belong in Heathenry”

The Black Sun

SS Symbol

The Triple Horn (logo of the Asatru Folk Assembly, a hate group.)

“Anti-Immigration”

Racialism

White supremacy is a real issue in Heathenry, and dogwhistles have become so subtle that many can be written off as harmless or unrelated to white supremacy...which is exactly the point.

Ask yourself this: Does the book, group, or resource state or imply that white people have lost their pre-Christian roots, and that they can reclaim them through the brotherhood of Heathenry? If so, then you have found the introductory narrative of white supremacy.*

Remember that a trustworthy resource on Heathenry will not prey on bitter feelings you may have coming into Heathenry. Instead it’ll give you the room and tools to build your practice regardless of where your come from or the religion you were previously in. Your inherent worth and wellbeing are important and should not be leveraged against you.

The front-line defense against white supremacist sources is Googling the author of your resource. A few popular and easily-found authors out there like Edred Thorrson/Stephen Flowers are active white supremacists, and even if a book of theirs doesn’t talk about race, their ideals bleed through their works.

*As a side note, many pagans turn to family origins to inform their path, including people with ancestry in Nordic countries. Just because someone comes to Heathenry this way doesn’t automatically make them a white supremacist or a sympathizer. The narrative only begins to darken when bloodlines are used to measure the legitimacy of someone’s Heathen practice.

That being said, this post is not suggesting you should point out the white supremacist red flags in other people when you see them. Rather, this post is meant to help you identify when the narrative tries to prey on YOU. Regular people aren’t equipped to reverse radicalization in other people, no matter what point it’s at, and trying to do so will do more harm than good. Please exercise good personal discernment in all situations.

[waywardfangirl]

Write This Down

General Audiences | No Archive Warnings Apply

Baz Pitch/Simon Snow | 3,305 words | Complete

Summary: Inspired by Write This Down by George Strait - Baz and Simon love each other, and they know it. But, Baz came close to losing Simon once, and he doesn't intend to let that ever happen again.

***A big thank you to @foolofabookwyrm​ for editing this for me literally the second I finished writing it! I love you!!!***

Baz

The first time I told Simon I loved him, tears were pouring down both of our faces and we were absolutely miserable. It was one of the worst days of my life, and I hated the fact that every nice thing Simon and I have, every special moment and milestone in our disaster of a relationship, is marred in some way by tragedy. We kissed for the first time in the middle of a burning forest when I was so deep in the throes of self-hatred I couldn’t find my way out without Simon to save me. Instead of the honeymoon phase that every other couple gets, Simon and I received death and destruction and trauma, and then hearings and interrogations before the Coven. When we tried to go on vacation, to take a break and do something to pull Simon out of the pit of depression he had spiraled into, we almost died multiple times. When I finally propose to him I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that dark creatures can’t find us, the weather can’t ruin us, and even our well-meaning but nosy friends can’t disturb us.

But I’m getting too far ahead of myself. I can’t start planning for a proposal just yet, because I’m still not sure that I won’t lose him one day. He told me he loved me with tears streaming down his cheeks, and then he tried to break up with me.

I had started crying around that time too; I wanted to be in control, I wanted to shut off my emotions so Simon wouldn’t be hurt by my own anguish, but instead traitorous tears came streaming down my face and I started babbling out every thought I’d ever had – please don’t leave me and I’m not happy without you and no no no don’t go, Simon, please don’t and eventually I love you, I love you too, I love you so much, there’s nothing for me if you aren’t here, I love you. So, no, it was not one of our better moments.

Once I finally convinced him that breaking up with me would, in fact, not help me at all, we agreed to put serious effort into working on our relationship. This has also meant that both Simon and I found ourselves going to (separate) therapists, and coming together once a month for couple’s counseling too. Put together, we’re utilizing three-quarters of the magical word’s mental health resources. (It’s helping.)

(Read the rest on AO3, or under the cut)

I don’t know exactly what Simon discusses with his own therapist (although I could probably make a few guesses), but my therapist has been encouraging me to work on my own anxieties as of late among other things. I haven’t been able to shake my fear that Simon might decide to leave again, and that crying amidst declarations of love won’t fix things this time. So, since I can’t control the actions of others, I can only control what I think and do myself (yes, thank you Amy, the once-weekly sessions are working and I now hear your voice in my head when I evaluate my own thoughts), I’ve decided on a course of action that will help both Simon and myself.

I start by stealing his phone. He only uses the notes app to write down things he wants to bring up in therapy, so I ignore all the existing memos and start a new one, just three words – I love you.

(The numpty never bothered setting a passcode, I should modify his phone more often. He needs a new lock screen.)

 Three days later, Simon emerges from his bedroom after his appointment, face blotchy and tear tracks drying on his cheeks. Every muscle in my body pulls to gather him up in my arms and give him shelter in the form of an embrace, but I know in moments like this I have to let him make the first move. Luckily, he walks straight over to where I’m putting the dishes away and immediately buries his face in my neck. His arms cinch around my waist, and I waste no time in pulling him closer to me, carding one hand through his curls.

“Alright, love?”

He nods, pressing in closer, then mumbles into my skin, “I love you.”

Ah. He found the note, then. Good.

“I love you too.”

*****

The next week, I walk into Simon and Penny’s apartment after classes, only to find Simon asleep on the couch. Netflix is playing some action movie on the tv, and Simon’s face is twitching slightly, still reacting to the sound even while fast asleep. I know he was up late last night preparing for a big presentation, so I let him rest. As I pull my laptop out of my bag to study at the kitchen table, I grab a sticky note as well, and attach it to the center of the television screen.

I love you

An hour later, I hear the tv shut off. Simon wanders into the kitchen, sitting down at the table and scooching his chair over until it’s pressed up next to mine. He kisses me on the cheek, and then on the mouth when I turn my head.

“Hi love, how was your day?”

“Good. Better now.”

*****

Finals are upon us, and of course the worst academic weeks of the year are also the time when Simon and I decide to try spending the night together again. (Just sleeping, but sharing each other’s space for that long, being there together when we wake up the next morning.) I feel like all of this should be so much easier, like other couples just make it look so effortless – we love each other, why can’t we show it? Why is it so hard to turn those emotions into actions and words? I don’t ever want to be beside anyone else, how can I prove that to him?

After the first few nights, it starts to feel normal. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the feeling of Snow’s arms wrapped around me, his muscles relaxing as we both fall asleep, but I don’t want to get used to it. I want it to be novel every single time, I always want to feel this in love with him.

Tonight, though, I can’t let myself lie down until I finish this last essay. I’ll edit it tomorrow, but I can’t stop writing until I’m done or I know I’ll lose momentum. Simon went to bed at least half an hour ago, and that’s all the incentive I need to keep my fingers flying across the keyboard; the sooner I’m done, the sooner I’ll be back beside him.

I close my laptop at half past midnight, and attempt to straighten the academic mess on the kitchen table before breakfast ruins a textbook tomorrow morning. Snow has left his books in a perilous heap, on the verge of teetering onto the floor, so I straighten the stack, then pick up the top book.

It’s a textbook, An Introduction to Social Services, because my brave and caring boyfriend wants to continue saving the world in any way he can. The first half of the book is filled with bookmarks and flags, highlighted passages and scribbled notes in the margins. He’s been attacking his studies with a vigor he’s never shown for academia before, and I’m so proud of him. I pick up a pen and add a note of my own under the practice review he’s flagged with tomorrow’s date (when did he get to be so organized? He’s wonderfully full of surprises even now) – You’re absolutely brilliant, love.

I leaf through the book to the next practice exam, this one flagged for three days from now. You’re the most caring man I’ve ever met, you were born for this work. The review in the middle of the book gets a simple (true) I’m so proud of you, and then I start leafing through the pages I assume Simon will be using next semester. I don’t let myself question the future, I don’t let uncertainty and anxiety creep in, I just write notes on random pages, to be discovered in the middle of lectures or homework or studying.

My darling

You’re the only sunshine I need

Have I told you lately how handsome you are?

I adore you

You’re my perfect other half, I’m so happy we match

Finally, I leave an index card mixed in with the ones he’s been using for review.

Q: How much do I love you?

A: More than I can possibly say.

*****

Simon Snow can still go off. He’s less physically destructive now, nothing in the flat gets burnt to a crisp and he doesn’t leave craters behind, but sometimes his emotions get stopped up until they come out in a flood of yelling and crying, and he erupts.

We’ve both been trying to be better about handling our outbursts, and trying not to take bad days out on the other, but sometimes it still happens. I don’t know exactly what happened today, but from what I can make out it seems like small things just piled up until I rolled my eyes when Simon suggested watching Star Wars, and that became the straw that broke the camel’s back. Old habits die hard, and we both still give as good as we get when fighting, so fifteen minutes later Penelope came home to find a screaming match in the living room and neither of us even aware of what we were saying or fighting over anymore.

She made us sit down and go through all the skills we’ve learned (use “I” statements, list your emotions, say what you admire about the other person – fine, thank you Amy, your voice is still in my head) until finally we had calmed down enough to be there for each other again.

I held Simon as he cried into my shirt, and we crawled into bed together still holding hands. We kissed before falling asleep and the last thing I remembered was Simon’s breath ghosting over me.

Now though, I’m awake, pulled from sleep and my boyfriend’s arms because I needed a glass of water, and I suddenly can’t stop reliving our argument. We’re fine, I know we are, we’re going to be okay. All couples fight, what matters is that we sat down and talked about it afterwards. We’re both sorry and we both love each other.

I can’t help the voice in the back of my head though, the voice that insists that Simon still thinks I don’t love him and that he might leave me again. I ignore it, then tell it how wrong it is, before finally giving in to my anxiety and tearing a blank piece of paper from the notepad on the fridge. I leave the note on his bedside table, so he’ll see it first thing in the morning, when he inevitably wakes up before I do.

Simon, my dearest, I love you so much. I promise, I love you, no matter what.

*****

“Baz! Did you get it?”

Simon Snow is bouncing on the soles of his feet like a toddler crossed with a golden retriever, and if anyone else were acting like this I would make a point of ignoring them, but because it’s Simon I just kiss him quickly and pull the book out from behind my back.

“Yes, love, I got it. Hot off the press, specially for you.”

Simon’s never been much of a reader, but after discovering ‘the best book in the world’, as he puts it, he’s been devouring this series. The newest one was released today, and I promised him I would pick it up from the bookstore on my way home. (I’ve read them too, and they are quite good, although Simon is definitely more enchanted with them than I am.)

“Can we start reading it right now?” He’s got it clutched to his chest like a child, and—no, that’s dangerous territory to enter, I can’t let myself start thinking of Simon with a baby or else I won’t leave this flat until I’ve proposed to him, and he deserves a nicer proposal than whatever happens to fall out of my mouth right now. Besides, I don’t even have the ring with me, it’s still hidden in my sock drawer back in Hampshire.

“Are you suggesting skipping dinner?” I hold up the bags of takeaway I’ve brought. He looks anguished.

“Can’t we do both?”

He’s a disaster. I love him.

“Alright you bottomless pit, you can eat your dinner and I’ll read to you, will that work?”

He kisses me again in response, a proper snog that’s only interrupted when Bunce wanders through to the kitchen, remarking loudly to Shepard, “They have their own room and everything, but they still insist on doing this sort of thing out here in the open.”

Simon good naturedly flips her off, and I pull away to smirk.

“He’s far too attractive for me to confine my affection to only one room in the house, Bunce. It’s not fair to expect me to restrain myself when my boyfriend is so criminally handsome.” I take Simon’s hand and tug him into the living room to settle against me as I start to read.

When all the food has been devoured and my voice is starting to lull Snow to sleep, I grab a scrap of paper, scribble I love you on it, and then insert it in the book to mark our place.

*****

Simon has been baking up a storm. He’s determined to figure out Cook Pritchard’s recipe for sour cherry scones, because she won’t give up the secret and he hates having to wait for Pitch family gatherings to eat them. He’s going through butter like a fiend, and all of our neighbors adore us because he keeps giving batches away.

When he leaves the kitchen to go retrieve something from his bedroom I slip a note into the fridge, to be discovered the next time he picks up the butter.

I love you

 Three days later, I find the note affixed to the freezer door.

*****

“It’s so empty!”

Simon’s voice bounces off of the walls, and it almost echoes. The house really is empty, at once both exciting and intimidating – this is ours, this is where we get to keep building our life together, this is where we’ll make more memories, this is where we’ll start our family.

“The rest of our furniture will be here tomorrow, love, the movers said they could have it in before nine.”

I hear running footfalls, and then Simon comes sliding down the hall in his socks, crashing into me and almost knocking me over.

“Maybe we should keep it like this, and we can use the first floor for sock races!” He’s laughing, and so happy, and I adore him.

“Mmm, perhaps not,” I say, pushing his curls back from his face. “As enchanting as that idea may be, I expect you’d be sad if Penny and Shepard stopped visiting us because they had no place to sit. And I’m sure you would miss having a dining room table, too.” I kiss him on his nose, because it always makes him laugh, and then I lean back, grab his hands, and spin him around in circles in our empty living room.

Once we’re both too dizzy to stay standing, we collapse on the floor together, struggling to swallow our giggles. Eventually, I pull Simon back up to standing, and nudge him to start unpacking what we can. Dishes go in the cupboards, and sheets go in the linen closet. One of the boxes I open has a hammer and nails, and Simon finds the box that we put our pictures in. Some have to be set aside until the furniture is arranged, but we hang a few in the kitchen and the entry hall. Right before we blow up the inflatable mattress and go to sleep for the first time in our new house, I lead Simon back into the living room and pull out one last photo to hang.

The picture itself is quite large, a candid shot taken during our engagement party. Simon was laughing at something I’d just said, and he’s as bright and radiant as ever. I’m gazing adoringly at him, looking every bit the lovesick fool I am. Penny and Shep are in the background, along with Fiona and the rest of my immediate family, and everyone looks so happy to be celebrating the two of us. It’s one of my favorites, enlarged to sit in a frame over the mantle, where everyone who enters our home will be sure to see it.

It’s a bit of a struggle to get it to hang straight, but eventually we manage it.

“That looks lovely. I didn’t even know you’d had that one framed, I like it.”

I kiss his neck, and wrap my arms around his waist, hooking my chin over his shoulder and holding my wand out in front of him.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

We watch together as three words start to curve around our bodies in the portrait, shiny gold cursive tethering us to each other and stating simply, I love you.

Simon leans back into me, turning his face up for a kiss. “I love you too,” he whispers when we pull apart, “Show-off.” Then he’s walking backwards down the hall, leading me towards the stairs, and going to break his neck if he tries to go up the stairs without first turning around. I’ll tell him tomorrow that the spell I cast will only show those words if they’re true and if I still mean them. (They’re going to be there forever.)

*****

We go ring shopping together. We want our wedding rings to match, and to also complement the engagement rings we gave each other, so we block off an entire Saturday to find the perfect bands. (It turns out that the perfect rings are hiding in a jewelry store just a few blocks from Simon and Penny’s first apartment, which I think has a lovely symmetry to it.)

The rings themselves are simple, gold bands that compliment both of our complexions with a delicate scattering of engraved stars barely visible on the surface. We know immediately that these are our rings, we hardly need to glance at each other to confirm it.

As we’re being sized and filling out all the necessary information, I hand over a folded slip of paper.

“I would like this to be engraved on the inside of his ring, please.”

Simon’s mouth falls open for a moment, then he reaches into his jeans pocket to pull out his own slip of paper.

“I’d like this engraved inside of his too, please,” he says, and I can’t help but loop my arm around his waist.

“I suppose great minds think alike, don’t they Snow?”

He wrinkles his nose.

“You’re going to have to start calling me Pitch before too much longer, you know.”

I wasn’t prepared for this argument, and I’m far too in love with him to have a satisfactory response ready.

“No I won’t. Pitch will be your last name, and Snow will become your middle name. You call me by my middle name already, so we’ll match,” I add, as a happy afterthought.

The jeweler chuckles.

“You really do. You want the same engraving and everything.”

I feel like he maybe should have understood that those messages were meant to be a surprise, given Snow’s obvious shock, and the folded pieces of paper, but I’m a little too happy to care. Our wedding rings are going to match, inscription and all.

I love you

[stillness-in-green]

Changeling: The League (1/3)

Being some errant nerdery combining two things I love very much into one thing that is exponentially more nerdy than either thing on its own: My Hero Academia villains as Changeling: the Lost characters!

This will(/should) be a series of three posts containing some mid-length write-ups on the League of Villains, the Metahuman Liberation Army, and some odds-and-ends on other characters/alternate takes.  

Some prelude: The most prominent question that kept coming up as I was brainstorming the write-ups below was, “Is this retelling the story of My Hero Academia using Changeling: The Lost’s mechanics and world, or is this exploring Changeling: The Lost’s themes using the My Hero Academia cast?”  Would these versions of the characters be NPC villains in Izuku’s story, opponents (or possibly eventual allies) in some grand, epic clash between Heroes and Villains as begun with All Might and All for One?  Would it be the story of a corrupt system, pulled down by the PC group that was Shigaraki and his motley?  I had ideas for both, but in the end, I decided that, rather than oblige myself to the MHA canon, I was ultimately more interested in just letting the implied “story” focus on the League and their histories of loss, trauma and recovery, so that’s the spirit in which these are written.  (Though things do get a bit plottier when their story intersects with the MLA’s.)

Lastly, these are, of course, completely AU, but if you don’t know who the Liberation Army is, you’re probably still going to trip over manga spoilers, so be mindful.  

First, let me lay down some backstory!  Specifically, the story of All for One, One for All, and the lives they drew into their story...

THE PROLOGUE

There is a realm in Faerie inhabited by a pair of binary-matched Fae, All for One and One for All, styling themselves as warring brothers.  They’ve been fighting for many long generations, each in their own fashion.  All for One has tended to keep his power mostly within himself, employing many underlings, but sharing his power with very few of them.  One for All, conversely, has shared most of himself with a succession of users, and in each generation, the pair clashes, with OFA not very "present" for the battles (and thus at less risk), while AFO is able to bring more of himself to the fights.  Before each battle, each user of OFA would be "freed" for a period to find and designate a successor (who would inevitably go missing a few weeks later), before returning for the battle.  They often did this with deeply tormented feelings, but saw little escape from the pattern.  Each one hoped that they might be the one strong enough to break the cycle, as OFA told them each time was a possibility--patterns grow stronger for being repeated, after all--but none of them was able to do so until recently.  Toshinori Yagi refused to designate a successor, and finally, for his stubbornness, was recalled to do battle without one--without having passed even a fragment of OFA's power on, he was finally able to defeat AFO.              

In his defeat, AFO was cast out from Faerie.  He had little memory of who and what he was, but retained a sense for fae matters and a limited grasp on his powers.  He spent the next several years setting up shop in the local freehold, dabbling with Spring and Autumn Court matters as his fancy took him, and racking up a fair amount of renown with the latter in particular when the former found him too ruthless, and not only with humans.  One day, though, he stumbled across what would eventually become his way home--a little boy who felt startlingly familiar, black-haired with a mole on his chin.  AFO struck up a friendship, and when he eventually met the boy's father, things began to click into place--he knew this family because he once fought their matriarch, and that connection was the key to his return.  As he was once defeated by this bloodline bearing his brother's power, for his rise, he had to defeat someone of the bloodline--but he couldn’t just do it straight out.  With his brother, there were pacts in play, old bargains and arrangements.  He couldn’t just waltz in and kill Shimura Kotaro.              

One of them needed to ask. 

THE LEAGUE

Here are the League roughly as we might find them when they’ve been out long enough to build a motley, solidify their bonds somewhat, and start taking on bigger, toothier problems.  All have 7 dots of Contracts except Shigaraki, who has a modest leader bump.  Just assume he’s been out doing some level-grinding the others haven’t.

Shigaraki Tomura

Quote: “There’s always a win condition.”

Type: Gameplayer Wizened.  A trophy/souvenir of AFO’s time on Earth, Tomura survived a durance filled with little but tests in the guise of games.  Survival, combat, endurance, manual dexterity, reaction time, strategy, academics, even odd trivia--he learned them all under his Keeper’s tutelage, in preparation for the next battle with his brother's champion (AFO having seen that his brother's way of doing things has its merits).  Tomura grew up believing himself responsible for his family's deaths (though he's blocked most of the specifics, he knows in his gut that he's responsible somehow) and watching the realm celebrate the champion who'd defeated Tomura’s Keeper, but who hadn't done a thorough enough job to prevent the cycle from resetting after all.

Toshinori, for his part, initially had no idea that AFO had returned with a child, a new champion.  But he did know that AFO had returned (the realms are connected enough that you can't really miss it), and so waited for the next battle with some impatience.  He thought that he, perhaps, just hadn't done well enough, that he'd be more careful, more thorough next time.  After all, patterns become stronger when they repeat.  He doesn't truly understand that All for One can't be killed--not in Faerie, at least--and so there will be no end to the cycle as it stands.  Eventually, he got tired of waiting and sought out AFO on his own--and was shocked to find a kid, just a kid, where he expected to find AFO.  AFO did not think Shigaraki was ready for this yet, and was not prepared to watch several years' worth of effort and his cute keepsake get slaughtered (and he probably would have been; Shigaraki could have all the lives he wanted in training, but an official battle against the sanctioned bearer of OFA would have been different), so he ejected Shigaraki from Faerie and fought the battle himself.  As to what happened afterwards, Shigaraki has no way to know, but the gradual return of various other servants of AFO may eventually begin to shed some light on the subject…

Shigaraki is, when his story truly begins, still figuring out his current game--outside of Arcadia, second chances are harder to come by--but he’s a sore loser and a quick learner, so he never stays down for long, and he’s already made a friend in Toga, who he met in his escape from the Hedge.  He still has very ambivalent feelings about his Keeper, which makes him something of an outlier amongst changelings, who typically feel only terror and loathing for the Others that upended their lives and scarred them in ways that will never--can never--fully heal.  No one, including Shigaraki, has quite realized his connection to the Emperor of Darkness who caused so much havoc in the freehold when he escaped back to Faerie five years ago.  Likewise, Tomura’s fetch, only ten years old, is still in a mental care unit in juvie for the murders of the Shimura family, but dealing with that mess will have to wait until Shigaraki can stomach the idea of even looking at that version of himself.  

Tomura looks much as he does in canon, thin and covered with scratching and scarring.  Behind his tousled white hair, though, his red eyes gleam and flicker as if they’re forever reflecting the dancing lights of a screen.  His masked form has black hair rather than white, and eyes the color of dark, old rust.

Court/Mantle: Autumn, the season of fear.  Shigaraki’s entire durance threatened him always with the fear of failure (and the fear of the consequences of failure), and he himself would rather intimidate than charm, but he also shares the Leaden Mirror’s inquisitiveness and discerning eye.  As such, even when he first emerged from the Hedge, it was with a strong Autumn mantle, and it’s only grown stronger over time.  He’s often trailed by dead, desiccated brown leaves, and Hedge foliage that’s in his presence for any length of time visibly begins to wither--but his mantle flares up even more when he’s being actively combative.  Chilly, dry bursts of air can wring involuntary chills from those on the receiving end of his wide grins and dire promises. When he’s feeling more playful, one can sometimes see small flickers of light in the shape of unknown words or hear odd little strains of music from unrecognizable (albeit somewhat tinny) instruments.

Contracts: 

     Fleeting Autumn I.  He’s not so concerned with becoming some kind of symbol of fear that he’s pursued this Contract very much, but it never hurts to get an idea of what your opponent’s afraid of.

    Eternal Autumn I-III.  It takes time, glamour expenditure, and good dice rolls, but he can kill people this way, withering them down to nothing.  Conversely, he can also make plants bear fruit.  It’s occasionally useful.

    Hours I.  He’s figured out how to consciously botch the activation of this clause so as to decay the targeted object instead of restoring it.  It usually works, but sometimes randomly backlashes onto him instead, causing him injury--the bigger the object, the worse the damage.  The Wyrd doesn’t like being toyed with.

    Lucidity I-IV.  Clarity is a fluid, malleable thing for Shigaraki, which can make him extremely frightening--he can thank his Keeper’s lessons in control.  With this series of Contracts, Shigaraki can and does laugh off the kinds of deeds that would make other changelings quail back in fear of what their own minds would do to them in the aftermath.  He can also be shockingly perceptive for someone who by rights should have terrible trouble distinguishing the boundaries between Real and Unreal, Self and Other.  However, his use of these powers does make him somewhat mercurial and difficult to predict, even to his motley, as derangements come and go with the artificial inflation or drain of his Clarity.  It’s a downward slope, but one he’s taking more slowly than would otherwise be the case.

(Hypothetical Powered-Up Shigaraki: Adds two 5-dot Goblin Contracts, Blood-Binding and The Fatal Transformation.  Be it the power of glamour or the breath of life itself, if Shigaraki wants an enemy drained and is willing to pay his pound of flesh, Goblin magic will provide.  It’s a good thing he’s got friends to back him up, as both of these powers leave him in a pretty vulnerable state.) 

Toga Himiko

Quote: “I met someone cute today.  Don’t wait up!” 

Type: Mirrorskin/Leechfinger dual kith Darkling.  Toga served her durance in the chrome-tinted underbelly of a glass-and-brass dystopia full of mirrors, learning to steal life as easily as she stole food, and to slip from one form to another to keep ahead of everyone who’d chase her down for doing it.  More free than she’d been in her old life, to be sure, but still not free to truly do as she pleased, she dreamed of being able to hunt people down the way she’d been hunted down, with no one to answer to for it.  In time, she managed her escape and, on her path back through the Hedge, crossed paths with Tomura--distraught, lost, but still with plenty of fight left in him.  Each decided that the other was dangerous but sympathetic enough to be a better ally than an enemy, and they teamed up to find their way back to the real world.

Back in that real world, Toga is learning to put herself back together.  Getting back home only to find something waiting there wearing her face was a shock to her system, but after some agonizing (and a bloodbath in her parents’ kitchen), she’s decided it’s for the best.  If going back to being that girl means giving up the amazing psychic buffet the world now presents her, it’s not even a debate.  

Toga in her masked form is dark of hair and eye, a school girl with a wide smile and swift, excitable hands.  In her true form, everything bleeds paler--she’s china white, even her hair turning paler than flaxen fiber, most of her features seeming somehow insubstantial except for the long points of her teeth and the gas lamp yellow of her eyes.  

Court/Mantle: Spring, the season of desire.  Toga, more than anyone in the motley, has embraced the fact that she wants things now that she never would have before, that she has desires that no human would ever understand.  And why not?  She doesn’t kill people, after all; she just likes to taste.  The air around her is always infused with heady floral scents, and when she walks, phantom flowers trail up behind her.  Hemlock and cypress vine, spider lilies and nightshade--all lovely, to be sure, but the language of flowers does give her away.

Contracts: Everything about Toga’s Contracts heightens her skills as a predator, and she’s unquestionably the best in the group at it.

        Mirror I-II.  Allows her to shape her form with more specificity and finesse.

        Darkness I-II.  Makes her targets more suggestible.

        Fleeting Spring I-III.  Lets her pinpoint what her targets want so that she can shape those wants or her reflection of them as needed.

Bubaigawara Jin

Quote: “Nothing’s too much for my friends!”

Type: Truefriend Beast.  Jin’s human life didn’t differ much from his canonical backstory, minus the super power, but went drastically off course when he was hunted down--even on a motorcycle, hunted down!--by a monster on horseback and the various other monsters tumbling before it.  His changeling life consisted of one cage, one chase after another, and while most of the people around him were shaping themselves into being better vessels for coursing, baying, sharp-toothed menace, what Jin most wanted was the pack solidarity.  His Keeper thought this was funny but not a very useful trait in a hunting hound, so they started taking him to dog fights instead, hoping to scour the excess sweetness off of him.  Lacking a pack to stay for, he escaped, but the wanting for one never left him.  

Toga basically tripped over him his first night out, and her kindness then meant he was more than happy to follow her home.  He later made the acquaintance of Mr. Compress and Magne on a bar crawl and, wanting all of his friends to be friends together, introduced them to Shigaraki and Toga.  He’s also trying to make friends with his fetch, who is finding the whole experience of having a clone pop up at him at unexpected times to be unbelievably disorienting and nerve-wracking.  Which one of them is the real one, anyway…?

His mask looks much as Jin does in canon, though his scars are in different places.  In mien, he  always looks a bit rumpled, with short, sandy brown fur and bright, emotive eyes.  He’s dog-eared (literally), one alert, the other floppy, and his hands have stubby, darkened nails.  Unbelievably expressive and more overtly doggish body language--he didn’t keep a tail in his flight back through the Hedge, but people tend to remember him as having one anyway.

Court/Mantle: Courtless.  Jin’s too mixed up in his own emotions to pick just one to focus on.  He likes the idea of Spring, but he’s also skeptical that just wanting is enough to keep people safe, and that fear is rooted deep.  He’s also not without his old sorrows.  Of the High Court emotions, wrath is his rarest visitor.

Contracts:

        Fang & Talon (Dogs) I-III.  Jin’s got an undeniable rapport with dogs.  He loves them and they love him.  There’s practically no mutt he can’t get some words out of if he asks nice.  He’s also still got a hunting hound’s nose, when he needs it.  

        Hearth I-II.  Deeply dedicated to his friends, the Contracts of Hearth make advancing the goals of the motley (or hurting the chances of their enemies) even easier.

        Eternal Spring I.  Easier to be a people-pleaser when you know what pleases people!  Toga taught him this one.

        Moon I.  It’s good to know what people want, but it’s also good to know what kind of crazy people (fetches especially) might be sitting on.  This one also helps the group nail down where Shigaraki’s head is at on any given day.

Spinner

Quote: “What a mess.  Where are we even going with this?”

Type: Steepscrambler Beast.  Spinner spent, by his best reckoning, four years in a Faerie jungle.  It was always sweltering, sickbed heat with air so wet you could choke on it, and after a few close calls with the serpentine river dragons and over-large birds of prey that prowled the place, he’d all but given up trying to search for a way out--the sea of trees just went on forever anyway.  A long-tongued madman named Stain convinced him otherwise, with talk of hidden trods and clues found in the bellies of gutted fish.  When Stain went missing, Spinner resolved to try again, and though he can no longer remember the method of it, whatever he did seems to have worked.  He got back to his shitty hometown, but found it just as bad as ever, if not worse, with a fetch still cooped up in his old bedroom, spiralling ever further into depression.  And so, fed up with the state of his life and the apathy his fetch reflected back at him, he did something that very few changelings are capable of doing--he left home.  

Finding his way to the nearest big city with a proper freehold, Spinner gravitated to the Summer Court and got set up with an apartment in a small complex the freehold maintains for newbies to stay in while they get their feet under them.  Not too long after, Shigaraki and Toga wandered into a Summer recruitment drive, with Shigaraki immediately managing to get on Spinner’s nerves--which made it all the more exasperating when Spinner went home and found the both of them moving into the apartment next door to his!  Spinner’s still trying to figure out what he thinks of the mercurial and difficult Shigaraki, but they have been bonding over video games of late.

Spinner’s mask is a sun-darkened young man with a prominent nose and a thin, terse mouth.  He’s straight-backed but with a certain nerviness in his eyes, a stance that suggests he’s ready to throw the first punch.  He has a street punk look--pointy fingernails and pink hair--that people without the sight to know better assume is achieved with a nail file and hair dye.  His mask looks exactly like canon!Spinner with one exception--changeling!Spinner has ears.  They’re pointy, green and finely-scaled, but otherwise normal humanoid ears and they make his face look just a little wider and more humanoid than canon!Spinner’s lizard profile.  

Court/Mantle: Summer, the season of wrath.  Spinner’s angry about a lot of things--the state of the world, the injustices served to his motley and the wrongs of his life in particular--but he’s also wrestling with a lot of self-loathing.  It’s easy for him to slip into fatalistic thoughts and get mired down in apathy, and every time he thinks he’s gotten past it, someone or something comes along that throws him off, and then before he knows it he’s back on the ground wondering how he’s ever going to get past this.  Leaning into Summer’s hot anger helps keep him focused.  His mantle is relatively weak, tending to manifest as a warm, dry wind only when he’s particularly fired up or activating Court contracts.

Contracts: Spinner’s well-rounded, but that’s because he has a hard time settling on anything.  His ridiculous spread of Contracts illustrates this.

        Den I-II.  Not interested in leaning into his animal instincts and learning to talk to lizards, Spinner has instead leaned into possessive territorialism.  Unfortunately, he still feels like a small fish, so it’s hard to muster up the swagger that would allow him to progress this Contract further.  

        Fleeting Summer I.  Need to pick a fight and score some quick glamour?  This is the clause for you!  Just make sure Dabi’s not around; that guy’s angrier than the whole rest of the motley put together and it skews the readings.

        Eternal Summer I.  Makes Spinner a walking thermostat. Yes, sometimes Toga and Mr. Compress take advantage.

        Oath & Punishment I.  There’s a certain capital-R romance to this Contract that Spinner likes, but he’d need to find something (or someone) to whole-heartedly devote himself to first.  At least he can do sick parkour jumps in the meantime.  

        Artifice I.  Temporary repair magic.  Handy around the house and when you fight with cheap knives.  

        Dream I.  Useful facts about the local Hedge and he’s generally content to leave it at that--he doesn’t have a lot of use for dream-spinning, not when Magne’s so good at it.

Dabi

Quote: “You’re mad, huh?  So what are you gonna do about it?”

Type: Gravewight Darkling.  Once upon a time, there was a barren couple who wished desperately for children.  For many years, it was only a wish, until Todoroki Enji finally found someone who offered him a solution.  Nine months later, Todoroki Touya was born, to be followed by a string of children, each haler and heartier than the last.  Seven years later, the firstborn child was taken away in the night.  No fetch was left behind--after all, the Other was only claiming the price they’d been promised.  Fifteen years after that, a changeling calling himself Dabi dragged himself out of the Hedge, having spent most of his life lighting funeral pyres and digging graves in Faerie until he dug his way out.

Dabi fell in with the rest of the League motley after being found by Magne after a fight went sideways.  She patched him up and offered him a group to run around with for a while rather than doing the solo act.  He accepted, but his pledges with the rest of the group are a bit different--more paranoid, less supportive.  Dabi is distant from the motley, and only time will tell if he eventually lets them in or not.  

In mask, Dabi’s a beanpole, wild black hair and bright blue eyes with a caustic grin, skulking about in a succession of black coats and heavy, workmanlike boots.  In mien, he’s even taller, a too-thin gaunt with great swatches of skin burned away by restless soul-fires, which still cling and flicker blue around his hands.  His skin fits him a bit too loose, and he wears staples to keep it all in place.  

Court/Mantle: Summer, the season of wrath.  Could it ever be anything else?  Rather stronger than Spinner’s mantle, Dabi’s manifests as heat distortions in the air around him and, when he’s particularly riled up, blasts of hot air like you’d get opening up a hot oven.  He has some trouble advancing in the Court proper, though, as he prefers to only fight battles he knows he can win.  He feels, all the time, sick with rage, but until he proves willing to make stands even when the odds are against him, the Iron Spear’s time for him will be limited.  

Contracts: 

        Shade & Spirit I.  If he’s going to see ghosts around all the time anyway, he might as well be able to talk to them.  They’re only sporadically helpful, but as a skeleton in the closet himself, he has some fellow feeling for them.

        Elements (Fire) I-III.  He brought fire with him out of Faerie, but it’s a difficult thing for him to master, foreign to his seeming despite sometimes feeling as if it’s nestled in his very bones.  

        Fleeting Summer I-II.  Dabi’s much at home with wrath, and very willing to shape it to his own ends.  Whether or not he sticks around for them, he likes starting fights.  

        Punishing Summer I.  An odd branch of Summer magic, but one that he feels has some promise for him.  Compared to the more straightforwardly righteous Contract of Eternal Summer, this feels harsher, longer-burning, and that sings to him in ways he finds very appealing.

Mr. Compress

Quote: “If we’re going to break the law, why shouldn’t we do it in style?”

Type: Larcenist Fairest.  A simple stage magician of modest fame once upon a time, right up until he was offered a promising and lucrative gig by a stranger who thought he deserved a better stage for his talents.  The stage in this case turned out to be--well, you can guess.  His client (Keeper) wanted things stolen--they seemed to enjoy the taste of things ill-gotten--and there was always some new diamond or painting or antique.  Sako’s time in Faerie (which he came to share with Magne) was like a string of heist films: glamorous and bubbly and thrilling, but the underside was rife with lurid, impossible violence waiting on the slightest error, the stakes always seemed to be climbing, and of course you could never say no…  But one thing you can say for heist films is that they always allot a proper amount of time for planning, and so over time Sako and the others planned their last heist--the one to steal themselves into freedom.  If asked, Sako will tell a dozen different stories about how it went, but the truth is his memories are fuzzy, and the only thing he knows for sure is that he and Magne emerged from the Hedge alone.  

Sako’s a bit disjunctioned in time--many more years have passed in the real world than he spent in Faerie, and he spent a good many years in Faerie.  His fetch washed up in a nursing home in the meantime, riddled with palsy and Alzheimer’s, and though Sako is not by habit or preference a violent man, the sight of it filled him with a primal loathing.  And it’s so easy, in an overcrowded environment, to make a mistake with a dosage…  Sako still has a piece of the detritus left over, just to remind himself of how his story could have ended, and how determined he is to not let such a future come to pass.  

In his mask, Mr. Compress (well, he needed a new stage name) is a handsome, auburn-haired man in his forties who gestures constantly, frequently toying with a short white cane, and speaks in refined if somewhat dated language in a rich, theatrical voice.  He always dresses a bit more nicely than he needs to, preferring clothes with hidden pockets and long sleeves, and is rarely without a hat to flourish.  His mien mostly serves to heighten all of that--he becomes impossibly graceful and compelling, his voice catching the ear like a song, and his clothes are revealed to be Hedgespun, the feather in his hat belonging to no bird an ornithologist could name, the buttons on his coat and the stone accentuating his bolo tie shifting slowly in pattern and shade the longer you watch, and the cane almost certainly a low-level token of some kind.  The most eye-catching thing, though, is the mask--he wears a white mask that always seems to have a different pattern on it, though it never moves while you’re looking directly at it.  He doesn’t seem able to actually remove it all the way, though he can slide it around enough to eat or theatrically squint or blink his eyes (dark and bewitchingly expressive).  If it’s forcefully pulled off, it’s only to reveal another one beneath it--though he’ll complain that it stings and ask you to refrain.  

Court/Mantle: Autumn, the season of fear magic!  Mr. Compress didn’t come out of the Hedge with a particular Court affinity, but he was drawn towards Autumn like a compass needle finding true north.  He’s only a limited interest in fear (though his response to his fetch shows that he has his share of it), but he’s endlessly fascinated by the ins-and-outs of faerie magic.  Trinkets, tokens, pledge-craft--if it’s a clever trick, he’s interested.  His mantle shows as pops and starbursts of light, and frequently as a cool, trailing mist about his feet.  

Contracts: The only person in the group more focused than Toga.

        Separation I-IV.  Escape magic fit for Houdini himself.  If it looks like Compress is locked up or restrained, it’s almost only certainly because he’s allowing himself to be.  

        Forge I-III.  Sleight of hand is even more impressive when you’re using magic!  Extremely convenient for those times when he needs a passable ID or a house key he does not in fact own.

Magne

Quote: “Take it easy, honey.  I’ll handle it.”

Type: Metalflesh Elemental.  Magne was a criminal before she was a changeling, and it was in that capacity that she--like Mr. Compress--fell prey to an offer that should have been too good to be true.  The heist team needed a bit more muscle, is the thing; they were getting caught too often without a good combatant.  And so came Magne, given a sturdier body (that could, incidentally, meld through safe walls when necessary) through processes she only remembers in her nightmares.  An odd thing happened with her, though--what Magne felt the pull of in Faerie was less the element she became and more the stuff of Arcadia itself.  Where her Keeper expected her to become hard as steel, instead she embraced dream conjury; where she was instructed to protect the rest of her band, that protection took the form of healing as often as it did squaring up for a fight.  It’s hard to argue with the results, though--Magne is a fierce and stubborn defender of any group that wins her loyalty.  

Currently in a live-and-let live relationship with her fetch--she feels a bit sorry for the poor creature, and would rather see her find a way to break free of the image she was forged in and make her own path than kill her.  It’s painful to be around her, though, so while Magne’s willing to extend some help from a distance, she would rather the fetch keep her distance.  Time will tell if her fetch--who has her own desires and very much shares Magne’s willingness to bust some heads over them--is prepared to abide by this.  

Magne in mask looks much as she does in canon, though she can afford nicer clothes.  Her preference for butch presentation is unchanged, but the jeans are designer and the shirts elaborate silk prints.  She has a collection of fetching sunglasses for any occasion.  Her mien is a gleaming ochre bronze, flesh hard and smooth, her hair (a bit darker in color than the rest of her) always a bit stiff but, on the other hand, difficult to muss.  Her body is in all ways a more chiselled, more perfected version of the body she went into Arcadia with, which Magne has mixed but overall relieved feelings about.  The flesh-to-metal transition her Keeper forced on her was bad enough; whyever would she trust the Others with gender affirmation?

Court/Mantle: Spring, season of desire growth. Magne’s desire is to never be held down by any sort of repression or expectation forced on her by others (the Others in particular), and this pride drew her strongly to the Antler Crown.  While she doesn’t exhibit the flowing, graceful beauty so prized in women of the Emerald Court, her passion for self-expression and her unstinting support of those fumbling their way towards the same has certainly won her her share of admirers.  Magne’s mantle takes the form of fresh-scented air and pleasant breezes.  She doesn’t leave flowers where she walks, but you can sometimes find ivy where her hands have been.  

        Contracts: 

        Dream I-III.  By leaps and bounds the most talented dream-weaver in the motley, Magne’s oneiromancy is light-hearted and nonjudgmental while her oneiromachy is formidable.  Everyone in the motley can soothe one another’s nightmares, but Magne is the best at it.  She usually has at least one or two dream-task pledges active with mortals, too, so she rarely struggles to keep her glamour reserves--or her wallet--full.  

        Elements (Metal) I.  Magne’s retained only the minimum level of connection with the metal she was forged from; in truth, her body is less important to her than what she does with it.

        Eternal Spring I-III.  Easing fatigue, curing wounds, and even bringing in         a gentle rain--Magne’s deeply in touch with the rejuvenative aspects of her Court.

BONUS TIDBITS:

Shigaraki experienced more deaths in Faerie than any other member of his motley.  After all, you might know the cheat code for unlimited lives, but that doesn’t mean you never die.  And it did feel like death, every time.  Of course, sometimes failure just meant Sensei shaking his head and Being Disappointed.  That still felt a bit like dying too, though.

Over the course of her durance, Toga had more than one knife fight with a cyber hero adventurer hunting through the city’s underbelly looking for a power core.  Also, changeling!Toga is much less murderous than canon!Toga because if she were as murderous as canon!Toga, Clarity loss would rapidly render her unplayable.  

Spinner was pulled into the motley over a planned playdate heist to see how well Shigaraki and Toga could work as a unit with Mr. Compress and Magne.  Being very familiar with heist stories by that time, Sako and Magne decided the group needed one more guy to provide muscle, and as it happened, Shigaraki and Toga lived next door to just such a one.

I have not decided on whether the Todoroki family are a mundane equivalent of the way we see them in canon, all deeply damaged by Endeavor’s ceaseless drive to fulfill his goals by way of his children, or whether they’re actually pretty normal and well-adjusted with the exception of Enji’s one dark secret.  Either way, Natsuo is the only one who has any inkling that there was anything “off” about Touya’s death/disappearance.    He has no inkling of the truth, obviously, but he always felt that Enji didn't react quite the right way to Touya's death, or thought Enji was behaving suspiciously on the night Touya vanished.  

The League’s basic motley pact includes the dreaming pledge, so they frequently take mental voyages into one another’s dreamscapes to clear out the nightmares and indulge in silly, impossible-in-reality lucid dreaming adventures.  The exception is Dabi, who would rather have nightmares than people in his head.  

Mr. Compress doesn’t jokingly call himself an old man anymore because he’s too traumatized by finding out what he’d actually be like in old age.  

Shigaraki, while beginning the story in a fairly ambivalent, uncertain place, eventually finds his way towards a goal of helping to free loyalists--from their hopeless circumstances, from their learned helplessness, from their starstruck adoration.  He finds this goal over the course of his late-game encounters with Kurogiri, Gigantomachia, and Re-Destro, and it is through helping them that he’s finally able to begin to process his own feelings of attachment and affection towards his Keeper.  It may well be that the fetch of Shimura Tenko is Shigaraki’s final boss.

[liskantope]

[Warning: good old gratuitous rant describing really bad SJ/wokeness ahead.]

Over the past 4-5 years or so, I’ve had exactly one person on my Facebook newsfeed who is both a PoC and talks on a personal level about racial issues. Plenty of my white Facebook friends (predominantly from academia) constantly demonstrate wokeness on racial issues there, but this is the one PoC Facebook friend (an African-American, who grew up with white parents and mostly away from African-American culture to the best of my knowledge, isn’t academic, and isn’t liberal or even particularly woke on other issues) who does it.

(Well, for the sake of honesty, that’s not entirely true. For a few of those years I had another PoC friend (not black) who effusively espoused woke views on race, and who disturbed me from a psychological standpoint on an even deeper level than the person I’m focusing this post on. But a while back I had to cut her off completely for entirely personal reasons some of which involved third parties. I’m pretty sure she’s somewhere on Tumblr, considered her a friend once, and don’t care to talk about her here.)

I was Facebook friends with the subject of this post for longer than the 4-5 years I’ve mentioned; we were originally friendly acquaintances (she seemed like a super nice and fairly functional person at the time) and I haven’t seen her since well before the time around 2015 or 2016 (can’t remember exactly when) she very abruptly went down a certain ideological rabbit hole.

Anyway, since she’s really my only PoC Facebook friend talking about these things and writes really well, and I’m at least woke enough to acknowledge that it’s the job of white people like myself to listen to the experiences and points of view of PoC on race, I do try to get what I can out of her posts.

Therefore, it’s unfortunate that she

went from 0 to 100 in the direction of modern wokeness on racial issues so fast that her brains flew out of her head and her hyper-awareness of race-related dangers clearly mixes in a really unhealthy way with her anxiety (clinically diagnosed and very apparent outside of racial issues); for an example see the story I described at the end of this post

considers all of her extreme opinions on race objective knowledge that she (alone of my African-American friends) feels forced to disseminate (or maybe it’s out of her purely generous nature?) and writes about how generously she’s “educating” white people with the most subtle yet exquisite condescension I can possibly imagine or would have the writing skills to convey myself if I wanted to, while complaining how exhausting it all is, eventually reaching a point that she’s charging money for her “emotional labor”* in meeting white friends for coffee to give them her “education” and occasionally advertises this minor side-business in Facebook statuses

seems to analyze every single everyday activity in terms of what race everyone is classed in to an extent that to my thinking would logically lead to complete cultural segregation rather than increased diversity; to take a minor example she wrote a rueful diatribe against a black woman on the bus who didn’t meet her attempt to make eye contact because “we black women are supposed to stick together”

occasionally espouses the (to my ears very-pseudoscientific-sounding, and anti-black racist!) theory that African-Americans’ genes were permanently damaged by slavery however many generations ago and talks about the collective trauma she has directly suffered because of slavery -- when she briefly wrote about it in a status she got comments that thanked her for (exact words) “giving us this education”

frequently shares posts of Ally Henny, a prominent writer who comes out with mini-essays on a daily basis some of which (at least the ones I see shared) sound exactly like conservative everyone’s-an-irredeemable-sinner Catholicism with certain words replaced, as if she’s not even making the slightest effort not to sound that way -- one (from the end of last year that I’m not up for hunting down right now) even described what in essence sounds like a second coming!

is surrounded by (mostly white) worshippers and sycophants who immediately dogpile anyone who posts a disagreeing comment (to be fair, the quality of dissenting comments is not high and often comes from an ignorant or obtuse place, making the discussions on her wall even less beneficial to me) in a vicious, vindictive manner

loves to make posts deriding “mediocre white men” (e.g. paraphrased from memory “Maybe the reason so many white men refuse to acknowledge their privilege is that they just don’t want to acknowledge their own mediocrity”, and just the other day, “To have the boldness of a mediocre yt man. That is my goal in life!”) which promptly get applauded by her big group of snickering (mostly white) sycophants; I don’t even want to try to get into the layers of abusive this tactic is (and again she came across, both in-person and online, as a super sweet person prior to 2015-ish)

(and oh yeah, for some reason my white privilege blinds me from seeing, she can no longer actually spell out the phrase “white person”; following Ally Henny she has to write the modifier as “wight” or “yt” or “wh*te” or use “person of whiteness” [EDIT: just found out this, at least on Henny’s part, apparently has something to do with too much use of the phrase “white people” setting off red flags for Facebook’s “community standards” algorithms])

the other day described a conversation on black friend’s wall (which I can’t see) about a representation issue where a white guy politely disagreed; she proudly reports that she told him that “disagreeing with a black woman is not a Good Look, even if done respectfully” at which point the guy angrily left the conversation; she holds this up as an example of white fragility

and finally, tonight’s post which was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me: she complains that in her “largely unproblematic” cooking group online forum a black woman asked if any other PoC could share a recipe for banana pudding with her and several white people replied, “I’m not a PoC but...” and provided a recipe; she decries this as white people taking space away from PoC... in a NON-RACIALLY-SEGREGATED ONLINE FORUM. FOR COOKING. Because apparently the need to acknowledge race in each and every daily activity extends keeping the taint of whiteness out of BANANA PUDDING RECIPES**, and anyone who fails to respect this by giving her unsolicited white-person recipe suggestions is oppressing her.

Of course, when I say “straw that broke the camel’s back” I don’t mean that it will necessarily cause me to un-follow this person -- no, that would be much too responsible and sensible of me! -- I just mean that it caused me to stay up past my bedtime ranting on Tumblr. (And yes, at this point I probably should un-follow her. And go back to staying away from Facebook altogether.)

I guess if this post actually had a point, it would be that my social media sphere has not exactly served me well in providing PoC voices that I can actually learn from (and yes, I’m aware of the laziness and disingenuousness this comment implies, but I’ll leave it here as a tongue-in-cheek conclusion).

*Her implication that this falls under the umbrella of “emotional labor”, even taken in a broader pop activism social context, is on shaky ground in my opinion.

**This would be significantly different if we were talking about a dish coming from a nonwhite culture, e.g. jambalaya, but as far as I know you can’t get much more culturally white than banana pudding.

[donatellalejandra]

I just graduated and that means I literally survived.

Tw: Trauma, Suicide, Abuse, abuse by authority figures, depression, and violence.

School was hard. Like way too hard for anyone to deal with. It wasn’t a fun time for most of it, there were parts that were just me fooling around in a photo studio, but the other parts, in classrooms with teachers who didn’t understand depression episodes, didn’t understand anxiety, didn’t understand neurodivergent folks, teachers who deliberately used fear tactics in order to gain order in the classroom and cause long lasting trauma on children the ages of 7 to 12.

That was school for me. It wasn’t all about learning math, French, sciences, it wasn’t about the curriculum being assigned. It was about getting through the day without feeling like you were a burden, without feeling like you were insignificant, without feeling like you didn’t belong anywhere. That’s what school was like, that’s what school taught, how to survive trauma.

No one helped, I may have shown a side of me in art classes that would suggest I was suicidal in high school, and I most likely was, but when they saw the poems I wrote and put me on a watch list they met my depression and suicidal thoughts with anger and disappointment. The anger and disappointment was mostly from my parents, and the principal at the time had me come into her office to talk about it. I had to say that it was a love poem even though it had imagery of sadness and hopelessness. Had to say this is how I express love. Because that’s how it worked for me back then. I was still a tender nerve after elementary school.

I didn’t know how school worked when I first went into it as a young kid. I just thought you sat in a room and followed what the person at the front was saying. French classes in kindergarten weren’t like that. Mostly because I lived in a house of people who only spoke English and Tagalog, I didn’t know that many words in French. The teacher would say to me that I was to be punished for not knowing what she was saying. I was marked as the class clown for not understanding her. It kept happening as I grew up into the next grades. I’d cry in class asking why no one would help me understand what anything meant, and they would scorn me and tell me, “You should know this by now!! Why don’t you know this already?! Didn’t you learn anything?!”

It broke me. And I was only 8 years old. I was a child who didn’t know anything, but to not ask for help, and to try and get through everything without getting yelled at by someone. Sneak around, forge signatures if you have to, make them think you’re an actual good person. Because obviously if you’re a good student you’re a good person. And if you’re not, well it’s too bad then, you don’t respect or understanding, you just get yelled at.

Moving up through elementary school it didn’t stop, it got worse. Grade 5 and 6 were the points of extreme trauma. My grade 5 teacher would raise his hand at kids who couldn’t get the answer right. We were all scared of being hit by him. My grade 6 teacher was more nefarious with her technique. No matter what you did she would yell at you. If you got the wrong answer she would yell at you and scorn you for being dumb, and if you got the right answer she would scream at you because holy shit one of these dumbasses finally got it right! You would pray that the project was done well, otherwise she would call your name out as she was grading the papers in front of the class, look right in the eye, and rip the paper up 4 times before tossing it in the recycling bin. She didn’t scream at those people, she just gave them a scornful stare. We all broke in that class I believe. I broke too.

I had teachers in high school ask me why I was forging signatures, why I wouldn’t ask for help, why I was doing so poorly. I can only tell them that I couldn’t ask for help, that I would be punished if I ask for help. They would reassure me and tell me I could ask for help, but I knew that I couldn’t just do that. It was engraved in me the trauma of everything that happened before. And in junior high the environment became that of a prison yard. You had to toughen up, get into a few fights, show people you can take a punch, take a hit, and get up and hit back harder. I remember having my face stepped on and my glasses break, and then tripping that guy to the ground so hard the ground shook, and the air left his lungs. It was all in good fun though, right? Just learning to be a man in the school yard. Get bruised, and get scrapped, and get bullied, and turn that trauma into energy to get through the days.

I became toxic. It was a way for me to survive that point. If not, I surely wouldn’t have survived those days.

It was only in my 5th year of high school when it weighed heaviest on me. It was the darkest point in my whole high school experience. It was the time when I decided living was pain, and only pain. There was no hope, and no light, and I was lost. I hated myself, but loved everyone else, so I gave friends my lunch money, or bought them candy from the machine, or bought them lunch. I didn’t eat. I didn’t take care of myself. In gym class I would run the 5k test at top speed hoping my heart would burst, hoping I would just die running, just die in the middle of the suburbs where nobody knew me, and scoop me up and put me in a hole for me to rot. I was falling asleep in class a lot. I was isolating myself more. I just wanted to die, because nothing mattered, because the world only knew pain and how to be horrible. I wasn’t dying fast enough. I didn’t want to hang myself and I didn’t want to cut myself because that would be too sudden. If I was to die, I chose to die in the most pain I can possibly imagine, because it’s what I deserved, it’s what the world taught me. And everything I knew about the world is what I learned in school. The trauma had mounted, and it was the end, I hit bed rock, and there’s nothing more to do, but wait for the day, the day when I was finally gone.

I wasn’t dying fast enough. A voice came to my head and said that. I had to make a decision. Either stay at rock bottom and wait to die, or live a little. I didn’t have to do a lot, I just had to do something, anything, to live. So I decided to try that since I wasn’t going anywhere.

And then I learned to pick myself off the bed rock and claw my way out of my hole. I became part of the play, met one of the most amazing people in my life who I then I called my girlfriend, and now I call my best friend. I have friendships that lasted and ones that didn’t, and the voice in my head got me through it all.

CEGEP had its ups and downs, but it showed me that I had worth, because of the people there who would see me as a friend, and who would love me to the ends of the Earth, and remember me for days to come. My depression, and trauma led me down paths of being easily manipulated around that time. It put a hole in my side from surgery, and it left me understanding that some people just want to control people to their core. I would hit rock bottom again and again, but I would rise up again and again.

University wasn’t something I wanted. My whole school experience was something I didn’t want. My parents wanted me to get a bachelors degree in something rather than start a photography business based on my professional photography degree I worked really hard to get in my last three years in CEGEP. I was living with them at the time so what I wanted wasn’t going to happen. University had its points of feeling like I didn’t belong, very memorable feelings I felt at the start of my academic career. I did make friends, and we all got through it together, but academia showed it’s ugly head to me in those last years more than ever. Not in the form of trauma, but in the form not caring about that trauma. The way academia works makes it so that you have to follow a certain set of rules, and if you don’t, then you don’t understand the curriculum, and since the curriculum has to do with what’s happening in the world that means you don’t understand the world. I wasn’t a child anymore, I went through all that already and understood that what I learned in school was nothing compared to what I was going to learn out in the world. To academia it doesn’t matter if you’re depressed, if you neurodivergent, if you’re disabled, if you’re from another country, if you’re poor, if you’re sick, if you’re family is in trouble, all of it doesn’t matter to academia, because everyone is like everyone to academia, and if you don’t follow like everyone else does then obviously you don’t belong there, or anywhere for that matter. Because without a ‘proper education’ you don’t get a job, you don’t get a job you don’t get paid, you don’t get paid then you don’t get to live, and you’ll die because you don’t matter to academia, because you couldn’t hand in an essay on time, or write a critical summary according to a teachers convoluted outline, or you couldn’t get to class because the weight in your chest was keeping you in bed, or you couldn’t attend school because you had to spend money on trying to survive rather than pay for another semester. There are so many reasons. I know they’re valid, but academia doesn’t.

I graduated from university on Monday. There was a convocation, all us who met the requirements to graduate put on the designated robes, held our barcodes out to the scanner back stage, and once we scanned our way to the front of the stage we had our names called out, our hand shook, our diploma given to us, and a pin as a parting gift. I was happy to see the people getting their diploma, people who I met in different points of my life, who were either customers at my work, who I played basketball with on the weekends, or old classmates, people I used to know from high school or CEGEP. I was happy to see them. The ones who saw me were happy to see me.

They all cheered and say, “We did it!! We’re done!” And I didn’t do that much cheering. I was happy it was over. I held the envelope in my hand that held my diploma, and thought about what it meant to be holding it. It meant I was integrated enough to live in this world, supposedly. It meant that it promises me a good job, supposedly. What I think it could mean is not a congratulatory pat on the back that said, “Congratulations!! You’re future is bright and full of promise!!” It felt more like a receipt, or a document with words on it that meant nothing to me. I learned what I could, but what I learned most was how to survive my trauma that academia put on me. How to survive everything else too, from my parents to horrible people to myself.

This diploma is not a trophy, it’s not a pat on the back, it’s not a good job. It’s a cold, icy breath that groans at me, and tells me with an evil grin, “Congratulations. You didn’t die. Yet.”

[dxmedstudent]

Hey! I want to study Medicine and then Biomedical Engineering. Any advice?

Hello!So I’ve been mulling your ask over. Obviously, you’ve probably considered your plan for a while, and I’m sure there’s a reason that you’ve chosen to do two degrees. As it is, your ask is brief, so I’m going to be doing a little guess work. Forgive me if my answer sounds repetitive, or a little brusque; I’ve just finished another not-restful night shift. I’m guessing from the order you suggested, that what you really want is to go into biomedical engineering. Which is a worthy and exciting field all of its own. I’m a little curious as to why you want to study both, and in that order. I’m not sure if you are considering hedging your bets, or maybe can’t quite decide what you want. And to be fair, deciding can be extremely difficult; I really, really struggled with that when it came to choosing medicine, and also when it comes to choosing specialities. So if that’s the case, I can really get where you are coming from. It’s hard to commit to one thing, and it’s scary.

Life is long, with no guarantees; our plans often change along the way, and.  we can’t usually do every job we might be good at or interested in. If you had to pick the one you want to do most, which one is it? Is there one? Are you fairly sure of what you want to do in the future, or just kind of hoping that doing the two degrees will help make it clearer?Are you really interested in going into research or academia? Or working in industry? Did you want to be a doctor with a side of research in biomedical engineering, or a biomedical engineer who happened to have a medical degree previously.

Quite frequently, people start off doing another degree (say biomed or biochem) because they didn’t get into medicine, and they wanted to try something also sciencey. Afterwards, perhaps they still felt they wanted to work with patients, and reapplied to medicine, and got in. In other cases, people were already working in a field but decided to go into medicine as a change of career. It happens quite a lot. I wouldn’t personally recommend medicine as a ‘first degree’ i.e.  choosing to study medicine deliberately before studying something else entirely, and I’m not sure I follow the rationale behind this as an idea. 

Medicine is a science degree, but it’s very much applied science. It’s first and foremost a vocational degree geared very specifically towards training you to be a doctor, NOT a researcher and NOT a lab scientist. It’s really much more of a fancy apprenticeship with a shedload of exams thrown in. Having done biomed and medicine, I can definitely say I got a much better window into academia, lab work and research doing biomed, and relatively little of that from medicine. You don’t get anywhere near as much lab or research time as your standard science degree. If you really, really want to be a scientist or go into research, you are probably going to be better prepared by doing a ‘real’ science degree first, and take it from there.The other reasons behind my thoughts are mainly practical: medicine is a long degree. Financing degrees is expensive, and second degrees even more so, but it becomes a little worth it if you plan to work as a doctorbecause on average they earn higher than the national average. However, research is not necessarily as well paid. Therefore, if you want to go into research or lab work, you need to think carefully about which qualifications you’d actually need to do the job, and if they are worth the tuition fees you’ll be spending 20 years paying back. In most academic or research fields, having an undergraduate degree or two is not enough in the long run; most people get Masters’ degrees or even PhDs. Given that you may need to do another 4+ years of study after your undergraduate degree or degrees, it’s worth thinking really carefully before you decide to go in two directions at once. 

Studying for 8+ years is also just really tiring. You don’t necessarily realise it when you are 17, but it really is. When your friends graduate at 21, you’ll still be halfway through medicine. By the time you finish your second degree, you’ll be 26, and only just a baby in terms of seniority in your field. In the meantime, your friends will be progressing steadily at work, or settling down, and generally living grown-up but also less complicated lives. In that time, you’ll still be living the student life, but you’ll also be earning little or nothing, whilst your student debt increases higher than everyone else you know.  Now, many of us come into medicine as grads, and there’s nothing wrong with that at any age; if you really, really want to do it then you’ll be happy regardless. I don’t particularly mind that I did another degree first. But it’s certainly an undertaking to spend longer than usual studying, so it just means that you really need to think about whether you want to spend the next decade studying. Medicine is also one of the most competitive degrees; almost certainly in the top three or two (I imagine it is only beaten by veterinary medicine  or dentistry in the UK because their number of places is more limited). That’s not to say that it’s impossible, of course. But getting into medicine requires a shedload of extracurriculars , work experience and general effort on top of just getting good grades. If we are honest, many people do another degree before medicine because they didn’t/couldn’t get in the first time. I suspect that the odds of getting into biomedical engineering are better than for medicine; whilst it’s still a competitive degree that needs good grades. If you want to study either degree, you’re probably more likely to get into biomedical engineering. Now if you really want to do medicine, then you should still go for that first; because my advice would alway be: first do the degree you really want to do. But I suspect that, as you want to end on engineering, this might be where your heart lies. Only you know, but I think it’s something you need to be honest with yourself about.Doing a degree and then applying to medicine can make your life slightly easier in terms of the application; you get more time to decide if it’s really for you, and excelling at another degree always looks good. Plus you will gain experience, interview practice and generally go through applications with less trauma all round. 

There’s also what medicine prepares you for; being a doctor. Now, your final year in medicine is effectively shadowing in preparation for being a junior doctor. If you study medicine first, then immediately disappear for 3+ years into academia, you will really struggle if you want to get back into clinical medicine all those years down the line. Your practical skills won’t be up to date, your knowledge would be rusty, and you’d actually have to resit practical med school exams in order to be allowed to see patients. If you leave medicine before finishing FY1 junior doctor year, you won’t be able to do the odd locum shift to keep your skills up to date.

So going into working as a doctor after years of lab work would be scary, stressful and a little challenging. It’s not impossible; people come back after 1 year of maternity leave, after all. But all my colleagues coming back from maternity leave (even those who were comfortable and experienced doctors) find it a challenging transition back. Even colleagues I know who are doing PhDs as doctors are locuming on the side to keep their clinical skills sharp, because it’s hard whenever you de-skill. Whilst there are times when you have to take time off for personal reasons, I would not recommend anyone to deliberately leave clinical medicine altogether for years on end if they plan to come back. It would be a needlessly stressful way of doing things. That’s not to say that studying medicine first and then doing something else doesn’t have its uses; some people start off studying medicine (or even finish it!) before they realise that they don’t want to be doctors, and would much rather do something else (including research), and it can open doors because it’s considered a reliable indicator that you know some science and can work hard. But I’d never advise someone to put themselves through 5-6 years of studying medicine if they don’t really think they want to be a doctor going into the degree from the start. So what I’d suggest is for you to do some thinking. Then talk to your careers adviser. Make contact online with ayone in biomedical engineering, or hit up The Student Room forums and see if you can find people in the field.

Do you have any idea what field you’d rather work in? Do you have any access to careers advisers at school? Anyone who can discuss the pros or cons with you? You may well still be really unsure which subject you really, really want to do. And that’s OK, sometimes we just really don’t yet know where we want life to go. And it’s hard because nobody can really help us decide; only we know what we want out of life, what we enjoy and what would make us happy. So if you really don’t know what you want to do, then I can’t furnish an answer; some things can only be decided by ourselves.

If you know what job you want to do, then you can look into the qualfications and experience you need for that job. Do you need a PhD? Will your future employer prefer for you to have done summer projects or internships over a less related degree like medicine?

But if what you really want to do is biomedical engineering (and I suspect it might be), it might well be easier (and kinder) for you to do the degree you actually want to do first. Doing the degree would let you evaluate if you enjoy it enough to work in the field, and if you like academia or research in general. And if what you really want to do is medicine, then obviously studying medicine is the best place to start. In which case, you might well find that some med schools offer intercalated years in all sorts of subjects, which give you some academic experience (and a BSc degree) without a whole three years of that subject. And even if you do really like a field, it may make more sense for you to do a Master’s or PhD in that subject later on in your career when you have some earning power and can fit it flexibly around your life.

In summary, there could be lots of reasons why studying medicine then biomedical engineering could be a great idea, or a less great idea. This depends entirely on what you want out of life, and the reasons why you decided this would be the best way to do it. Our reasons are very individual and personal, and what is right for us can be completely different between students. You do you; although I’ve written a lot, I actually know very little about the path you want to take, what you want out of life or what would make you happy. And I bet you’ve thought about this a lot more than I have. You’re also the one who is going to be living with the decision, so you’ll have to pick the one you think is best for you.  I’ve given some reasons why I personally wouldn’t choose to do things in that order, and some of the challenges it might pose, but it really is your choice alone to make. There might be situaitons where it’s the best course of action; there’s no one rule to choosing what to do with your future, and the common paths aren’t always right for everyone.

The key is to think things through carefully, get some advice from any careers service you can, even if it’s teachers at school, and try to decide what you feel is the best option for you in the long run. If you feel like replying or feel that I’ve missed something, I’m happy to listen. But of course you don’t have to; it’s your decision after all. Good luck!

[djgblogger-blog]

Lest we forget: Children are watching this racism, violence and our reactions

http://bit.ly/2vL6GYq

Cara McClure of Birmingham, Alabama cries Sunday in Charlottesville, Virginia at a solidarity meeting. AP Photo/Brynn Anderson

I find myself in this place again. I am numb. I feel empty. I almost have no words.

The saddest part about this? I wrote these exact words little more than a year ago.

And now, here I am again, feeling the same feelings I felt after the deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and the Dallas and Baton Rouge police officers in the summer of 2016.

I had felt similar sadness and grief in 2012, around the time of the birth of my son. Trayvon Martin had been killed. I was pregnant with a black male in a world that was not ready for him.

Yet again, my heart is heavy, and I am feeling a little like a broken record. I grieve for our country and the resistance to its betterment. I grieve for Heather Heyer, the woman killed by an alleged white supremacist when he drove into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia.

She died because of the violence that erupted after white supremacist/ nationalists protested the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general who led the South’s efforts to hold onto slavery. For many, the removal of the statues of “heroes” of the Confederacy signifies recognition of the sins of slavery. Yet removing these symbols of white oppression and injustice seems to stir people to violence and bring out even more hate.

The constant barrage of horrifying images and commentary on traditional and social media footage of these tragedies seems to only make it worse.

Oddly enough, events like this drove me to academia. I reluctantly pursued a career in research. But, because these events are not going away, I, like a magnet, was drawn to research of widely publicized racially charged events on everyone, but especially on people of color. While I am heartbroken at the events themselves, I am glad to be doing research that might lead to better understanding, if not some healing, of the wounds that separate us.

Many black people are experiencing these events as acts of vicarious racism. Vicarious racism traditionally refers to experiencing racial discrimination indirectly through close contacts, such as family members and peers. I strongly believe, however, that this definition is not inclusive enough. Vicarious racism can be experienced by those who are not directly involved with the event, but who identify with the victims of racism generally on the basis of race. Age and gender could also be factors. Essentially, vicarious racism is the secondhand exposure to the racial discrimination and/or prejudice directed at another individual.

As a pediatrician, I am extremely concerned about vicarious racism’s impact on our children and youth. My concern is that black Americans, especially youths, are impacted by vicarious racism more than we expect and that its impact on children is understudied. Also, I want to know how to best help all of our children. What can we do to help them deal with their feelings? And what can we do to help them and ourselves deal with racism?

Media onslaught

The Charlottesville riot resurfaced much of the nation’s racial tensions. And, once again, children may be affected by the troubling and scary images. Research has shown even if children or youth are not close to the event geographically, they can still be influenced by the event. However, the closer they are to the event, the greater the mental health impact.

A 2001 study showed that after the September 11 attacks, higher levels of acute stress disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, ASD symptoms and PTSD symptoms were present in undergraduate students. Researcher Edward Blanchard of the University of Albany, State University of New York, studied three geographic different populations. One was in Albany, New York; the second in Augusta, Georgia; the third in Fargo, North Dakota.

One predictor for PTSD and ASD in this study was “connectedness” to the victims in the World Trade Center, meaning having a friend or knowing someone directly involved in the event. ASD in the three populations was almost 10 percent in the undergraduates from Fargo, nearly 20 percent in those from Augusta and approached 30 percent in the Albany group. Children in this study had more psychological symptoms closer to the event, but even children 1,000 miles away from the World Trade Center were still impacted.

This study’s findings are important, because it shows children can be impacted by traumatic events if they identify with the victim regardless of geography. Think of how youth of color everywhere may identify with these events, based on the ages and races of the victims.

Not only do the events themselves affect youth, but the onslaught of media afterwards is traumatizing. Like media coverage surrounding these racially charged events, after 9/11, media coverage was extensive and constant. The Blanchard study found hours of TV watched was a predictor of ASD, PTSD or the accompanying symptoms.

In another study, 166 children and 84 mothers who had no direct exposure to the September 11 attacks were assessed for PTSD. Almost 5.5 percent of the children and 1 percent of their mothers were symptomatic. Children identified with the victims of the attack, and the amount of TV younger children viewed as well as parental depression predicted increased risk of PTSD symptoms. Pre-event familial support was associated with lower risk of PTSD symptoms.

Children feel the pain, but parents can help

While the 9/11 attacks are different from more recent events, there are similarities, including feelings of pain and fear, especially experienced by minorities. All of these events have evoked trauma, and children are not an exception. Children are traumatized and retraumatized by these events through the media, but can also be exposed to these events through the words and actions of their parents.

After the murder of Trayvon Martin, a 2013 study done including 104 African-American parents with children ages 6-18 showed that parents felt the need to protect their own children. Parents used the events to discuss racism and attempt to process it with their children, as well as advise them as to how to behave if in a similar situation.

The guidance or socialization parents impart to their children accompanies the oral accounts of these events and becomes a part of the generational heirloom passed down. These tragedies are woven into the historical and multigenerational trauma of African-Americans.

The nation is grieving, and our children are impacted by the horrific events. We need to protect our children from the effects of media exposure to these events. We can do that by:

caring for ourselves and making sure we seek the mental health care we need if we are severely impacted by these events

talking to our children in an age-appropriate way, gauging their knowledge and dispelling rumors or heightened fears

discussing concerning behavior with our child’s pediatrician or primary care provider

monitoring and limiting the exposure of these events through TV, radio, internet and social media.

We need to protect our children from being the indirect victims of these events, which would compound the damage and the suffering. Ensuring we have healthy, resilient children to whom we may pass the torch is surely our priority.

This article is an updated version of an article that appeared in The Conversation on July 20, 2016.

Nia Heard-Garris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.