Firm belief!

Jonathan Joss was an Indigenous, gay man who was murdered on the first day of Pride month as well as Indigenous History Month. He died protecting his trans husband. Homophobia and racism aren’t marks of the past, and this is a heart breaking reminder of that.

MAGIC FATIGUE/EXHAUSTION/OVERUSE.

Give me those sweet side effects of overusing magic:

Getting lightheaded and weak, struggling to stand let alone keep fighting

"Are you ok?" "Yeah I'm fine. *immediately faceplants because their legs can't support their weight anymore*"

F a i n t i n g

Physical injuries like burns, broken bones, etc

The risk of permanent damage either physically or mentally

Can I get uuuuhhhhh "loses a sense either temporarily or permanently depending on the severity of the overuse"?

Stopping their heart (cue the team scrambling to drag their dumbass friend back from death)

-Nosebleeds. Never gets old.

-Coughing up blood. The good ol’ “cough into your hand and pull it back to see blood” also never gets old.

-Headaches. You keep fighting as your head pounds, desperately telling you to take a break. At first they fade within minutes when you stop using magic, but overtime, they become chronic.

-Fatigue. After a big battle, you stand triumphant, and then just fall asleep on the spot.

-In a similar vein, overuse causing you to straight up faint rather than just fall asleep. Darkness begins to overtake your vision in the middle of battle, unconsciousness abruptly looming over you.

-Any of the side effects happening to another person. Maybe two close characters are connected, and whatever side effects character A would normally endure are transferred to character B. When A uses a blast of magic B screams loudly because holy shit that hurt.

-Magic gradually deteriorating your mind. Using it too much eventually caused hallucinations and an inability to retain memories, or even larger scale memory loss. 

- numbness in the extremities from magical overuse. Mages casting spells, and then opening and closing their hands again and again until the feeling comes back to their fingers. Prolonged use of magic leading to nerve damage.

- emaciation from converting calories into magical energy. Magic users will eat until they almost throw up before undergoing a work, knowing that their magic will steal the energy they need to live. A common remedy for exhausted mages is to feed them something as sweet as possible, and then slowly get calorie-dense foods into their body.

- magic that extends the user’s lifespan, but also withers their body prematurely. Mages become white-haired and infertile faster. Their bodies gnarl and sag, but like deep-rooted trees on the sides of cliffs, they continue to live on.

- sleeping a lot, and having unsettling prophetic dreams. It’s considered bad luck to wake a mage, no matter how much they toss and turn. Some mages may try to avoid their dreams by staying awake as long as possible.

- I love it when magic manifests itself in moments of high emotion. Like a mage could be spitting angry and they don’t realize that smoke is blowing out their nose, or a mage could be hysterically crying and they accidentally cause a rainstorm or something.

- when a mage heals you… you are now living off part of their life force. So if that Mage gets sick/hurt/dies? Buddy I got bad news for you.

- if you use too much magic, yes you’ll crash and pass out. But if you tip toe that threshold and don’t quite make it to the “passing out stage,” you just get severely loopy. Slurring words, not recognizing people you’re with, terrible balance, etc.

- it’s important to broaden your range of what type of magic you use and use everything in moderation, bc if you use only one type all the time it has severe mental side effects. Examples:

only using healing magic will leave you numb/in a daze, because you’re so used to giving away parts of your own life force to help others that you just feel… empty.

only using “dark” magic will gradually make you apathetic, which isn’t inherently bad, but for certain people it makes them more prone to being reckless/dangerous/villainous bc they used to rely on empathy to keep their morals + decision-making in check

- likewise, certain types of magic having visible/tangible side effects on Mages. Examples:

Shadow magic turning a mage’s extremities black, or making them incorporeal part of the time.

Lightning magic making a mage’s hair stick straight up, or they always shock anyone they touch by accident. Maybe they even have glowing lightning feather marks.

Mages who specialize in plant/nature magic have a super rough, bark-like texture to their skin. They might have lichen growing somewhere.

Drawing him between studies

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa - Mortal Kombat (1995)