"Well, in the grand scheme of things that which is most in your interests is to come across authentically and appealingly to any observers who might be influenced thereby," says Nethys. "It's really indispensable. If you do it right you get to exist. But I certainly won't complain about magical project questions."

"So!" 

She hums lightly. 

"The biggest thing I'm unsure of is what it makes sense to pick up? I've got a lot of fundamentals for the... kind of combat that you expect in my world, but that's not really... enough, here? And I don't have a lot of theory for mine, either - the emotional lights are intuitive to a degree, but the magical theory behind it... Not so much. I want to develop my skills there more, and get myself into a position where I can more confidently defend against... some of the bigger threats in this class. Beyond that... I'm not sure how much this is in your domain, but I'm really curious what I can do with Doctor Morrow's element robot technology? I've got the scans of Red Tornado, Torpedo and Volcano, and I'm wondering if I can adapt it to something a bit less... purely physicalist that might be more useful... here? And I've got some limited scans of the technology that the qwardians use to forge rings, but I can't make heads or tails of it, and the really useful parts were too scanshielded for me to get through, so I can't just..." 

She waves her hand vaguely. 

"I also just don't know how much sense it makes sense to try to pick up random things? The atlanteans have their own traditions in my world, amongst others, and I doubt I could get that much out of just studying more of that normally in the kind of timeline that MCU tends to demand. And I don't really have a start for defending against some of the other disciplines - chi doesn't... really exist as a path in my world, so I don't know the first thing about defending against or synergizing it with my existing skills?" 

She rubs the back of her head bashfully. 

"Pure physicalism can work fine. We're operating in a space here where many things are on a curiously equal footing," says Nethys. "Though combining techniques allows you to win more at rock-paper-scissors, so to speak. The curriculum here goes at breakneck speed in part just because it's that kind of environment but also in part because mind control is applicable to learning more quickly, and if you care to catch up to Atlantis, this is a reasonable time to do it. As for chi, that comes from an angle that rewards putting in reps as much or more as it rewards any specific trick, but doesn't punish doing it, in, say, time dilation, should you have any handy, such as by going faster than light inside-out in the right neighborhood."

She tilts her head and frowns. 

"I guess I'm just a little worried about say, some chi technique just trivially defeating me because I don't have any specific defense for that... kind of approach? I've got enough training in telpathic defense and enough physicalist and magical shielding to be okay for... most things that I would expect to be around in the first week, but there's only so much general protections can do? And I'm just not sure how much my - specific direction of metaphysical development can help with other things, or how much I should try to say, work with an emotion-based cultivation or psionic technique just because that's where my primary magical talents lie. Beyond that... I think my biggest weakness right now is that I'm just - not prepared for a mind control fight? I have a bunch of options for psychological reinforcement and broad spectrum defense, but I don't know - the kind of tricks that come out of this kind of meta, and my options for offense are... pretty poor? I've sometimes used these..." 

She produces a diagram for a set of silver handcuffs, embossed with emeralds. There's a journeyman grade inscription on it in a thaumaturgical script that looks like it was made by imperfectly reworking a generic elemental concentration and evocation method, though the design does work to drain and somewhat unfocus the will of the person wearing them, and to physically reinforce them with a stored power reserve. There's aversion of it on a little silver disk, too, that is designed to stick to the target and apply the same basic draining effect. In a baseline human with nothing special about them, it'd probably be good enough to get them docile and unfocused, though someone who was actively really angry or scared or in love or hopeful or compassionate or avaricious would have a decent chance of shaking it off. It's more the sort of thing that helps as a defense in depth than something you'd really want to rely on. 

"But I find they're not very effective against magic resistant targets, and can be slippery against people who have motivations that don't primarily center around will to keep doing what they're doing. And the other colors are even more unreliable. In... theory, I guess I could construct additional soulparts out of the emotional lights into their system, but that's even worse at getting past resilience and as I would do it now really finicky and slow. There's a method of mind control in the orange light that lets you just sort of... turn them into zombified slaves that feel only the avarice you want them to feel and physically converts them into constructs, but it's pretty... blunt and all or nothing. There's the Indigo Tribe thing where they can indoctrinate people into compassion, but that's kind of all brute force and doesn't allow for much control of the end result. I'm sure in principle it's possible to do a lot better than that, but I made all of the magic theory for manipulating this by just watching what lanterns do and looking at some cross sectional theory so..." 

She shrugs a little helplessly. 

"Well, you're doing pretty well considering. Now, it'd be impolite of me to provide you anything even slightly like a fully general defense against mind control; the meta is what you students make of it, and not something that drops out of who goes to see the teachers first and asks for a shield instead of a sword. But if you want to get a jump on chi-aware defensive measures the chi teacher is suited to tell you about that, and I can let on that the simplest chi-based techniques typically want the user to come into physical contact with the subject; accordingly, keeping your distance will mean you only get higher-level attempts coming at you so you won't go down to some sort of chump. There's some interoperability between all of the curricula. You can have a magical protection that prevents people from touching you, which deflects a lot of chi control, so it should be no surprise that you can also have a magical protection that works on other attempts from the same quarter. Personally, I'd do this," he does something that produces a flash of bubblegum-pink light and smells like coconut, "unless of course I did something else."

She nods along consideringly. 

"The personal force field I've got is pretty good, just from the rings, but I could see about expanding it out a little, getting a bit more distance or - metaphysical substance to chew through..." 

She bites her lip thoughtfully, and stores some more notes on her ring. 

"As for some other questions... Anything in mind for extra credit? I was also wondering about hypnosis defense - the best I could figure out on the fly would just be disconnecting from my ordinary senses and relying on my ring, but that can be a little awkward. Maybe some sort of... specific emotional mix I can inject as needed preprepared or some sort of autoinjector that detects hypnosis associated mental states and tries to inject enough contrary emotion to make snap the target out of it? I'm not sure if that would work or hypnosis is too - mental or adaptable for what I'm picturing. Probably there's a more in-style way to do it with a general arcanists approach, though, and it might be worth hunting down something like that just to help with progressive mind control in general..." 

"Hypnosis works by aligning your mind to particular patterns; if you have a pattern that cancels, overrides, or otherwise contradicts an imposed one then hypnosis will be accordingly ineffective. The autoinjector might work well unless your hypnotist was adaptable enough. Having a seizure would also often work! More people should try that. Possibly not you. It tends to leave you open to other vectors. For extra credit, suppose you find - or create, if they're inconveniently thin on the ground - an emotionless sophont and enslave it? You don't have to keep it after that if that isn't what you mean to spend the extra credit on."

She furrows her brow thoughtfully. 

"That's... an interesting prospect! I'll have to think on how I'd go about that. Is it fine if I build emotions in myself, or do you want them to be emotionless start to end?" 

"If you want to add emotions to them once you've got them under control that's fine, but don't use them during the process."

A bobbly nod. 

"Beyond that... I'd appreciate general references you'd recommend for working with planar evocations, emotion magic, and whatever you'd recommend someone as a general starting out point for someone with no particular magical experience? Want to get a bit more of a sense for what's possible from that point and get myself more well rounded, I suppose." 

He retrieves a booklist from nowhere with some seven items on it and, pinching one corner, shakes it into a paper football and flicks it to her.

She will scan it and subspace it! 

...She pauses, for a moment. She... gets the impression that he's mercurial about this sort of thing and this is still plenty to start from but... 

yeah, not poking the bear. If this is a huge problem later, she can always ask Mesmerra if there's like, teacher non-favouritism standards they need to stick to. The reading list should be plenty, really - she's always been a bit more comfortable with that sort of thing, anyways.