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What got you into the pursuit of practicing magia?

For me, I think it was love.

Not a romantic love or a love for a specific person (though I was surely experiencing that as well), but a deep, sad love for the world and those that inhabit it. Through my mahō shōjo work I’ve come to be able to hold and make space that gut-wrenching sadness and aching love for the world while also actively putting energy towards a brighter, softer future.

My first intentional spells were focused on healing and taking physical and emotional pain away from others, often redirecting it to myself. I know now that that kind of self-sacrifice for magic is unnecessary and often counterproductive but I remember feeling so strongly that my existence was only good for relieving the discomfort of others and I became obsessed with that notion for a long time. This kind of magical thinking put me in a dark place, especially in middle and high school, and often made me susceptible to abuse. Even now I sometimes catch myself starting to think along those lines and have to work to not let it overwhelm me.

I think this is why CLAMP’s works and Puella Magi Madoka Magica struck such a chord with me in particular. Many of these characters similarly felt overcome with immense feelings of deep, and sometimes painful, love and struggled with fears of inadequacy which pushed them towards self-sacrifice or even martyrdom. That being said, I also see in them profound hope and optimism for a better world, which is something I always seek to emulate in my magia.