#I AM GOING TO HAVE A PHD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hollow-lime-green]

PhD Admission Acquired! 🥳

life update under the cut:

to be honest it's been an extremely shit ass month (happy pride) and I have been so so so fucking unwell. a large part of that has been this turbulent feeling of being unsettled - not having any guarantee of where i will be for the next years of my life or even the next months.

i've been dealing with a lot of health consequences from thesis writing: undoing my muscle atrophy, trying to lose the weight i put on, and most recently ✨liver damage✨ (which I am currently doing a lot of testing for to figure out haha what's goin on there what's goin on). that all sucks, but it has been made monumentally more suck by the fact that I live in the US, and I am facing losing healthcare because i'll be graduating, so my coverage ends in august. very cool very fun very necessary for capitalism to persist.

we're also trying to move out of this apartment into a house, but because everything is chaos soup, we're renting month to month and waiting on other financial things to go through. so I'm in a state of half pack, half live.

the stress of being a leftist in the US is also continually mounting and starting to crack me and some of my friends mentally, leading to some amount of interpersonal conflict that is really just a symptom of the fact that we're all going a little crazy due to the DOOM. (Zohran you are our North Star please please please)

i've been extremely depressed and anxious; wibble wobbling between states of hyperanxiety and crashing into collapse. chaos is very taxing on me, i'm a bit of a control freak. being out of control is just... not good. (it is, unfortunately, inevitable).

things are finally a little more okay.

there was really 0 reason to doubt i would be admitted (in grad school it is really about having agreement from your advisor, not numbers/etc, and I had that all the way back in february), but having the official letter means i can finally work on my immigration paperwork, securing housing, etc.

there have been some disappointments and some changes of plans, and i'm sure there will be even more of those in the future. things don't always turn out the way we expect, but they usually turn out okay (long term).

i finally know where I will be 6 months from now, and it is somewhere that i want to be and somewhere i know i can handle, and nothing is going to kill me before then.

i mean, unless the liver stuff does.

but it probably won't.

💜

[ccalpurniatate]

The other day I got a notification saying that I have been thirteen (13!!) years on tumblr. I am going through the few personal posts I have made during the years and it is so crazy that this blog is going to have seen me from dreaming about studying Physics, to getting a bachelor in Physics which basically did origami with me to moving to a different country to do a PhD in photonics.

It´s happening!! I only need to write a final paper (which I hope is going to be very high impact because we did some very cool, new things!!), my thesis and I will have made it!! I will be a Doctor of Science!!! The dream will be fulfilled!!!! It´s going to happen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[secretagentspydetectiveninja]

more v3 doodles (it's all just maki)

[fatehbaz]

weekly navel-gazing update: this week is most consequential event in long time. keyword search: "scared" "is it ok to be scared" "beaten and tortured by the ogre"

[astriiformes]

Was thinking idly about Lilith Clawthorne again today and I have to be honest. It really is such a callout that she is a gifted kid burnout disaster adult who made some poor choices in her younger years out of personal pride (that absolutely destroyed her mental health), only to manage to come back around and rediscover her love for learning via studying history specifically. She's even aro.

[rivvyribbons]

tthe funny thing about olnf mcs is that they're usually their best self during step three.. (glances at ames second who i will be dragging through thhe mud even more once she turns 18)

[coldpintglass]

So sometimes an idea grabs me and I have to ensure I see it through - 3 magnets and 2 badges later I think that’s enough for the time being 😭🤍

[proof-by-intimidation]

Submitted my master's thesis. Which means my life just lost it's meaning.

[intheeveningsunrise]

Okay…i haven’t read mha fanfic in about two years but I found myself searching on Ao3 and came across your fic with Akatani and Izuku.

Your work is amazing! I just caught up on the second part and there are tears in my eyes.

My heart breaks for Akatani. You write him so well. I’m really glad that you make him into a fully fleshed character as opposed as a shadow of Izuku.

I can’t wait to read more of your work. And expect comments from me because you’re absolutely phenomenal.

I hope your Masters/PhD is treating you well (as well as any college program let alone those two😂).

I really appreciate the hard work you do!!!! ♾️ kudos.

Ahhh!!!!????? Thank you so much??? I have been reading your comments on ao3 as they've been coming through (i read every single comment, even if i don't reply) and those alone have brought me so much joy! You and someone else picked this up roughly at the same time and read it through, haha, so someone must have recced it somewhere??

I am now going to go on an epic ramble about mikumo i am so sorry ive been activated i keep meaning to write more of him but i'm so busy, please accept this in lieu of an update. this is over 1k words beneath the cut oh my god i could have just written half the chapter. directors commentary, i guess??

I'm so glad you enjoy it. I'm so glad you love my tiny little son! his characterisation is deeply important to me, especially because i wanted to compare and contrast Izuku as much as possible, and giving into the parallels between AFO and Yoichi. Mikumo came to me more or less formed, and though his character evolved over the course of writing the first work, since I kept the vast majority of it unpublished until it was mostly done, I was able to keep him very consistent!

For the story I'm telling, it felt absolutely crucial that Mikumo and Izuku are and are not the same in important ways. Mikumo is a coward - that's his thing - and Izuku is heroic. But Mikumo still wants to help people, and in the very first chapter, he nearly helps Bakugou from the sludge villain, and it's only his fear of his father and All Might that holds him back. Izuku, by contrast, is heroic and helps people to a fault. There is nothing that holds him back - Mikumo considers Izuku to be the better of the two, while Izuku considers Mikumo to be the better, because despite every ounce of fear that undercut every move Mikumo made in the fist work, he still helped.

He helped at Hosu, and fought against one of his own mentors, and was physically punished for it. He tried to help Eri, and Shigaraki nearly killed him for it - and he did save Eri, hoping it would kill him, because he was just so tired. He has really strong morals, paralleling him with Shigaraki, who grew up in functionally the same world as him, and still strives to help people even if it's going to hurt him.

Just like Izuku.

I think his quirk was truly my favourite way of expressing Mikumo on a kind of meta level? His quirk is - anything. Quirk Creation. He can do absolutely anything he wants. But he uses inefficient quirks, resorts to the same quirks over and over again - he could just any quirk that would crush 1A in training, but he chooses not to. He doesn't have the strength to, sure, but he has no genuine desire to. I love making theoretically overpowered characters that get nerfed, and while he's nerfed by his health at the moment, in the future when that's resolved (because of course, it will be), he's going to be "nerfed" by his own pure disinterest in heroics.

I think that's a unique angle that people don't go for often in fics, or stories in general - if there's someone who's annoyed by or resentful of the system, e.g., a tragically overpowered hero that doesn't care about being a hero, but soon learns that it's their Obligation and Right to do it, and then come to enjoy it. Or they have a bitter arc, that spirals into becoming an antagonist, you know? Or it's an alternative story about how they use their powers for that same job in a different way, for example, think the Support Course/Inventor Izuku AUs. I wanted to write a character that - could. The equivalent of like, Momo still has her creation quirk, but she doesn't want to be a hero, or even hero adjacent. Maybe she just wants to work in accounting or HR or something. I plan to give Mikumo a job where his quirk will come in very useful, but isn't at all a prerequisite or something that'll make him exceptional at it. More than that, Mikumo's attitude towards quirks, both in general and his own, is that they're cool, but don't really make much difference. He likes knowing how they work, likes to play with quirks himself if he ever gets the chance to, but he's not driven by a desire to "do cool things" or "have crazy strong powers". He doesn't care about a cool quirk to give him a fighting advantage. He doesn't even want one. He doesn't care about it, accepts that it's a facet of the world he lives in, but wants no part in upholding it - it just completely doesn't interest him.

Mikumo is a coward - but he's also a pacifist. And I mean that he's a coward insofar as, he's scared of doing this things, deathly scared, and he does them anyway, because it's right. But he doesn't fight unless he's furious - a la Overhaul - and his actions are almost always in self-defence. Even his knife, that he carried everywhere, was exclusively used for his own protection (that i have a backstory half written for but it's really dark so i don't know if i'd ever post it). When he felt threatened by Izuku, he threatened him with the knife, even when he was fighting against Stain, he chose to use a barrier quirk over an offensive quirk. Mikumo isn't exactly a tank, but he's a defender. He's the barrier. The only reason he went back to the League during and after Kamino is because he believed Izuku was dead - he believed that his actions had gotten his brother killed, and he now had an obligation to stop the worst as best he can.

Izuku, by contrast is full-force, all in, 100% OFA from the get go as much as humanly possible. That scares Mikumo as much as it inspires him - Mikumo is terrified of their father, and Izuku reminds him of AFO a lot. On purpose, even. Izuku is possessive and righteous, and encapsulates everything that AFO had wanted in a son, and if Izuku hadn't been born quirkless, had been born with Mikumo's quirk, AFO would have had his ideal child - but would Izuku have withstood AFO's manipulation to hating heroes? Debatable. Mikumo was largely indifferent, and didn't hate them - he was just fed AFO propaganda that heroes hated him, specifically. That heroes wanted him, specifically, dead, because he's AFO's son. Would the same fear have worked for Izuku? Who knows!

Mikumo has had a very sad, difficult life. There are those "Implied past non-con" tags on the works that readers probably figure out is part of his extreme aversion to touch, as well as the fact that his only reliable sources of physical contact include, in no particular order, his violently abusive father (physical and emotional), his "brother figure" shigaraki, who is incredibly unstable, noumu that he trains with, the doctor, and kurogiri. At least Kurogiri was not explicitly hurting Mikumo. Like so many kids in bad situations, he just wants to do better, and he wants to be safe, feel safe, and have people who care.

and he has that, now, but Mikumo is under the impression that he's on a time limit, and it's running out fast. He needs people to think he's okay, so that he doesn't die a more painful death because they try to help him, and he also doesn't trust anybody enough to actually tell them the truth. Izuku trusts them, but he doesn't really know that he can. A lot of them, rightfully, don't trust him - barely reformed villain, caught stealing knives within days? Doesn't know how to talk to other students without unwittingly dropping weirdly loaded comments about his trauma?

He's suicidal, a little more passively so now, but he's content to just enjoy some nice things while he gets to have them - good food, a warm bed, warm clothes (and that's another fun parallel - they both have shockingly bad taste in clothes and think the other's is worse), and at least some people who don't outright hate him. That's as good as Mikumo can hope for, and it's better than the life he had.

Things will get better for him. He'll get happier, he'll feel safe, he'll have a world that wants him, and he'll be free to navigate it however he pleases - and he'll always have Izuku with him, too.

okay im sorry forgive this absolutely insane rant that you did not ask for i hope you enjoyed it anyway?????

[appallinnballin]

WHAT!!!! the scallop

[alcyneus]

im sorry [university name] for slandering you to high hell, i didn’t know we was cool like that

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

wanna ask how you feel about the eridan bpd headcanon/theory(?? not sure what to call it!) you're so good at your character analysis and i'd love to see your outlook on it

Since I don't have a degree or any formal training in psychology, I feel deeply uncomfortable diagnosing characters. I've made an autism joke before but only because I'm on the spectrum. He's definitely traumatized and anxious, but I mean those as descriptors of his behavior rather than capital-D Diagnoses. I try to focus on those when I can - the cause and effect of cognition, self-image, and behavior - and those factors may very well match up with DSM criteria, but I try not to touch an actual diagnosis with a ten foot pole unless the author has explicitly stated that X character has Y condition.

[rubberpuckies]

everyone at my job is actually so insane and neurotic and all of them kept thanking me unprompted for being the only calm person in the house i'm cryingfndskjfsd this is going to be a long summer

[astriiformes]

Talked with a favorite professor today and we got to discussing things that might improve my grad school applications for next cycle, including trying to reference some more current scholarship in my personal statement, which I think he's right about. As it stands one of the primary works I mention is Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park's Wonders and the Order of Nature -- which I adore, and is very related to my project, but which is also from 1998.

Anyway. Part of my homework for my independent study with him is now to trawl some journals for more modern scholarship related to my interests. Thus far however a quick keyword search in one of the more promising ones got me a paper..... also by Daston & Park.

Starting to see why academia is the way that it is.

[deconstructthesoup]

I know that the overlap is probably razor thin, but I need those in the overlap to imagine the insane potential that a DBD Midnight Burger AU could bring

[boydykepdf]

getting excited to have so much more free time in the end of may & june bc my semester will be over & all i’ll be doing is writing my thesis & working part time at my second job only to see that the first week after my semester ends my second job has immediately bumped me up from 15hrs/week (<- limit i gave them during my semester) to 30hrs/week 😀🔫 they want me to kill myself sooooo bad