I just want to fall in love with someone who makes me feel safe like even when we’re angry or sad or upset i just want to know that both of us are still going to be okay

Memory loss is common with PTSD.

There is a huge gap in my memory. I'm not sure if I was just dissociating so hard I barely paid attention to what was going on around me or if something so incredibly horrible happened that my brain is blocking it out.

The one thing I do remember are the panic attacks. Like clockwork, I'd wake up in the middle of the night, gasping for air. Whenever I'd watch horror movies I really believed they overplayed that bit. Someone would have a nightmare and shoot up in bed, soaked in sweat, heart hammering against their ribcage. But I guess I hadn't really experienced the worst just yet.

I would understand if I had a panic attack during the day with all that was going on, but I was asleep. I was asleep. Every night up until we ran I had those panic attacks. I never did figure out what caused them. Maybe it was just the increasing stress. Maybe something happened. I don't know. But I'm still missing time. And it scares me.

The other week I was alone at home and having an awful mental breakdown. I kept crying out, "What did he do to me? What did he do to me?" I cried so hard the capillaries in my face broke and left freckles on my skin. I cried so hard no air was getting in. I nearly lost my mind.

I was able to gather myself for a minute to breathe. With my hands pressing into the tops of my thighs I muttered over and over, "Nothing happened. He didn't do anything. You're making stuff up. Nothing happened. He didn't do anything. You're being dramatic. Nothing happened. He didn't do anything. Let it go."

Somehow, those words made me feel absolutely fucking insane. Because if I am right, then I will lose myself. And if I'm wrong, then I can't trust any memory I have. Then I can't trust myself at all.

I'm not sure which would be worse.

I can't remember if I sent this to you already but could I request headcanons for aizawa, hizashi and Toshinori finding their s/o that has a chipmunk quirk that makes her fall into hibernation when it's too cold (kinda like tsu) but when the guys find her with her heart rate low and her breathing shallow maybe they freak a little bc she didn't tell them about that part of her quirk yet

omggggg this idea is literally so cute I got so excited when I first read it. Also thank you love for comin through with the requests, I really appreciate it! <3 I also hella struggled cuz like, what can someone with a chipmunk quirk do? Stuff their cheeks? Climb up trees? Also I legit forgot what a chipmunk even looked like I had to look it up lmaoooo im so dumb it hurts

Aizawa is an intimidating fella, okay

So when you first told him about your quirk, you were lowkey embarrassed?

Like, here’s this grown-ass man with a badass quirk who is more than capable of taking down villains and defending himself, and here you are just-

🐿️

But you know what’s great about this man? He couldn’t give less of a shit about your quirk or anything like that. He strikes me as the type to care more about personality than anything else

concealing your quirk is fairly easy. People probably wouldn’t even know you had one if it wasn’t for the small fluffy ears popping out of the top of your head, and even then you could just cover them with a hat

But that doesn’t mean you don’t experience the effects of your own quirk just because it’s subtle

You have a mutant type quirk, so you experience certain things that actual chipmunks do

Sometimes you won’t even notice that you’re stuffing your cheeks to full capacity with whatever you’re eating before Aizawa has to cut you off and just be like

“y/n. Chew.”

Or when you’re rushing, you’re usually going so fast that Aizawa can barely even see you zooming from room to room

you can also get kinda skittish at times, your ears twitching whenever you hear a noise that sounds weird or out of place, and you’ll just look at Aizawa with wide eyes until he checks out what made a noise that he could barely hear

“y/n, it was just some kids outside.”

“Oh... sorry, Sho.”

he wants to be frustrated, but he knows it’s not your fault. And honestly? He finds you so cute that he can’t really stay mad at you

So he’ll just let out a huff before patting your head lovingly, grazing his fingers over your ears (Which he KNOWS are sensitive, that asshole)

Experiencing long periods of deep sleep is also a thing. You wouldn’t call it hibernation cuz you still have to do normal, everyday things, but there are times during the winter where you’ll sleep for a few days in a row and only get up to go to the bathroom or eat

And since you can’t actually burrow into the floor of your home, you usually make a blanket fort in the corner of your bedroom and stuff all of the pillows and blankets you can in there until it’s nice and warm, ready for you to bury yourself in

and you might’ve left that little part of your quirk out when you moved in together. whoops

So when Shouta comes home and sees the living room couch void of all of its pillows, he’s not expecting to walk into your shared bedroom and see you curled up in a blanket fort

he’s a bit curious at first, just kinda looking at you like “All right, I guess this is normal?”

and he’ll crouch down and kinda examine you for a bit before he eventually wonders if you’re even breathing? You’re burried under blankets, so he can’t really see your chest moving

eventually he’ll check and see that your breathing is abnormally slow and he kinda just... pauses and checks again to make sure he’s not going crazy.

and he wont deny that he kinda freaks out at first, his immediate thought being that he needs to get you out of there, but the second he grabs the blankets to pull them off of you he’s like wait... hold up.

then it all clicks

you’re a mutant with a chipmunk quirk...

c h i p m u n k

safe to say he’s relieved, so he just lets you be and goes about his day. 

When you wake up a few hours later to go to the bathroom, you come out of the bedroom with your clothes practically on backwards, rubbing at your eyes and stumbling past Aizawa like he’s not even there. And when you’re done, it’s right back to sleep you go

“Back to bed?” Aizawa would ask as he watches you with an amused smirk on his face

“Mhm.”

“Okay. Goodnight, y/n”

“Mm’night.

Listen, when he first heard of your quirk, he thought it was the cutest shit ever

“Your quirk is Chipmunk?! That’s SOOOOOOOO CUUUUUUUTE!”

No he’s legit your number one hype man. If you think your quirk is lame, he’s literally shouting at you how cool he thinks you are.

“You can stuff so much food in your mouth, y/n! And that’s pretty dope if you ask me! I’m totally jealous!”

speaking of food, he’ll just randomly ask you to shove as much as you can of one thing in your cheeks until they’re at full capacity.

“Hey y/n, think you can shove this whole pack of jumbo marshmallows in your cheeks?”

“But... I just bought those :(”

“I’ll buy you more, LET’S DO THIS!!!”

also asks you the dumbest questions omg. You don’t know if he’s genuinely curious or if he’s just doing it to piss you off

“So do you just eat nuts all day?”

“You’ve seen me eat, Hizashi. No.”

“Do you prefer to sleep in trees?”

“That would be extremely uncomfortable.”

“Ooh you’d probably be great frieds with Kamui Woods then.”

“Did you not hear what I just said?”

He also REALLY likes your ears. Like an unhealthy amount? Whenever you’re around he literally wont stop touching them and even tugs on them playfully until you’re swatting at his hands and telling him to go away

He can’t help that they’re so cute :(

so on a particuallry cold day in winter when he has to go to work at the school, he leaves your home while you’re sleeping, only to come home hours later to find you... still sleeping?

You haven’t moved an inch the entire time he’s been gone, so needless to say, he’s a litle concerned.

and when he checks to see if you’re still alive only to discover your heart rate is super slow, he’s A LOT concerned

His brain just goes to the most dramatic thing he can think of, which is that you’re in some weird coma and need to wake up

so rather than, i dont know, gently shaking you awake like a normal person, he grabs you buy your shoulders and starts shaking you violently while shouting your name loud as fuck

“Y/NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN”

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!”

you literally wake up so violently, you sit right up and shove him off of you before asking what’s wrong with him, pretty sure you’ve officially gone deaf

He then explains that he thought you were in a coma or something cuz your heartbeat was so slow, and at that point you just roll your eyes because of course he would come up with this ridiculous conclusion

“Hizashi, my quirk is chipmunk and it’s a mutation quirk.”

He doesn’t even get what you’re getting at, just tilting his head in confusion as he squints at you.

“What do chipmunks do in the winter, babe?”

Cue more confused squinting

“Oh my god, they hibernate, you headass.”

it finally clicks and the look on his face makes it seem like he just learned the secret of the universe, and afterwards he’s going on about how cool that is while you just roll your eyes and lay back down to try and go back to sleep, bringing the blanket over your head to try and drown him out

He eventually gets the hint and leaves, but after a while, you kinda feel bad for blowing up on him. He was just concerned and didn’t fully understand your quirk

so letting out a huff, you pull the blanket down and call out his name, to which he immediately runs to you at the sound of, asking you what you need

you just wordlessly lift up the blanket to expose the empty side of the bed, and oh boy, the size of the grin he gets on his face is unmatched

immediately throws off his hero costume so that you can both be comfortable and jumps into bed with you, holding you impossibly close

you fall asleep in a matter of minutes while he just looks at you fondly, hand soothingly rubbing your back.

Just like the other two, he finds you incredibly cute. Like mans is in love, okay?

everytime he sees your little ears twitch, he just gets the strongest urge to touch them, but he never does without your consent becuase he knows how sensitive they are.

“Uh... y/n, do you mind if I... touched your ears?” 

Baby probably feels so awkward asking ugh PLEASE REASSURE HIM

“Oh? Yeah, of course, Toshi. Knock yourself out.”

oooh he’s excited. He’ll be super gentle about it, just lightly grazing them with his fingers before gently rubbing them between his thumb and forefinger

and at that point you’re littlerally melting, practically falling into him because him caressing your ears like this feels absolutely amazing

When he sees how it’s affecting you, he immediately becomes a blushing mess and apologizes, but you just hug him and tell him it’s okay and that you liked it

yeah he definitely rubs your ears whenever you’re feeling stressed or anxious because it’s become a quick way to relax you

only when he does it though. If anyone else randomly touches your ears, you get kinda uncomfortable

Just because they don’t look human doesn’t mean they still weren’t a part of you, dammit

Anyways, one day when you’re waiting for Toshi to come back home, you’ve got yourself wrapped up like a burrito in your blanket, sitting on the couch as you watched tv

it had been snowing all day, but luckily Toshinori had turned up the thermostat before he left, remembering how you mentioned that you’re not a huge fan of the cold

unfortunately for you, the harsh weather had no trouble taking out the power, leaving you in the dark and the cold

it didn’t take long for the cold to start seeping in through the cracks in the windows, and you quickly began to grow tired before you inevitibly passed out on the couch, still wrapped tightly in your blanket

When Toshi gets home and sees you on the couch, his first reaction is “aw, how cute.”

but then when he comes up to you and starts calling out your name to try and wake you up and you just won’t, and then he notices how much your breathing has slowed down, he quickly growns concerened.

He’s not in full panic mode yet, but he’s getting there, and he’s quick to crouch down to your level and grab your shoulders to start shaking you to wake you up

which you do, blinking groggily at him like you weren’t just in full hibernation mode

“Oh... Hey, Toshi,” you mumble, and you reach up to wrap your arms around his neck to pull him down so that you can nuzzle yourself into his warm chest

He’s not able to ask you about what happened to you before you’ve already fallen back asleep, and when the power comes back on a few minutes later, he does a quick google search on chipmunks and mutant quirks before putting two and two together

Now he’s thinking of all the ways he could make you something to burrow into during those especially cold winters

aoba johsai’s sport’s journalist (h/c’s)

just crack+ fluff + platonic-ish relationship (gn!y/n) (w: language!) a/n: this has been bugging me for awhile now since i havent seen headcanons of this yet (if their are do send them on my ask box) and since im on a slump, i decided to write this down. this is completely fun, easy-going, and self-indulgent, really perfect for someone stuck on a slump ksks. idk if i should make some for the other schools but oh welp enjoy! happy 900 btw werkwerk uwu so weird to reach this when im not even very active.

Now let’s be honest here, it’s no surprise that the volleyball team of aoba johsai has their own sports journalist. Like, c’mon, they’re one of the best in the prefecture.

But let’s start with the basics here, shall we? Let’s start with you, how this all goes through, and how you got into this heaping pile of mess.

Yep, you.

There you were in high hopes to get into journalism for college so what better way was it than to apply for the school paper? It would definitely look good and pretty in those college applications *chef’s kiss* you’re a second year btw idk if that matters but yeah..

Much to your surprise no one was applying for the news section which was kind of sad since you wanted a buddy there.

but-but it turns out though everyone was applying for the sports section completely understandable, next to feature, it was the most exciting thing to write because there was going to be a special section and writer for the volleyball team.

You knew that volleyball was kind of a big thing around your school?? you just didn’t expect it to amass like that much people.

The editor in chief is obviously surprised, you were the first person on that day to come in there and actually apply for something else.

and guess where that led you to?

Yep, the sport’s section, specifically the volleyball team’s personal sports journalist. Your brain goes brrt brrt because you were not a sports writer at all and you were, ironically, scared of ball games.

VOLLEYBALL WAS COMPLETELY NEW TERRITORY FOR YOU.

Your editor in chief laughs it off and says, “you’ll do fine… its like news bUT SPORTS! IT’LL DEFINITELY LOOK GOOD IN YOUR APPLICATIONS!”

You’re not sure if you should be terrified or terrified?

It doesn’t help that on the first day when you enter the gym you look terribly constipated and panicking a lot because of all the stray balls being spiked and tossed around.

It also didn’t help that you crash course the terminologies and the member’s name a night before and you were just running on iced coffee that day.

Yeah, way to make a first impression, huh?

When you approach the coach, you’re not exactly sure what to say and you were this close to chickening out until you saw one of the players come up to you and ask if you were alright and if you wanted to talk to oikawa.

you’re loading for a second there.

and the poor guy who asks you if you were alright, starts looking actually worried because you weren’t responding at all.

“OH, oH IS THAT THE CAPTAIN?”

the guy literally looks very confused?? because what kind of rock were you living under that you didn’t know Oikawa???

so you go ahead and introduce yourself and say that your name was Y/N and you were the new sports journalist for the team.

“....soooo you write?”

“...”

at this point on, you’re also confused too

and idk man, first impressions do indeed last because you ended up (unknowingly) sharing the same brain cell with Matsukawa Issei.

you both were just confused there, straight up looking like two kids who got left behind by their mom in the grocery check-out line.

anyways...

He tells you the team’s pretty chill and you should stop looking like they spiked a ball on your puppy or something.

Basically introduces you to the whole team after, 

no questions asked, just go with the flow.

You basically just click and vibe???

Not only because you crash coursed and related to whatever they said, 

you literally all shared the same brain cell together.

Kentaro was another story though, kid basically hated your guts at first, it felt like if you were to say one sentence to him that day, he’d literally spike a ball at your direction.

“we’re basically the same year tho :(” -Y/N

“lmao well do i’ve got news for you, y/n-chan.” - Oikawa and basically everyone on the team.

you gradually start to understand the coolness of the sport since you had to incorporate visiting them once or twice a week during practice.

but suddenly it becomes almost a daily routine after a month because they’re just really friendly people??

like wow, they’re all friendly giants.

You’re literally just there to write about them but they’re really patient and kind, they even invite you to practice games so that you could practice out your skills in writing since you mentioned that you’ve never written for sports yet.

they even give you some added key terms that aren’t found in books and online.

you’re def closest to iwaizumi and matsukawa.

iwaizumi because he makes really funny fish jokes about oikawa (yes you arent supposed to be laughing but man theyre funny af, oikawa would usually call you and iwa corny because the jokes aren’t even that funny) and yes its canon that whenever iwaizumi sees an oikawa fish in textbooks, he starts laughing and joking about it.

no explanation needed why you ended up being close to matsukawa.

its obvious after that first meeting ya both would be besties.

same brain cell bros go brrt brrt.

incredibly!! supportive!! I CANNOT STRESS THAT ENOUGH

like when you release a new write up about them, Oikawa would usually go, “It’s such an honor to be apart of your first steps, can you sign this?”

dramatic but hella supportive, we stan the gr8 king

“oh, wow, i thought you said you didn’t write before? how come you sound like a professional already?” - Hanamaki 

another dramatic best boi.

akira + kindaichi getting shy because they’ve never experienced this yet. So whenever you try to interview them about stats or something for a special issue, they usually end up a stuttering mess

“w-well, L/N-san...”

kentaro slowly warming up to you but still looks like he wants to spike a volleyball at your face 90% of the time but unlike before you’re used to his whole thing already.

“Move, extra.”

“You were great, by the way. That was a powerful spike!”

you may or may not be included in random ramen nights with the team

yes, oikawa buys you your own bowl of ramen

itadakimasu.

he doesn’t mind tho, he really loves how you write them. 

so its sort of a thank you for giving the team justice when you write about them.

team says you’re technically part of the team so they make you your own jersey. Now when you watch your games people ask if you’re like the manager or smthng.

“ no :’) “

When they lost against shiratorizawa and karasuno, you were bawling too like you were apart of the team.

this pretty much cheered everyone up despite the loss because your crying face was apparently very funny and memable.

oh right, your article was passed on to the town’s newspaper

it was literally like 7 am on a saturday and your notifs went zoop.

they added you to their group chat and spammed you with pictures of the articles that you wrote.

“...wOW I CAN’T BELIEVE IT?? YOU GOT FRONT PAGE FOR SPORTS???” -Oikawa

“we didn’t even win the tournament but we still get a feature?? thats so cool?? holy shit?? CONGRATS KSKSKS” -matsukawa

lmao idk matsukawa looks like a keyboard smasher tbh idk why

pretty much its normal for you to even start hanging out already outside of the court and after practice to get steam buns.

more chaotic mess and clumsy you running around.

your volleyball sports writing experience wouldn’t be complete until someone accidentally spikes a ball at the back of your head amaright?

ironically, it’s yahaba who does that to you. poor smoll bean.

“wow, you’re dumb.” -kentaro says to you

“ :’)” -you.

“y/N-SAN I SWEAR IT WAS AN ACCIDENT.” -yahaba 

overall, you found yourself in a safe haven with the volleyball team and yes, you also cried when the third years graduated. 

the third years have a picture with everyone on the team + you with a very red face from all the crying?? once again, you’ve proven yourself to be a meme.

continued to write for them up until graduation.

and its def obvious you kept in touch with all of them after, duh.

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THE MANY HEALTH BENEFITS OF METH

In low, pharmaceutical-grade doses, methamphetamine may actually repair and protect the brain in certain circumstances. But stigma against the drug could be harming patients and holding back research.

TROY FARAHMAY 15, 2019

D-methamphetamine is what generally appears on the street—although it's often cut with other chemicals—whereas l-meth provides a less addictive, shorter-lived high that is less desirable among drug users.

(Photo: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)

Ask your doctor about methamphetamine. It's not a phrase you'll ever hear on TV or the radio, but here's a secret: Meth is an incredible medicine. Even the Drug Enforcement Administration admits it, and doctors are known to prescribe it for narcolepsy, obesity, and ADHD. Historically, meth has been used to reverse barbiturate overdoses and even raise blood pressure during surgery. Some preliminary research suggests that meth can be neuroprotective against stroke and traumatic brain injury, even stimulating the growth of brain cells.

Yet we're constantly warned never to try meth—"not even once," goes the refrain—or it will instantly cause addiction and ruin your life. Before fentanyl was the demon drug du jour, meth was seen as the worst, most destructive, most evil chemical you could find on the streets. Even of late, if you ask the New York Times or NBC, you'll learn that meth, "the forgotten killer," is back with a "vengeance." Other outlets, from Rolling Stone to CNN to The Daily Beast, have raised the alarm about meth use in the context of the opioid overdose crisis.

Stimulant-related deaths are indeed on the rise in North America—in some regions, meth is even more prevalent than heroin. Surveying drug overdoses in America from 1979 through 2016, researchers wrote in Science in September of 2018 that "Methamphetamine deaths have increased most dramatically in the western and southwestern United States."

Meth poisonings accounted for an estimated 14,845 hospitalizations in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and another 15,808 emergency room visits. In 2016, around 7,500 people died from overdosing on stimulants, including meth. If you ask most people, including policymakers, you'll hear that meth is a scourge that can do no good.

But if you've ever used something like Vicks VapoInhaler, you've experienced the healing benefits of meth firsthand. That's because the over-the-counter nasal decongestant contains levomethamphetamine, the levorotary form—or "mirror image"—of the same stuff from Breaking Bad. Procter & Gamble tries to obscure this fact by spelling the active ingredient "levmetamfetamine." Selegiline, a drug for treating Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, also metabolizes into levomethamphetamine.

There is a significant difference between these two opposing molecules. D-methamphetamine is what generally appears on the street—although it's often cut with other chemicals—whereas l-meth provides a less addictive, shorter-lived high that is less desirable among drug users. But people can and do use it recreationally. Abuse is rare, however, in part because the high is shitty, but also because d-meth is so widely available. It's easier to buy a more powerful form of the drug on the street than it is to try to extract it from over-the-counter medications.

Other Americans are prescribed actual, pure meth by their doctors. It happens less frequently these days, but in ADHD, obesity, or narcolepsy cases where nothing else has worked, a drug called Desoxyn (methamphetamine hydrochloride) can sometimes help. It can even be prescribed to children as young as seven.

It's important to make these distinctions. Meth didn't make a "comeback"; it never left. It can't return with a "vengeance" and it can't be "evil" because we're talking about a chemical compound here. It has no personality, no feelings, no intentions.

Thus it does a disservice to science and to medicine, as well as to the people who use these drugs responsibly, to treat a molecule with dualistic properties purely as a poison. And as recent research has shown, we're still uncovering some of the potential therapeutic benefits of methamphetamine. Confronting the stigma associated with meth and highlighting its benefits can better inform drug policy and addiction treatment.

(Photo: HO/Royal Thai Navy/AFP/Getty Images)

'IT'S JUST A STIMULANT, LIKE ANY OTHER STIMULANT'

For Jordan*, the meth he's prescribed works better against his ADHD with fewer side effects than the Adderall he'd been on for 20 years. About five years ago, Jordan asked his doctor if he could try methamphetamine. The doc said sure.

"The first time I brought it to the pharmacy, the pharmacist actually said to me, 'Oh, your doctor wrote this prescription wrong, this is the stuff that they make in meth labs,'" Jordan tells me by phone. "I told him to type 'Desoxyn' into the computer, and he did. He kind of backtracked, [but] he obviously had no idea."

Jordan, a middle-aged man from North Carolina who works in clinical research, now switches every three months between Adderall and Desoxyn to prevent building a tolerance to either stimulant.

Methamphetamine and amphetamine (one of the active ingredients in Adderall) are almost identical chemicals. The main difference between the two is the addition of a second methyl group to methamphetamine's chemical structure. This addition makes meth more lipid-soluble, allowing for easier access across the blood-brain barrier. Meth is therefore not only more potent, but also longer-lasting.

"The medications have definitely been important for me, to be productive, to be successful, not just at work but also in my personal life," Jordan says. "I've been on the medications for years, but I can take Adderall or methamphetamine and take a nap afterwards. I don't have any noticeable side effects."

Jordan also doesn't feel "high" from the doses he takes—approximately 10 to 15 milligrams of meth per day. Doses at this level are well tolerated by most people. It's very difficult to estimate the typical dosages of illicit meth taken on the street, but they are generally many times higher and taken every couple of hours. Further, the route of administration—typically, users smoke or inject illicit meth—allows for more of the drug to enter the bloodstream than taking a prescription pill.

At high doses, meth gives a rush of euphoria, boosting attention span, zapping fatigue, and decreasing appetite. Intense sexual arousal, talkativeness, and rapid thought patterns are also common. Body temperature and heart rate shoot up, which can cause irregular heartbeat, increasing the risk of seizures. If taken repeatedly over long periods, street meth can be highly neurotoxic, inducing paranoia and psychosis.

But illicit meth is also often used to self-medicate, according to Mark Willenbring, an addiction psychiatrist from St. Paul, Minnesota, with over 30 years of practice treating substance-use disorders. In Willenbring's experience, most of his patients who use illegal meth are treating undiagnosed ADHD.

"There's a high degree of comorbidity between substance-use disorders and ADD," Willenbring says. "They used meth for years in a controlled way, they never over-used it, they just used enough to get an effect, and then they stopped. One misconception is that it's always very addictive."

With most people who are addicted to meth, Willenbring says, you can't tell it just by looking at them. Carl Hart, a neuroscientist in Columbia University's Department of Psychology, agrees that the image of a snarling meth addict with bad teeth is a false stereotype. The dental damage so prevalent in anti-drug propaganda, he says, is more likely due to poor nutrition and lack of sleep—not to the drug. "There is no empirical evidence to support the claim that methamphetamine causes physical deformities," Hart wrote in a 2014 co-authored report.

"It's just a stimulant, like any other stimulant," Willenbring says. "It's a marketing issue."

Part of the reason Jordan asked to try Desoxyn in the first place was to see if he'd develop any of the "stereotypical meth addict problems," as he puts it. He hasn't.

"Those of us that know the reality have a responsibility to say, 'Hey, not that shooting up meth isn't bad, but the chemical itself isn't bad,'" Jordan says. "It's just misuse of the chemical that's bad."

For Joan*, a 66-year-old grandmother living off the grid in northern Georgia, Desoxyn makes her feel normal. "Not high, not hyped up, just normal," she tells me. She's been taking prescription meth since 2006, but first tried many other ADHD meds, such as Ritalin and Concerta, with poor results. But Desoxyn has not only helped her socialize, manage bills, and finish her master's degree in social work; it's also helped with Joan's depression and self-esteem.

"The only downside is the cost," she says. "It's one of the oldest drugs on the market, but even generic, it is outrageously expensive."

Still, meth isn't for everyone, of course. Kevin*, a 31-year-old artist from the Midwest, was first prescribed Desoxyn at age 15 to treat extreme fatigue and trouble focusing. But misdiagnosed mental-health issues—his doctors thought he had bipolar disorder, when in fact he had post-traumatic stress from childhood abuse—led to worsening symptoms.

"Being able to just take a bunch of pills that made the exhaustion go away for a while felt like a blessing, but it was just a Band-Aid on the problem," Kevin says. "I became completely dependent upon Desoxyn to function, and any lapse in taking my dose would result in a terrible energy crash."

"In retrospect, my neurologist at the time would have done well to consider the effects of intense stimulants on someone already prone to mania, insomnia, and hallucinations," he says. "I think Desoxyn has its merits as part of a treatment plan for attentive disorders, but that's the thing—it needs to be part of a larger understanding of how and why it might have a negative impact upon the patient's overall health, and should remain closely monitored throughout."

"Stigma is the lens [through] which we see all drug issues. It keeps us from making the best decisions. It is fear-based, not rational, not creative. Because of stigma, we have not fully addressed the opioid crisis."

(Photo: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images)

HOW METH CAN TREAT BRAIN INJURY—AND MUCH MORE

Street doses of meth can be extremely damaging to your health. The purity of such drugs is often unknown, and repeated, high doses of meth have been proven to be neurotoxic. But in low, pharmaceutical-grade doses, meth may actually repair and protect the brain in certain circumstances.

This was first discovered in 2008, when researchers at Queen's Medical Center Neuroscience Institute in Honolulu, Hawaii, analyzed five years of data on traumatic head injuries. They unexpectedly found that patients who tested positive for methamphetamine were significantly less likely to die from the injuries. The authors suggested that meth could have neuroprotective benefits.

To learn more, in 2011, a different team from the University of Montana applied meth to slices of rat brain that had been damaged to resemble the brains of stroke victims. Then they induced strokes in living rats, using a method called embolic MCAO, and injected them with methamphetamine. At low doses, the meth gave better behavioral outcomes and even reduced brain-cell death. At high doses, the meth made outcomes worse.

Because meth stimulates the flow of important neurotransmitters—dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine—the Montana researchers theorized that methamphetamine may provide neuroprotection through multiple pathways. David Poulsen, one of the researchers involved, says this was a "serendipitous discovery."

"So we decided, well, if it worked in stroke, it's probably going to work really well in traumatic brain injury," says Poulsen, now a neurosurgeon at the University of Buffalo who specializes in treatments for protecting the brain after severe damage.

Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, occurs after a violent smash to the skull. Its consequences include concussions on the mild end and coma or death on the severe end. TBI kills around 50,000 Americans annually, according to the CDC, while about 2.8 million of us visit the emergency room for TBI-related injuries every year. There is currently no Food and Drug Administration-approved treatment for TBI.

So, Paulson and his team reasoned, if meth can already be prescribed for children, why not to adults with TBI?

To test the proposition, Poulsen and colleagues gave TBI to rats. Giving an animal brain trauma isn't easy, but for more than two decades, there's been a trick called the rat lateral fluid percussion injury model: Simply cut a hole in the skull of a rat and apply water pressure to the brain.

About half the rodents—19 male Wistar rats—were given this treatment, and eight of these were then given meth. The rats given meth performed better at a task called the Morris water maze, a widely used experiment that involves plopping a rat into a pool of water with a hidden platform. By tracking how long it takes the rodent to find the platform, scientists can measure many different aspects of cognitive function.

"By the third day of training, there were no statistically significant differences between the uninjured control rats and the injured rats that had been treated with methamphetamine," Poulsen and his colleagues wrote.

But the team also found that low doses of meth were protecting immature neurons, while also promoting the birth of new brain cells that are important for learning and memory. The same was also true for rats that were given meth, but not injured.

"We see not just little, but very significant improvements in cognition and behavior," Poulsen says. "Their memories improved, functional behavior is improved.... It's not a trivial difference."

"In light of the fact that low-dose methamphetamine is FDA-approved for use in juveniles and adults, we see no valid reason why it cannot be utilized in human clinical trials for stroke and TBI," Poulsen and colleagues concluded in 2016.

But those clinical trials, considered the gold standard for testing medication, have yet to materialize, even while a 2018 retrospective study found similar results to the Hawaiian neuroscience report: Out of 304 patients with TBI, those who also tested positive for meth had better recovery results than those who did not. "The potential neuroprotective role of meth and other similar substances cannot be ignored," the authors wrote in Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery last July.

There are limited conclusions that we can draw about these rodent and retrospective studies, and it's probably unlikely that nurses will soon start giving meth to people who have cracked their skulls. Still, a wide variety of stimulant therapies for TBI is being explored, with positive results. These include trials with modafinil, a narcolepsy drug; amantadine, a Parkinson's drug; and dextroamphetamine, one of the components of Adderall. But there's still no indication of a single clinical trial for methamphetamine for TBI registered with the National Institutes of Health.

Methylphenidate, also known as Ritalin, seems to be the stimulant most popular in these trials. For example, in 2004, researchers at Drucker Brain Injury Center at MossRehab Hospital in Pennsylvania gave methylphenidate, better known as Ritalin, to 34 patients with moderate to severe TBI. They reported significant improvements in information processing and attention.

Twelve years later, in Gothenburg, Sweden, another 30 patients suffering from prolonged fatigue following TBI were given methylphenidate and observed for six months. They also showed improved cognitive function and reduced fatigue. But a 2016 meta-analysis of 10 controlled trials found the main benefit of giving methylphenidate for TBI was increased attention, "whereas no notable benefit was observed in the facilitation of memory or processing speed," the authors wrote. They encouraged more research into appropriate dosages and length of prescription.

Birgitta Johansson, a neuroscientist at the University of Gothenburg and lead author of the Swedish study, suggests caution whenever treating someone with a brain injury. "With methylphenidate, it is important to be aware about possible side effects, [such] as increased blood pressure and heart rate and also risk of anxiety," she says. "It is always very important to prescribe medication with care and follow the patient carefully."

But the reason meth isn't studied more rigorously—for TBI, for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, for stroke—could also come down to money. Methamphetamine is off-patent, meaning there may be less financial incentive for pharmaceutical companies to explore the drug's potential uses. Consider Vyvanse, a drug first marketed in 2007, with a new formulation introduced in 2017, that racked up $2.1 billion in sales in 2017. Desoxyn, which is sold by three companies, only earned about $9.3 million in 2009.

While Methamphetamine may not be widely recognized as medicine, it clearly has potential to heal as well as harm. Recognizing the duality of meth is arguably all the more essential in the face of a rising stimulant overdose crisis.

"Stigma regarding any substance use or substance use disorder is counterproductive," says Dan Ciccarone, professor of family medicine at the University of California–San Francisco. He says the overdose crisis is shifting from opioids to stimulants and that we are not prepared for the next wave. "Stigma is the lens [through] which we see all drug issues. It keeps us from making the best decisions. It is fear-based, not rational, not creative. Because of stigma, we have not fully addressed the opioid crisis."

That stigma remains a major hurdle, and until doctors and public-health officials counteract this kind of messaging, it seems unlikely that a multinational pharmaceutical company would risk marketing a substance only believed to be toxic and deadly.

"Everything will kill you, if you take enough of it," Poulsen says. "Some things don't require a lot to do that. Meth is one of those things. But just like any drug, the difference between a poison and a cure is the dose."

*These names have been changed.

TAGSALZHEIMER'SADDERALLTRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURIESFEATURES & INVESTIGATIONSMETHAMPHETAMINEMETHTOPIC: HEALTH CARE

BY TROY FARAH

Troy Farah is an independent journalist and photographer in California. His reporting on science, health, and narcotics has appeared in Wired, Ars Technica, Smithsonian, Discover, Vice, and elsewhere. He co-hosts the drug policy podcast Narcotica. 

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If you hate your job so much, just quit.

Psychiatric Emergency Services at Victoria’s Royal Jubilee Hospital is a department that is run like no other medical department in the world. The treatments used in first-line mental health crisis were not designed to address the neurological functions associated with mental distress outside of psychosis. Additionally, the hostile environment created by staff serves no purpose in the treatment of mental distress.

I’ve been there countless times. I have witnessed the procedures and noticed alarming patterns in procedures were applied not to chemically subdue patients experiencing a wide range of psychiatric ailments.

When you first walk in, you are asked to hand over your bag and cell phone by a nurse. You are then directed to sit down in one of the chairs in the waiting room. Assessment usually begins with a nurse who asks you a service of questions in order to relay that information to the psychiatrist. You are then asked to go back and wait to see the next doctor, usually a medical doctor. Following that, you will be given the opportunity to speak to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist will recommend medication or hospitalization based on what they observe.

Patients who suffer from psychiatric problems like psychosis are often unmanageable, hostile and may be physically violent. Anti-psychotics are the first line medications used to treat drug-induced or schizophrenic episodes of psychosis by correcting the irregular dopamine functions associated with the ailment.

These seem like standard, reasonable procedures, but what makes PES unique is the unexplainable logic used to validate the administration of psychiatric drugs and execute deplorable personal treatment of patients by support staff. Unlike people suffering from physical pain, people who suffer from mental illness are vilified for questioning procedures that include detaining people isolation if they were forced to go to the hospital by family members, friends or law enforcement after showing signs that their mental health was a threat to their welfare, or the welfare of those around them.

Distressed people who do not want to go to the hospital usually become aggressive and demand to let out. In my case, a friend overreacted to something I said online and provoked a team of law enforcement and an ambulance to raid my home, handcuff me and deliver me to psychiatric emergency services. After hours of trying to get out, worrying about the welfare of my pets after the dramatic scene the RCMP and ambulance had created, I became hostile. I used the phone in the waiting area to call 911 and try and get out. Having previous experience with psychiatry, I knew I would likely be forced to take the magic bullet of psychiatric medicine: Seroquel.

I’ve taken Seroquel before, naively after my psychiatrist recommended it for insomnia. After taking it, I passed out cold and woke up with a terrible feeling of depression, dread, anxiety and depression. I immediately made the connection between the drug and these symptoms but did not realize that all anti-psychotics by their very mode of action are directly responsible for chemically inducing these kinds of mental disturbances.

Anyways, I asked for a piece of paper and wrote down a lengthy satire targeting the over prescription of Seroquel. I was then guided to a private observation room where several doctors and a psychiatrists who did not ask questions about my well-being but addressed the very behaviour I was displaying as a result of being detailed against my will, and the audacity I had in ridiculing the well-known practice of prescribing Seroquel for psychiatric disorders where no evidence existed to support the administration of the drug. She called me a psychopath and then used the opportunity to impress the room by listing the qualifications she had acquired various certificates and degrees. No explanation of why anti-psychotics were being administered for psychiatric ailments outside of psychosis was provided and the illogical argument that a variety of vague academic achievements somehow qualified the psychiatrist’s relentless devotion to this magical drug.

The very logic behind administering these drugs for a rainbow unrelated mental conditions is an unexplainable practice that is incomparable to any other medical practice in the world. The assumption that one drug can treat the extraordinarily complex functions associated with multiple mental illnesses seems so obviously faulty. In no other medical practice can a drug be used without any scientific proof to treat illnesses by chemically inducing the blockade of the very neurostransmitter responsible for creating positive emotional responses. The very neurotransmitter that upon release is scientifically proven to be the reason why people feel happy is chemically supressed by anti-psychotics and by removing the ability to experience the ‘happy’ emotion, these drugs treat depression. Depression is unhappiness. So by eliminating the ability to be happy, people who experience chronic unhappiness will benefit from a drug that by its very mode of action chemically castrates the brains ability to make happiness. What in the actual fuck is going on? Imagine a doctor prescribing smoking to cure lung cancer. That’s the same thing as treating depressive mood disorders by administering medication that restrains the ability to make happiness. Happiness is the opposite of depression, no? Am I missing something?

After that productive discussion, the psychiatrist used her power ‘punish’ me by committing me to the isolation room where I violently banged on the door for hours until guards came in to restrain and inject me with anti-psychotics.

I woke up on the cement floor to see that one of the nurses had thrown a plate of food into the isolation room. Most of the food had fallen off the plate and were on the cement, but by all accounts the nurse fulfilled the requirement of providing a psychiatric detainee with food. I did not eat the food. Additionally, the anti-psychotic administered created an overwhelming sense of depression, anxiety and dread. Extreme mental distressed, faced with the realization that my freedoms and psychiatric well being were at the mercy of psychiatric decisioning was incredibly traumatic. I was then escorted to another unit in the hospital and put in another isolation room. I passed out again and woke up startled, not knowing where I was.

I got up and knocked on the window and was met by a nurse who let me out. The ward was a small, windowless set of rooms and a common area for eating. The medication I took both suppressed my cognitive functions, and chemically induced a state of dysphoria and dread.

Several days past, and I was not considered well enough to join the adjacent ward where more freedoms were awarded to patients. The continued administration of anti-psychotics caused insomnia and ruminating thoughts throughout several nights and after about seven sleepless nights, my cognitive abilities were so limited that I failed to recognize where I was when the doctor asked me. By some miracle, I was able to string together the words required to ask the doctor to review the records the nurse had kept about my sleep. She had lied on her report and indicated that my sleep was excellent.

I still have vague memories of countless nights where I pled for help at the window that surrounded the nurse’s station. If she even ever paid attention to me, she would do so by opening the window and yelling the word, “no.”

There are no words I can use to try and describe the dysphoria that anti-psychotics produce. There is nothing that I can compare to the anguish of chemically induced states of mental distress that they cause by their very mode of neurological action in blockading dopamine, the chemical responsible for mental well-being. There is no way out and no relief.

Patients in the psychiatric ward at RJH are treated with palpable disrespect. The chemical restraints forced upon patients do not treat symptoms of mental illness outside psychosis. They subdue patients in order to make them manageable and ensure the safety of medical staff if they display warranted frustration with being locked away against their will. Nothing more.

After weeks of forced medication, the psychiatrist started to put me back on the medications I was used to taking before being admitted to the hospital. My mental health quickly improved after anti-psychotics were removed from the schedule. Eventually I was released, only to relapse into psychosis again after months of isolating and self-medicating the trauma induced anxiety brought on by my incarceration in the psych ward.

I’ll never forget how I helplessly pled for relief of the anxiety produced by anti-psychotics. The prolonged insomnia had profound impacts on my cognitive functioning were so frightening. After seven days of sleeplessness, the doctor finally administered a drug to put me to sleep. There are no words I have to express the utter lack of confidence in psychiatry that I have after being submitted to the abuses of medical professionals responsible for psychiatric patient care.  This was only the first, and not even the worst.

I can’t help but continuously think about the unrelenting desire support staff at the psych ward have to execute punitive actions on patients there, may they be the denial of medications they need to alleviate the unbearable stresses of forced incarceration or the overwhelmingly disdainful way in which they treat patients. I can only compare it to the way overworked parents abruptly address the frivolous demands of a fussy toddler. Only replace toddlers with adults and frivolous demands with helpless pleas for their lives. 

The logic in which drugs that produce unhappiness are used to create happiness in psychiatry is also prevalent in the way in which patients are subjected to treatment that would cause emotional distress in facilities believed to treat them.

These kinds of absurd realities in healthcare are far too unreal for people to believe. 

I can’t help but wonder why nurses who work there do work there. If you hate your job so much, do the world a favour and quit.

The Psychology of Attack of Titan: Bertholdt

The Battle for Shiganshina, which constituted most of Season 3, Part 2, really highlighted a lot of character tension and insight into how individuals can handle intense stress. Attack on Titan frequently gets called ‘Trauma: The Anime’ by fans of the series and continues to hold true to that title. A scene that struck me hard personally during this battle was Bertholdt’s sudden dissociation in the form of depersonalization. Dissociation as a mental process, how it can manifest, and what it can look like, is frequently misunderstood in the wider population. Therefore Bertholdt’s disconnect is a great opportunity to discuss the topic to share more information about it. 

Dissociation, as already mentioned, is a mental process where a person basically disconnects from their current surroundings. This can happen in a number of different ways: disconnecting with emotions, thoughts, memories, or even identity. One doesn’t necessarily need to have a disorder to dissociate, though if it happens frequently on a regular basis then you should seek some sort of help.

Modern research on dissociation only started as recently as the 1960s with a new wave of research on child abuse, but really become a necessity following the Vietnam War. In fact, up until that point, dissociation was still considered ‘hysteria’ and was thought to largely only affect women (thanks Victorian Era!). Veterans returning from Vietnam resulted in a new need to research it more seriously in connection with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder becoming an official diagnosis in the DSM-III. ‘Hysteria’ was finally renamed during this time as well.

Most of us have (hopefully) learned about the concept of “fight or flight”, the survival instinct we have when presented with a potentially dangerous situation. You may also have heard of a third option that was added to this instinct called “freeze”. Prevalent theory is that in humans, the “freeze” state is what we now call dissociation. Essentially, if fighting or fleeing are not feasible or more dangerous, then a different system in our brain will kick in to “help” us weather the proverbial storm. You’ll recognize this especially from Season 1 when Armin first comes face to face with a Titan.

But literally freezing and losing control over your body is not the only type of dissociation. Depersonalization is a type of dissociation. This occurs when you feel disconnected from your own emotions or sense of identity. Bertholt’s expression of being disconnected emotionally from the events of the battle are an excellent example of this.

The last time our poor heroes of the 104 faced off with Bertholdt was at the end of Season 2. He and Reiner had captured the ever unlucky Eren and his compatriots made bold moves to rescue him. During the face-off, several emotional conversations are had between the Warriors and the Soldiers they trained with. Both sides are conflicted, with the 104 thinking they misplaced their trust and the Warriors not able to explain how they had no choice in their decisions. In a final bid to rescue Eren, Armin lies about how Annie is being horrendously tortured. We finally see Bertholdt snap. 

We see a “fight” response here hardcore. Doesn’t do Bertholdt or Reiner much good, of course, as the distraction works and Eren is rescued. Bertholdt and Reiner succeed in escaping only with Ymir and neither of their 2 main targets. Zeke then gives Bertholdt a sound lashing for having broken due to threats to Annie. It is only alluded to in the anime, but in the manga we saw an actual match between Reiner and Zeke to determine if they would rescue Annie. Zeke wins. Bertoldt acquiesces and promises to push Annie out of mind.

This is the end of the line for Bertholdt. Either he wins here or he loses. He and Reiner must defeat the Scouts and capture Eren. Else, even if they were to escape, it is very likely their lives would be forfeit regardless. We see Bertoldt’s mental reset the next time he faces off with Armin. 

He doesn’t take the bait of Annie’s supposed torture and remains eerily calm:

I wanted to know, to know whether, if I faced you guys, I’d start whining and begging for forgiveness again. But, I’m fine now. Yeah. You are precious comrades to me. I also intend to kill you. None of you have done anything wrong, and you’re not devils either. But you all still have to die. That’s just how it is….

This is a very strange feeling…I don’t feel that scared at all. I can see everything clearly. I feel like, no matter how this all plays out, I can accept whatever happens. That’s right, nobody’s in the wrong. There’s nothing we could do. Because this world is just that cruel.

Mikasa comments on his changed behavior: “…was that really Bertholdt just now?”  

Bertholdt attempted to fight against Zeke and already lost. Flight is not an option. Therefore, to protect his own psyche, his mind dissociates his emotions from the actions at hand. The internal stress and conflicted emotions that we saw in Season 2, Episode 36 are so overwhelming that a disconnect is the only way to reconcile facing down this same stand off again.

Comparing these two scenes side beside really emphasizes how incredibly deep and troubling Bertholdt’s conflicted emotions are. It also makes it so much more obvious how separated he needs to become in order to continue with his mission.

This is of course a dramatized version of what depersonalization can look like. Frequently, those experiencing depersonalization, or its closely related experience derealization, are aware that something isn’t ‘right’ about their perception of reality at that moment. They can also describe the feeling as being spacey or emotionally numb. My hope is that walking readers through an extreme example, they might be able to see the transient personality shifts in real life should it happen to themselves or their friends. 

If this happens to a friend, please watch out for them and help them reconnect. Do not assume they are simply doing it for attention. If this happens to you on a regular basis, please be sure to seek out help. For those in the US, NAMI is always available as a resource.

Headcanons for Wolfstar personalities...

I’ve been carefully reading a lot of stuff about Wolfstar and people being unhappy/offended by the portrayal of Sirius (especially, I think?) by other writers. And I think that it’s based on assumptions that may be incorrect.

To explain: in my case, I happen to work as a psychiatrist and obviously I see mental health everywhere, including in characters I see in books. And it interests me to look at how someone is described in canon and what their background is, and to come up with theories as to how it could have affected them from a mental health perspective, in a positive and negative way.

Your upbringing and your early life experiences as well as your genes have a massive impact on your brain development and place you at varying risk for developing mental illness and/or personality disorders. This does not mean you are a weak person, far from it, it just affects how you view relationships, your ability to trust others, your ability to self-soothe, to calm your emotions, your fear of abandonment etc. mental health problems affect both men and women, just to note here. Members of the 🏳️‍🌈 community have higher rates of mental illnesses as teenagers, not surprisingly, due to the higher stress/shit they have to put up with.

Anyway....

So for me, based on canon evidence that Sirius ‘ mother used to scream at him, that he hates his family, that he ran away from home, that he made impulsive decisions and used to get into regular fights/hex Slytherin wannabe death eaters etc, I headcanon him as having borderline personality disorder. It just makes sense to me. And yes this means he experiences very intense emotions that can be overwhelming, he can lose his temper quite badly, he has fears of abandonment and finds it very hard to trust people and can become paranoid/quasi psychotic when very stressed (I’m sorry but if that doesn’t sound like canon Sirius???) - but in no sense whatsoever is that me implying he is in some way “feminine” or the female in the relationship. That’s like implying that only women have traumatic early life experiences???? It’s just me making sense of his background and what little canon info we have, and then imagining how it would have affected him. James is his secure base, that someone he has learnt to completely trust. The Potters seem to be the same for him. He’s way less secure when it comes to romantic relationships so that includes Remus. In my mind he gets depressed after being forced back into grimmauld place, unable to contribute and DO SOMETHING and reminded of the emotional abuse (and probably physical abuse and emotional neglect) he experienced there. He probably has PTSD as well. I mean who wouldn’t after being stuck in Azkaban for 12 years?????

In Grimmauld Place, he gets depressed, and he changes from the very helpful, supportive godfather to Harry earlier in the HP books to then making rash decisions and Hermione is worried about him in canon.

btw Boderline Personality Disorder occurs in males and females, although it is easier to get misdiagnosed as a male because often when you present with drug or alcohol abuse eg professionals don’t recognise the underlying problem which made you turn to substance abuse in the first place.

Okay, so in no sense whatsoever is my headcanon of Sirius as “dramatic” (if you want to call it that), based on misogyny or me thinking he’s the female in the relationship or whatever. It’s simply based on the info from the books, and how I imagine it affecting him. I hope that makes sense. It would be EXACTLY THE SAME if I was writing about a female character who had had the same life experiences.... it’s not based on gender. Sirius being into flying motorbikes, wearing ridiculous coloured t shirts with a Phoenix on it, sticking up multiple muggle women posters in his room - the guy does drama rather well in canon. And I don’t see any of this drama as at all “feminine” ... it’s just him. He’s also described as very good looking in canon. Again that’s not trying to make him feminine it’s just a fact. You can be very attractive and very male, lol!

Then Remus. So we know he suffered a huge trauma aged about 5 which changed his life forever. He thinks he’s too old, too poor, too ‘wrong’ to get married, he’s surprised he makes any friends and that they accept him as he is. In canon, He has low self esteem and won’t stand up to James and Sirius when they “bully” Snape after the exam. Anyway, I headcanon that he has PTSD, probably complex PTSD because each month is traumatic for him. And then after 31st October 1981 he experienced complete loss of all his friends and what he now believes is betrayal by his lover. I guess he probably became depressed for a time and may have drunk excessively to cope. With PTSD, people often feel closed off emotionally and that’s how I see Remus. Don’t get me wrong, I see both Remus and Sirius as being incredibly resilient despite their respective traumas. They are incredibly loyal, to their friends, to Harry, to Harry’s friends, they both risked their lives regularly with the Order to save others, they both die trying to save Harry and the next generation. They are heroes. Remus is a very kind and thoughtful person who the students love. Sirius is willing to live off rats in a cave to help Harry. They are both incredibly likable, strong characters. That’s how I write them and I really don’t see how that is in any way misogynistic at all. I think when you get where the characterization is coming from, then maybe this idea / assumption is not so valid? I mean you can still believe that, but it’s just not accurate.

In relation to who is top/bottom or don/sub etc, I don’t really care. I am quite happy to read either/all the above. Personally I think maybe they switch depending on time of the month?? I don’t think being a bottom equates being less male/masculine at all. I don’t see why it should. In canon Remus seems to be the only person Sirius immediately listens to (“sit down!”) so that may sound a bit dom I suppose. The greater tendency towards dom Remus is most likely also a reaction to earlier fandom ideas where Remus was very wet blankety/passive unpopular guy who has never dated anyone and Sirius was the suave/popular guy who had loads of conquests under his belt!! And to each their own, I personally don’t really fancy that version of Wolfstar.

But I have read fics with Dom Sirius and others with Dom Remus, fics with Blackinnon (even if I’m not usually a fan, I have been won over by brilliant writing @stonecoldhedwig 😍😍😍!), fics with Jegulus (even though Jily is absolutely my favourite but @wolfstargarden your writing is too good 😂!!!) fics with Remus being buff (💕💕💕@confunded-gryffindor !!) and fics with Sirius being a mechanic and others where he’s an artist( @jencala !!! ❤️❤️) or where Sirius is an Indiana Jones type character (@hp-shessocold😍😍!) you can be any of these things and can be either female or a male character. You can be a drag queen or a tattoo artist and be very Sirius (@jennandblitz 😉!) . I’ve read Sirius dying of cancer (ugh!! 💔) fics and Remus having a chronic illness quite a few times. As long as it’s well written and I love the characters , I don’t care. As you know, I read a LOT of fics and I generally let people know what I think about their fics (by gushing about the writing!) so you know I’m not making this up, lol!

There is some research suggesting that people with BPD traits often end up in relationships with people who are quite opposite e.g. don’t express strong emotions/are emotionally repressed/distant etc. maybe they compliment each other. So in my universe Wolfstar do compliment each other. I’m currently refusing to consider canon endings ☹️☹️☹️!

Anyway, that’s enough. I feel good for explaining what I think. You can agree or disagree. I happen to think that many people write characters based on their own life experiences and that this affects the portrayal.

I went a bit overboard with this!! I need a cup of tea or some sleep!! Up early tomorrow!

The Wolfstar fandom is full of incredibly talented people and I hope you can all put these disagreements behind you and move on. Good night❤️

one thing I'm interested in at the moment is how many trauma-like responses I'm working through, and why they are all different

My protest stress feels most like the classic diagnosis - suddenly feeling like I'm still in a particular moment of time, and feeling permanently a little unsafe, because I could be pulled back into that "reality" at any moment. It's very cinematic, almost, like exactly how you would depict "a flashback" in a film.

and then ive got the sort of, pervasive social shame stuff - whether it's abuse, disability, or queerness, it's all fairly similar. Distorted thoughts and negative thought spirals, extremely psychological, the type of thing one probably could overcome with positive thinking with enough time and hope. That's not to say it's easy to deal with, more that it feels very explicable, and like I understand the kind of tools one would use to work through it. These are overwhelmingly the ones which stand between me and a good day. They're also the ones which bring on the nightmares.

then I've got the post-attempt stuff, which is the most bizzare of the lot. It's not psychological at all. I don't have memories or thoughts or feelings. I just have a physical response, one which happens regardless of what else I'm thinking about or doing. But it's a very dramatic, very real physical response, and it's kinda incredible to me that a thing like that can just happen of its own accord. I don't have things which feel like "a flashback" the same way the protest stuff does, and I don't have any negative thoughts or feelings or ruminating. My body is just like "fuck! Panic!"; most recently, I was able to verbalise a completely different thing I was stressed about. It was real stress, a real problem I was worrying about, but simultaneously when I look at when that panic started, and the characteristics it had, I'm like - I wasn't really reacting to this stressor, I was reacting to a trigger earlier in the day.

so ive got a lot of curiosity about how...any one of these might be vaguely described as some kind of "trauma response", but yet they are all so different. I'm curious about why there isn't one, universal response, and what the different kinds of responses could indicate. Also, my brain is basically a Swiss cheese now; I feel very "distant" from the normal human experience, far enough that I'm never going to quite get back. And quite alone, too, being around people who haven't been defined by this kind of response. They are very strange, very certain, or uncertain within the normal human range of doubt. Not like, experiencing life as pervasively unreal and unsafe, and prone to collapse at any moment.

Spider-Man: Life Story #4 Thoughts Part 3: Pathetic Parker

Aaaaaaand finally....let us discuss you know Peter Parker.

Or the stand in for him in this mess of a mini-series.

Positives should be gotten out of the way first. I like the new Spider-Suit’s look. I’ve liked all the suits’ looks so far.

Okay cool we’re done now with positives.

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooo...Peter is dating Jessica Drew huh.

Hahahahahahaha....fuck off.

Jessica Drew technically speaking existed in the 1960s but only because Bendis picked a random girl from a Ditko issue and decided he would make her his new original character (who was a rewritten Jessica Drew stand in...) Jessica Jones...which happened in the 2000s.

Remember how I said the Stark thing was remixing stuff from the 2000s and how this probably references the Ultimate Clone Saga?

Well between that stuff, the inclusion of Parker Industries, a obvious reference to Slott’s ‘No One Dies’ buzz word, and now Jessica Jones Zdarsky has entirely collapsed the ONE consistent thing about his writing in this series.

You can read my past posts on this series for more detail, but in a nutshell, this series is utterly convoluted in it’s premise and confused in what it wants to be.

However the ONE utterly consistent thing about it was the fact that it remixes elements from Spidey stories that happened in the decade each issue was covering.

Until now.

Now in fairness Parker Industries was a 2010s thing that debuted in the 1980s. I let that one slide a bit because I guess the idea was if Peter age 30 had money and time he could have a company by age 37 which would be in the 80s. Okay I guess.

But with all that other stuff...this issue isn’t remixing 90s stuff it’s remixing 90s and post-90s stuff so what the fuck is the conceit of the story again?

It’s anything Zdarsky wants whilst mostly remixing stuff from every decade per issue oh and Spider-Man ages in real time I guess and mentions various wars.

I (and others) have talked about how this series is fanficion. A time honoured tradition of fanfiction is the wacky indulgent ships that occur.

In professional works though these are best avoided, see MockingSpider.

That’s what Jessica Jones and Spider-Man being a couple is. Yeah she had a crush on him in high school.

Now tell me anything else that’d serve as a basis for their relationship instead of her being with Luke?

How the fuck did this even happen? At least with Peter and MJ you have canon as a roadmap. In this series...nothing. Peter and Jessica just hooked up somehow in the last 11 years!

What’s so insultingly asinine about this ship is that it emphasis another person who is conspicuous via her absence.

So...where the fuck is Felicia!

I know that the important life events of Spider-Man can be debated up to a point.

That point doesn’t cover though whether Black Cat is relevant of a mention or not across his ‘life story’.

No shit of course she is!

But she wasn’t mentioned in the 1970s when she debuted. She wasn’t mentioned in the 1980s when she became a regular. She wasn’t mentioned in the 1990s.

Surely in a world where Spider-Man’s marriage to MJ falls apart and he’s dating a private eye that should be fucking Black Cat not a character who wasn’t even invented until 10 years later! I mean c’mon Black Cat BECAME a private eye in the 1990s!

And wouldn’t that have been way more dramatic too?

In the 1980s instead of Peter being allegedly addicted to a costume or neglecting his family to clean up radiation or asking his wife to kill him if he turned into a brain munching alien the root of their break up involved his affection for Felicia?

I mean c’mon the symbiote was framed as a response to a mid-life crisis, a sexy platinum blonde who actually wants to hook up with Spidey not Peter isn’t prime real estate for a story about a superhero’s mid life crisis? Even the Incredibles did that!

And wouldn’t that have been more worthy of drama in this issue than literally 2 panels of Jessica Jones establishing they’re shagging but also he’s neglectful and she dumped him. I mean at that point you might as well have just had her be a private eye he hired and dropped the romance completely it served no purpose at all.

One aspect of the story that I will praise Zdarsky for even if I think he got it right by accident is that without his family Peter couldn’t keep on going as Spider-Man.

MJ, May, etc, they keep him together, he needs people, he’d fall apart without them.

Running out of gas as he did in this story could be seen as a reflection of that depending on future issues. Or it could just be he’s old and tired and don’t you know all superheroes would feel that way at age 48.

Too bad that seems rather at odds with issue #3 where he was a neglectful jerk.

Another problem inherited from issue #3 was the issue of Peter’s diminished prowess in his old age.

Remember how he wanted the symbiote to stay ‘relevant’ because he was slowing down.

Okay so it’s been 11 years later, he’s held onto Parker Industries and...he’s just accepted he’s gotten slower and weaker.

Remember how issue #3 implied he had a nano-weld suit.

Okay so he’s had 11 years to improve on that tech and...he hasn’t.

In fact his current outfit looks less high tech even.

Now brace yourselves because I’m about to do something nuts and call upon Dan Slott continuity as reference material.

In Slott’s run Peter with HORIZON labs and Parker Industries tech was able to whip up a variety of costumes for himself. These included nanotech.

In fact his MAIN suit in ASM volume 4 was nanotech armour that came complete with all sorts of gadgets.

Are you telling me that a Peter Parker with even greater years of scientific knowledge and experience, with even more time and resources, across 11+ years NEVER made technology like that?

He NEVER invented tech that could offset his diminished powers?

Seriously?

IRON MAN had strength enhancing armour in the 1960s and that technology got illegally distributed to countless people, hence we got Armor Wars. Even that aside there is countless inferior technology that could increase strength, speed, agility, etc, let alone protect from knock out gas.

But Peter in LF is such a jackass he...never employed this. He never considered this. He just let himself grow weaker and more vulnerable?

Either he’s stupid or he’s a sellout on Ben and May’s morals of responsibility because he had a death wish hence he never upgraded.

I mean Jesus Christ the Hobgoblin found a way to make the Goblin serum SAFE. Peter couldn’t investigate that avenue as a way to spike his power levels? Friggin Norman Osborn was in his 40s when he got the formula and it made him almost on par with Spider-Man.

It gets even stupider when you consider Peter hands over his mantle to Ben Reilly.

Ben is physically the same goddam age as Peter. In fact considering he clearly doesn’t crime fight as much as Peter does or else ‘Red Mask’ would be more famous, Peter if anything would be in better shape. So Peter is giving the mantle of Spidey to a less experienced, weaker 48 year old man who’s ALSO got diminished strength and speed.

But it gets worse.

He doesn’t just hand the mantle of Spidey to Ben. He hands Parker Industries over to him. You’d think this is a case of him passing it on to his relative Ben Reilly right?

Nope.

He wants Ben to...literally become him.

Peter wants Ben to literally pose as him forevermore and run his company.

This is the most gamebreakingly stupid thing in the entire issue.

Ben having Peter’s notes doesn’t mean he’ll be able to pose as Peter.

He doesn’t know the in jokes Peter has with people. He has 0 experience of running a big company.

He has less scientific knowledge and experience.

He will be way worse in business negotiations because he hasn’t got the measure of people.

And he’ll be seriously stressed out because unlike Peter who just knows this stuff Ben will have to study for a lifelong performance as Peter Parker every moment of every day.

Not to mention is no one going to notice the sudden disappearance of Ben Reilly?

Didn’t he have friends or colleagues of his own like Lori from the start of the issue?

Peter starts the comic determined to not allow Parker Industries to fall into the hands of the war profiteer Tony Stark but by unloading his entire company onto Ben Reilly he’s placed it in a hugely vulnerable position that makes it MORE likely that it will be absorbed into Stark International.

Oh and of course there the teeny tiny problem of PETER AND BEN NOT LOOKING ALIKE!

Now realistically Peter and Ben Reilly, having lived such different lives, would look similar yet different, like identical twins. Identical twins might look the same at age 1 but they really wouldn’t at age 30 if one of them was a desk jockey and the other was a soldier.

But you know artistic licence and suspension of disbelief can bypass that.

What cannot be bypassed is when Mark Bagley is drawing both characters on the same page in the same panel and you can tell that they clearly look different to one another. Their faces, hair colour and hair styles are not the same.

Did Peter’s notes include the correct shade to dye his hair too?

But the biggest aspect of this which is betrayal pornoigraphy for Peter’s character is between handing over the reigns of Spidey and P.I. to Ben...how...the...Hell...is...that...at.all...responsible?

He claims that he can’t give up his responsibility but he can ‘shift it to where it matters’.

What a crock of shit. That’s some lame ass lawyer talk for giving up and letting someone else do your job for you.

In the 90s Clone Saga Peter’s retirement was justified. He had impending parenthood as a responsibility and he and his wife had nearly broken in recent months. In Spider-Girl he got his leg blown off and had a 2 year old child to care for.

In this? His ex-wife and children are doing just fine without him as far as we know but the city still needs Spidey and P.I. still needs Peter Parker.

So no, retirement under these circumstances is irresponsible and utterly unjustified.

Not to mention wouldn’t BOTH Peter and Ben being heroes be more responsible? Or at least have Ben take over hero work and Peter runs P.I., possibly training Ben up.

There is also this bullshit that because Peter is so loud and public Ben could never live up to his potential.

I’m sorry but what is it with the Spider-Man fandom’s obsession with the idea that success = owning your own business.

As if that is the one and only way Peter or Ben could fulfil their scientific potential. Why not work for Reed?

Why not work with a Think Tank?

Why not start up a company in a different country and establish that Ben is indeed Peter’s relative. He already had his last name in issue #2!

Hell the argument that if they both started up companies and 2 Spider Heroes showed up it’d raise questions doesn’t consider the ideas that:

a)      Ben could WORK for Parker Industries, thereby allowing Peter to be in the lab as he wants or Ben handle the lab work

b)      They could SHARE the Spider-Man identity, which if anything would help maintain their secrecy

 Finally this issue (and the last one) on the recap page and at the end of the story pushes some toxic, dated, bullshit narratives regarding MJ:

a)      That it was grief alone that hooked up Peter and MJ

b)      MJ is Peter’s Plan B

c)       Peter cannot be married/have kids and be Spidey

d)      MJ wouldn’t stay with him if he’s Spider-Man, hence he only regains his family by retiring from Spidey

 I’ve seen an assessment of this story that argues that issue #3 as the halfway point was the low point from which the character will gradually fight back.

In a sense issue #4 goes along with this idea. Peter is at his lowest in issue #3 and his happier by the end of issue #4.

But the narrative structure of this series, wherein each issue is a snap shot of his life in each decade leads me to think that we’re unlikely to have 2 more issues of ending on gradually happier and happier notes.

Rather I think this issue is giving a pretence of happiness before it comes crashing down next issue and then in issue #6 we will get our happy ending or a bittersweet exit.

Regardless writing these long ass posts has actually soured me even more on the issue.

It’s another shit show I’m afraid.

P.S. The solicit read:

“THE REAL-TIME LIFE STORY OF SPIDER-MAN CONTINUES! Spider-Man’s life enters the 1990s! The COLD WAR is no longer cold as PETER PARKER returns to a world gone MAD! But will he let that madness infect HIM and his family?”

Where the fuck was any of that in this story?

Peter didn’t have a family, Peter didn’t return from anything, and the only madness to be found was in Ben and Otto.

A Guide to Writing PTSD & Psychosis

Something I’ve noticed over my (too many) years on Tumblr is that sometimes, first-hand accounts of mental illness can be hard to come by. It’s totally understandable, and it took me a long time to get to this point, but it can put writers in a bit of a bind who aren’t satisfied with only the DSM-5 and Wikipedia to accurately portray their muse(s)’s MI. That being said, hi, my name is Holo, and I’ve been living with PTSD and comorbid psychosis for almost a decade at this point, and I’d like to share some of my experiences.

This is by no means a complete or exhaustive guide. The thing about brains is that apparently they’re complicated, and that means that everyone develops MI differently. While there are broad strokes that are generally consistent across diagnoses (and said broad strokes are typically what make up the ‘criteria’ of any MI), not everyone will have every single symptom, and not everyone will display the symptoms they do have the same way. I really do recommend using these sorts of guides as guides to writing MI, rather than actual rules.

I’mma start with some basic definitions. PTSD is post-traumatic stress disorder, which is a disorder that develops after witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. Not everyone who goes through trauma will develop PTSD, and I believe the actual statistic is somewhere between 20-30% (double-check my factcheck before you quote me on that, please). Comorbid mental illnesses (or comorbidities) are MIs that occur with or alongside the ‘primary’ illness, usually because of said ‘primary’ MI. For example, my psychosis is comorbid with my PTSD; it is because of my PTSD that I have psychosis.

Psychosis itself is more of a broad term than a specific diagnosis, and it will generally assume one (or more) of three forms: 1) delusions, 2) hallucinations, and 3) disordered thoughts. I personally struggle mostly with delusions and hallucinations, and I don’t particularly experience disordered thoughts, so that’s what I’ll mostly focus on.

Before I move on, though, I want to share something that an old psychologist of mine told me and that I’ve never really forgotten: it’s possible, and even common, to experience and exhibit occasional symptoms of MI without ever actually having that particular mental illness. A random delusion or general panic attack does not mean your character has psychosis or PTSD. Again, brains are complicated, and what defines a MI diagnosis is the consistent, pervasive presence of multiple symptoms that interfere with the patient’s day-to-day life. You can have obsessive-compulsive tendencies without having OCD. You can be anxious without having anxiety. You can be depressed without having depression.

Another thing is that a lot of MI have symptoms that overlap (which is why comorbid MIs are, again, pretty common). My PTSD comorbidities include depression, anxiety, claustrophobia, and psychosis. In fact, when I first started displaying my PTSD symptoms, I was diagnosed with depression because that was the comorbidity that showed up most prominently at the time, and it took several more years before my doctors and I realized that my depression was a symptom and not the full illness.

Alright! Let’s see if I can break down things into more manageable chunks to talk about.

PTSD

PTSD symptoms are wide, varied, and incredibly subjective from person to person. In my experience, this variance starts with what exactly was the trauma that the PTSD is originating from. Someone who was in a war, for example, will have different triggers and experience different symptoms than someone who was abused (and even then, someone who was verbally abused will once again have a vastly different PTSD experience than someone who was physically abused). Figuring out what your character’s trauma was that caused them to develop PTSD is your vital starting point.

In my experience, PTSD tends to develop slowly. One of the things doctors look for when diagnosing PTSD is that patients are still suffering after six months have passed from the initial trauma. After my initial trauma, I thought I was fine. I was asymptomatic, until months later when symptoms started to creep up on me (and as I mentioned earlier, at first it appeared primarily as depression, and I didn’t even connect it to my trauma at the time).

I experience hypervigilence with my PTSD. I am always aware of where I am, looking for possible exits and escape routes. I get nervous and anxious if I feel trapped in a room or area. (I tried going to a corn maze once. It was a bad time.) I also have an exaggerated startle response. If someone sneaks up on me, accidentally or otherwise, I’m going to react much more dramatically than other people. It’ll frighten me a lot more than it would someone whose startle response isn’t so pronounced. At worst, I’ve had experiences where someone sneaking up on me and startling me as a joke sent me into a full panicked meltdown. (I’d been having a rough time before that, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.)

To which I’ll segue rather smoothly into things building up! I find it really difficult to ‘destress’ and relax if I have a lot of small triggers and uncomfortable situations pile up on me within a short period of time or without respite, to the point where something rather minor can set off an entire chain reaction and end up with what looks like an extreme overreaction.

Panic attacks can look different from person to person, or even day to day. Sometimes, panic attacks show up for me as in inability to focus, irritation and snapping angrily at every little thing while my hands shake to the point where it’s difficult for me to hold things. Other times, it’ll look like a screaming, crying mess, huddled up in a ball in a corner on the floor. How people express panic attacks varies greatly, and no one way is an ‘incorrect’ portrayal of your character’s panic attacks.

Flashback episodes are an easy, prominent way to showcase PTSD in media, and so it’s something that a lot of people are familiar with, but in a very narrow way. While it’s possible for someone experiencing a flashback to completely lose touch with their current reality and experience an exact repeat of their traumatic incident, that’s rarely the case. More often than not, my flashback episodes feel more like an overlay, where both reality and my flashback are happening at the same time. Innocuous things will suddenly seem much more ominous and dangerous, I’ll mistake the people around me for those who were present during my traumatic incident, and I tend to experience hallucinations (which I will go into more detail about later on). Someone in a flashback episode could even experience age regression, usually back to the age they were during the initial trauma. Flashback episodes and how someone experiences them are extremely personal, and I strongly suggest doing more research on the topic to find more varied accounts, and piece together how your character would respond to these events, if they even experience flashback episodes at all.

I’d like to take this next moment here to mention triggers. Triggers are highly subjective, depending on the person and their trauma, and they can often be obscure and strange. A particular scent or a familiar name could easily be enough to make someone extremely uncomfortable. Sometimes, triggers are only marginally connected to the initial trauma, or not seemingly connected at all. Conversely, something that might seem like an obvious trigger might not be a trigger at all! Brains are fucking weird like that. Also, a very common experience with PTSD (or any MI with triggers) is that day-to-day life is disrupted in favour of specifically avoiding known triggers. Crowded places will trigger my aforementioned claustrophobia, and so I will often avoid social outings, to the detriment of my friendships and familial relationships. (Which is a good example of triggers having nothing to do with trauma, actually. I was alone when my initial trauma happened. Why the hell am I afraid of crowds. @brain explain this) And not only this, but some days a trigger might not affect me at all! Triggers are so, so subjective. They’re a minefield of possibilities and dangers that can shift on what sometimes feels like a daily basis. It can be a real headache to deal with. Taking the time to get into the mind of your character and deciding what triggers them and what doesn’t it another important part of defining how you write their struggle with PTSD.

Psychosis

Since it’s what I have the least experience with, I’ll talk about disordering thinking first. Disordered thinking is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, and people experiencing disordered thoughts can appear distressed, confused, and have issues articulating their emotions, even to the point of not being able to form full sentences or fully acknowledge questions being asked of them. I strongly suggest doing more research on this topic outside of this post if you think it might apply to your character.

Delusions are, again, fairly self explanatory. Delusions are probably my most prominent version of psychosis that I struggle with on a daily basis. Personally, the most frustrating part of delusions is that I’m well aware that they aren’t real, but I can’t shut them off anyway. In general, my most common delusions is that Person X is out to get me/is trying to sabotage me. Logically, I know that this is ridiculous, but I still have the anxiety and panic that that situation would induce. While I’m sure there are psychotic people out there who cannot distinguish their delusions from reality, and that is absolutely a valid way to portray it, I have personally never met someone like that. It seems to be a lot more common that delusional psychotics are aware that their delusions are not real, and yet we are still forced to change our patterns of behaviour to accommodate for that delusion as if it were real regardless.

Hallucinations are broad and come in way too many forms. Media likes to portray hallucinations as full-bodied apparitions that are indistinguishable from real life, and while that can be correct, I find that I rarely experience those. Most of my hallucinations are tactile hallucinations. These are hallucinations where I feel as though I’m being touched by someone or something, usually in a negative way (these hallucinations can even trigger or be triggered by a flashback episode). There are also auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, and even olfactory and gustatory hallucinations, although I’ve never had experiences with the latter two. Often, I find I can fairly quickly differentiate hallucinations from reality, just by doing a quick check around me. If someone is not touching me, the feeling of a hand on my arm is a hallucination. Visual hallucinations (of other people) tend to not interact with the rest of the world the same way a real person would. Auditory hallucinations do not have an obvious source, and those around me won’t react to the noise. And, of course, the usual disclaimer of everyone who experiences hallucinations experience them differently applies here too, this is just my personal experience with hallucinations.

In conclusion

PTSD and psychosis are both broad MIs with a lot of complexity that vary from person to person. I fully encourage you to continue your research into these MIs and discover what is right for your character(s). I’d like to reiterate that this post is non-exhaustive and has focused on my personal experiences with my day-to-day life as someone who has these MIs. This post is absolutely available for you to reblog if you’d like, and my ask box is right here if you have any questions or discussions you’d like to direct to someone willing to be a first-person source on these topics.

I hope I’ve helped! Now go forth and write! :D

Summary: Species of all kind are welcomed at the Whitmore Academy for the Supernaturally Gifted, but that doesn't mean they all necessarily welcome each other. Ambitious supreme witch Caroline Forbes shares a mutual loathing with arrogant yet mysterious vampire Klaus Mikaelson. A spiral of events occur when their two dueling worlds collide and they have to ask themselves, 'is it worth it'?

Chapter 3 is updated!! 

I just wanna say how humbling it is that this story is being so well received. I love reading your reviews and it’s what keeps me motivated to update as quickly as I have been so thank you. Can’t stress it enough!

Under the cut is the first part of the chapter but  I would appreciate if you leave reviews on my fanfic account. But let me know if posting the full chapter on both tumblr and my ff account is preferred.

The full chapter can be found here and reviews are appreciated, as always (: 

Time was passing slowly, too slowly.

Class was dragging but luckily it wasn't a difficult subject. It was a general magic course, basically beginner chemistry that every student of any kind was required to take before graduating. Caroline could practically do all of this in her sleep. What had her on edge was the news she heard just 20 minutes ago, that she had to share a class for the rest of the semester with the boy she loathes.

He seemed to be everywhere and wouldn't bug off, like a nagging pest. It was as if Klaus was making it his life mission to make Caroline's last semester as miserable as possible by forcing his way into every aspect of it.

She could barely focus on the lesson Professor Sommers was teaching with her brain scattered.

Glancing over her left shoulder she spotted Klaus who actually seemed to be paying attention to the lecture. The crease in his forehead that usually appeared when he was fixated on something visible and deep; Caroline recalled from the few times she's caught him staring at her. His eyes squinted in determination, full bottom lip trapped between his teeth and left hand rubbing his scruffy cheek while his right scribbled down notes.

- Rebel Klaus Mikaelson turned ideal student?

- Why are you studying him?

Caroline blinked out of her curiosity and discreetly cleared her throat while uncomfortably shifting in her seat. Her moves not discrete enough given that Klaus was now focusing on her from afar with an expression full of wonder; no smugness in sight. They both had some sort of radar that detected when the other was looking.

The professor continued her lecture while the two of them were staring each other down like it was a job.

- Is this foreplay for him?

Feeling like she was giving him enough of her time, Caroline rolled her eyes and turned back towards the front. Not seeing the victorious smile sketched on his face.

She straightened her back and sat up right to appear studious and focused, fighting the urge to look over at him again.

"You know, you two should do us all a favor and just fuck to get it over with already."

Caroline nearly jumped out her seat, not the least bit aware that Katherine was sitting right behind her with a teasing smirk on her lips.

She appeared out of nowhere and mouth practically in her ear; no consideration for personal space. Similar to Klaus's behavior.

- God I hate vampires.

Caroline kept her attention towards the front of the class as she harshly whispered. "Uhh, excuse me?"

Katherine rolled her eyes. "Please you and Mikaelson have been eye fucking each other for the past 10 minutes and not gonna lie, it turned me on."

"Oh my god. Are all vampires this perverted and nosy?!" Caroline strongly whispered, looking around to make sure no one was listening to them.

She shrugged. "Probably. All the ones I've met are but we're highly sensuous creatures after all, are you surprised?"

"I wouldn't know. Vampire 101 isn't really my level of expertise."

The brunette leaned forward. "Lets just say we have incredible senses and can detect sexual tension from a mile away and you and him definitely have a lot of it."

Her blush deepened.

"I have a boyfriend." Caroline clarified.

"And?"

She scoffed. "And he's the only one I have any kind of sexual tension with."

"That's not really how sexual tension works, babe."

Caroline swiftly turned in her seat. "First of all, I am not your 'babe'. I'm not your anything. Second of all, we're forced to live together and apparently have a class together but we are not friends, not even in the slightest so you cannot talk to me about things like this especially when they're not true."

"You're getting quite defensive over something that isn't true." Katherine said suggestively.

"Be- because I don't want any kind of rumors being spread about me." She stuttered. "I don't associate with vampires and never will so you and your buddy Klaus need to get a life and leave me alone." Caroline said angrily.

The brunette clicked her tongue against her teeth. "Just because we're both vampires doesn't mean we're bffs. He has no idea who I am, yet, and I only know him because it's kinda important to know who's the leader of my own faction."

"Ask me where I asked, or showed that I care." Caroline sassed before turning in her seat again with a dramatic sigh.

Katherine glared pressing her lips together as she sat back in her chair. "All I know is that the werewolf has never gotten you this hot and bothered and I've only known you for a day. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong."

The blonde stayed silent shaking away the obvious blush of her cheeks from Katherine's accusation.

- Me? Klaus Mikaelson? Sexual tension? I rather swallow a blade.

Klaus wasn't hideous, obviously. Definitely one of the most attractive boys she's ever seen with a sultry English accent to match, but his arrogance and murderous tendencies were a definite turn off. Most importantly Caroline was with Tyler, she was happy with Tyler, and it angered her that Katherine would think she'd feel that way about anyone else but him. It also sent paranoia through her mind, wondering if Katherine was the only one with these ridiculous accusations.

The professor turned on the lights, indicating the lecture was over, but made another announcement.

"For this project you will be assigned one partner, of my choosing, to conduct and present a spell. You can pick any type of spell you'd like as long as you get it approved by me first so, no hexing." She said with a small smile.

"I think she's referring to you, love." Klaus blurted.

Caroline didn't realize he was addressing her until she felt the whole class snickering while looking at her. The professor settled down the class instigating while Caroline's eyes transformed to arrows and Klaus's face was the target.

Oh, so badly did she long to slap the stupid smirk off his face until it was red and bare. She hated how much she allowed him to snoop under her skin but he was just begging for a reaction with every stupid comment he would make.

"Mister Mikaelson," The professor clapped her hands together. "What an honor to have you in yet another one of my classes this semester. Since you clearly are so enthused by this assignment, you'll be the first person to receive their partner."

Caroline began packing up her belongings so she could exit the classroom as soon as possible. Being in Klaus's presence any longer than necessary was already giving her a rash.

Her movements ceased when she heard her name, not sure if she heard the context correctly.

- No. No, no there's no way.

"What?" Caroline questioned.

"Miss Forbes, I said I'm assigning you as Mister Mikaelson's partner so get to it!" The Professor clarified. "That will be all class, I'll see you on Thursday." She dismissed.

Caroline was frozen and distraught. Face drained of color and mouth opened slightly.

"Guess you'll have plenty of time to work out that, nonexistent sexual tension huh?" Katherine giggled before throwing her backpack over her shoulder and standing from her desk.

No...no...

How can this be?

The whole class literally just witnessed how terribly chaotic these two are being in the same room, let alone working on a project together for the next two weeks.

- What the fu-

Caroline was a range of emotions from pissed to confused to pissed all over again, and she definitely was not going to allow Klaus Mikaelson to have any affect on her grade.

She quickly snatched up her bag and hurried down the stairs of the lecture hall to confront her professor who was propped up on the wooden desk reading through an essay.

Of all the professors Caroline's experienced in her academic career, Professor Sommers was definitely her favorite. Her first name Jenna, but she preferred students address her as a professor; understandable. She was only about 12 years older than Caroline, mainly why she connected best with the students but still required respect and it was given. The first year Caroline attended one of her seminars she thought she was a fellow witch due to her knowledge in magic, but learned she was actually a banshee; practicing magic was a hobby.

Given that she was of one species but followed the practices of another was admirable, at least for Caroline and felt she was a reliable ally to talk to about certain struggles. They had a great trusting relationship wrapped with mutual respect, but today was the day where they might finally butt heads.

Caroline sighed when she reached her desk area. "Professor Sommers?"

"Caroline." She acknowledged still staring down at her paper. "What do I owe the pleasure?"

Licking her lips nervously she sighed again. "I respect you Professor, you know that and would usually never question your judgment but I think it is very unwise to pair me and Mister Mikaelson together for this project."

"Mister Mikaelson? So formal, you'd think we were strangers."

"One could only dream." She mumbled.

Of course he was standing right behind her.

"I have to say Professor, me and judgy here never see eye to eye but I have to agree with her on this one. So shouldn't that be incentive enough?" Klaus claimed now standing next to an annoyed Caroline.

"Seriously?" Professor Sommers's eyebrows raised intriguingly, placing her paper on the desk and folding her hands in her lap. "And why is that?"

Caroline scoffed. "Did you not see how completely rude and disrespectful he was towards me in class just now? Imagine what I would endure for two weeks?!"

"Ah, playing the victim." Klaus sighed. "Very typical witch behavior."

Caroline slammed her hand on the desk and faced him with her other hand on her hip. "Yes, I am a witch and you're a bloodthirsty vampire which already makes us a lethal combination." Turning towards the professor again. "We can't even have a civil conversation without him insulting me."

"Pot meets kettle." Klaus growled.

"Our factions are not meant to collaborate. You understand, right?" Addressing her teacher.

"Are you two done, or should I leave the room so you can continue your marital bickering?" Professor Sommers asked rubbing her temples.

"Yes, I understand completely how things work around here, I use to be in your shoes remember?" She began. "When I attended this school it was the exact same routine. Everyone stayed with their own, but I swore to myself that when I began teaching I was going to break that cycle. That's why I decided to teach a general education course, so not only I interact with every type of student but so that you all can interact with each other as well."

Klaus and Caroline both crossed their arms as she continued.

"Vampires and witches have never gotten along, I know. I've read countless amount of history books on it and have witnessed it my whole life but I don't care. This is the place where all your prejudices go away if you want to get a good grade, but more importantly to get a better insight on the supernatural world you're living in. You need each other more than you think." She concluded.

Caroline scoffed. "I highly doubt I will ever need him for anything."

Klaus chuckled under his breath, shaking his head in disbelief.

"Well might as well get use to it because you're gonna need each other for this assignment. So you have two options: you can either be partners and guarantee yourself a good grade or you refuse to work together and receive an 'F' which means you fail the class and can't graduate this semester. Up to you?" The professor shrugged nonchalantly.

As if they had a choice.

The way both side eyed each other then dishearteningly conceded to the terms was proof of that.

"That's what I thought. See you both on Thursday." She smiled then waved them off as they walked out of class.

Klaus's shoulder purposely collided with Caroline's as they both attempted exiting through the door. His skin brushed hers chillingly making her jump back unexpectedly.

He didn't bother acknowledging her awkwardness even when she began walking ahead of him.

"You should watch where you're going, love." Klaus suggested.

The blonde growled, turning on her heel and charging back his friction until she was directly in his face.

"Listen we might be forced to work together but let's get some things clear: we are not friends okay?" She began. "We do not engage in any kind of conversation or interaction outside of this classroom and assignment, got it?"

Both of Klaus's eyebrows shot up at her demands. He wasn't sure if he was more offended or impressed.

Instead of pestering, he nodded his head. "Understood, love."

"Oh and another thing, you will stop calling me by those stupid pet names. My name isn't 'love." She hissed.

Klaus's smirk grew mischievously, making Caroline tense. His eyes appeared dangerous and amused staring back into hers.

The gulp she just initiated didn't go unnoticed by Klaus who tilted his head curiously walking towards her. His steps careful and light.

Caroline didn't realize how many steps he had taken until her back was now against the wall. Both his hands placed beside both sides of her head trapping her in his hold. The warmth of his breath fanned her reddened face. Her entire body felt hot and tingly from his stare alone. Dark eyes and dark thoughts.

Their chests nearly touching, hers heaving when she finally looked up at him. His trance took its usual effect as it dragged her in once again.

They were completely out in the open, bodies almost connecting against a drywall as if no one would walk by and see. Caroline should've been more aware of someone seeing them in this position but she found herself caring very little.

Not the way his full red lips complimented those sparkly eyes. Caroline had never been this close to him, noticing the stream of green around his iris and the blue-green hue masking the simple blue she's grown to know.

He hadn't touched her and they hadn't done anything, and nothing was going to happen, so why did she feel so dirty?

- Maybe because you aren't pushing him away?

Caroline blinked repeatedly, swallowing. "What are you doing?"

He grinned at the hoarseness in her voice. "Nothing, nothing at all. You're the one making all the rules here. You said no more pet names so I wanna know what I should call you then..." Klaus claimed. "Princess, sweetheart, Goldilocks..." He listed jokingly but sensually, twirling a strand of one of her blonde curls between his fingers.

The move so casual yet erotic.

Caroline's hands began to sweat at the feel of his finger slightly brushing her cheek. She balled her fists till her nails dug into her palms as her hair remained in his soft grasp.

She unintentionally looked down to his lips but quickly back up to his eyes.

The lump in her throat bobbed up and down from her harsh gulp. He always examined her so thoroughly it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

"My name is Caroline. That's what you can call me. Clear?" She demanded still fixated on his intimidating glare.

He smirked. "Such a prude. Pet names are much more entertaining." Klaus commented twirling her hair delicately. "But all right, I'll play by your rules but just so you're clear," Moving closer into her space. "For the sake of my grade and not being expelled for murder I'll let your attitude towards me go this time. But that's the only say you'll have from here on out. I don't take demands from anyone, especially not from a prissy judgmental witch who always has her knickers in a twist."

Klaus caught her wrist mid air when she quickly raised it in an attempt to slap him across the face.

Her fiery eyes matched his that were now the threatening golden hue.

She nearly winced in pain at how hard he was holding onto her. Through all their bantering and insults Klaus never seemed genuinely upset with her, until now.

Caroline was breathing heavily, not just from the rushed motion of her attempted assault but from the burning feel of Klaus's touch. Like his hand was burning a hole into her flesh. His grip tightened as he pulled her back from the wall and closer to his chest; still keeping a short distance between their bodies. Both their faces tense and red in anger. Their breaths hot and labored fogging the air between them.

The black spidery veins outlining his cheekbones oddly fascinated Caroline, she couldn't resist staring at them. How was he able to make them appear on and off? What was the purpose?

Everything about vampires didn't make sense to her.

Noticing her lingering stares, Klaus's expression relaxed and his grip on her wrist loosened. He didn't even realize he wasn't saying anything this whole time, or remember what he planned to say initially. As if the seeing into her eyes, closely, for the first time struck an uncomfortable cord of emotion through him.

Klaus took a deep breath retreating his vampire features. Even showing her that side of who he was made him feel weak, and Caroline Forbes of all people didn't deserve to see it.

Caroline felt she was snapped back to reality when his face returned to normal. The window of fascination finally closed.

He finally dropped her hand and balled his fists together and face in front of hers.

"I wouldn't try that again." His voice low and threatening pushing his hands off the wall to create a distance between their bodies.

Of course he disappeared by the time Caroline caught her breath and turned his direction. Her breathing mellowing down as she settled her body against the wall. She pushed her hair back with her fingers and licking her dry lips tiredly. Feeling like her skin was ablaze and the wind was knocked out of her from his stare alone.

And touch...

- What just happened?

The link to the rest of the chapter is above! Reviews are appreciated, thanks loves (:

Side Effects

chapter 2: fatigue

Waking up to the fluorescent lights and the calm blue and white resembling a hospital room was not pleasant. Uraraka thought for a moment that she had died and gone to heaven or something dramatic like that, but after sluggishly feeling for her pulse she was put at ease. Her eyelids were heavy but she forced them open despite the blurriness of sleep. There was a pounding against her skull that sounded like the steady thrum of a bass drum.

“How are you feeling, dear?” A gravelly voice came from her right. It was much different than the one that had spoken to her through the wood of her dorm room door that morning. This was older, much older, and more feminine. Uraraka turned to see Recovery Girl in her green chair, smiling at her softly. It was her worst nightmare, waking up in the place that she had oh so desperately been avoiding.

How was she here again? Oh yeah, she collapsed.

Bakugou wasn’t going to be happy when he found out. Heck, he probably already knew since the fall came during their practice time. If he could he would be sitting in the plastic red chair beside her bed, waiting for her to wake up so he could scolded her back into sleeping. However he would never jeopardize the secrecy of their relationship like that. Not that the wrinkled woman to her side would tell a soul, but Bakugou would still never allow himself to show weakness in front of anybody other than her. And maybe All Might.

“Ah, I’m okay.” It came out more passively than she had hoped and she felt a little guilty.

“Your friends told me you’ve been feeling ill for a couple of days now.” Recovery Girl cut right to the chase and Uraraka cursed her traitor friends. Damn them for being so tentative to her health.

“Um, well, yes. Just a little… vomiting and dizziness in the morning but then it goes away!” Uraraka trilled.

Recovery Girl hummed and nodded, writing on her clipboard. “How long has this been going on, exactly?”

Uraraka bit her lip. “I guess… Since Saturday.” It was Thursday now and the nausea was still as strong as it had been that day. Uraraka didn’t say anything about it.

“You ought not push yourself so hard, dear.” Recovery Girl advised.

“Yes ma’am!”

“Though, I don’t think this is all about stress, you know.” Recovery Girl scooted closer to her and tilted her head to the side. Her nerves bounced against each other, uncomfortable under the scrutiny of the old woman’s gaze. The woman may be short but she was kind of intimidating. “I healed you yet I didn’t detect any changes in your state.”

Uraraka’s blood ran cold. “Oh?”

Recovery Girl only smiled. “Which is strange. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of personal questions? It may be a bit awkward but it may help with the situation.”

“I… I guess….”

Uraraka honestly had no idea what kind of personal questions Recovery Girl was going to ask her. Didn’t her parents have to sign a waiver or something like that? Was that only for jail purposes? Uraraka had no idea how these things worked but she was almost seventeen, she shouldn’t be this nervous. Plus Recovery Girl knew what she was doing. She was at least eighty years old; she had probably seen much worse than this. Nausea and fatigue weren’t all that bad in the scope of things.

The smile never faded from Recovery Girl’s face. It made Uraraka feel a little better, at least. Until she opened her mouth. “Are you having a regular menstrual cycle?”

Uraraka blinked. And then she blinked again. What did that have to do with anything? She shifted a bit uncomfortably, paper thin sheets rustling with her. In all honesty, the brunette couldn’t remember her last period. One, two months ago maybe? She thought it was normal to sometimes skip a cycle or two. It happened to everybody, right? She had always had a regular period, getting it the same week every month since she was twelve.

“Um, two months I think?” With a quivering hand she tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear. Her face felt hot and she tried not to make eye contact with the nurse, who was scribbling something onto the paper attached to the clipboard.

“Are you sexually active?”

Uraraka bit her lip. She didn’t want this sweet old lady knowing her business. It was almost taboo in their country to have sex underage but there was no denying that she and Bakugou had, had sex before. She could only count on one hand how many times they had done it, but the deed was done, right there in the dorms. Teenagers were sexually active all the time, though it was mostly swept under the rug. It’s why perverts like Mineta were so rampant, as they would only experience sexual pleasure through their fist and at the earliest they would experience it in college. But it did happen before and it was normal. If two people were in love then naturally they would have sex, right?

Uraraka was close to regretting it as she couldn’t gauge the look in the nurse’s eyes.

“...yes.” Uraraka hid behind chocolate tresses falling in waves against her face. She was glad she had been growing it out so she could avoid the gaze the nurse was giving her.

“Have you been experiencing anything aside from nausea and dizziness?”

Uraraka thought for a moment. “I guess I’ve been a little bit more tired than normal. But I just need to pace myself with my studies.”

Recovery Girl looked at her sympathetically. Uraraka didn’t understand. Why was she being met with sympathetic black eyes?

“Oh hun.” Recovery Girl rolled closer and pat her leg where it was covered by linen of the bed. Uraraka’s heart thumped painfully against her ribcage. Anxiety buzzed through her veins and sat on her chest, lungs barely filling with air.

She was not prepared for the older woman’s next words.

“These are early signs of pregnancy dear.”

The air that was so desperately trying to fill her lungs escaped and forgot the passage to flow back in. Big brown eyes became impossibly wide and vision became unfocused. The room spun and although Uraraka tried to fix her gaze on something in the room, she could not. Everything made sense yet she just… couldn’t believe it. She was only sixteen, Bakugou only seventeen. They were too young to be parents. Too young to make life changing decisions such as this. Even if she had just been hit with the news, that could potentially be wrong though she did trust the older woman, Uraraka already felt an overwhelming responsibility for the thing growing inside her.  

“Are you sure?” Uraraka whispered, feeling incredibly small.

“Well, there’s only way to know for sure.” Recovery Girl stated. “We’d either have to take a blood or urine sample to be able to tell. Or do an ultrasound, but we don’t have that equipment here as this is unheard of at our school.”

Pulling her knees to her chest, she sat up and shook her head. No, she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want to know. Not right now, not tomorrow, not the next day. Not ever. This was too much . Too much responsibility and too much news for one afternoon. She wanted to curl up against Bakugou and forget that this even happened, wanted to run her fingers through golden hair and tell him how cute he was. Like a little, angry pomeranian always ready to pounce. That was simple, everything with Bakugou was simple.

This was not.

There was a careful “I’m sorry dear” and then the sound of wheels skidding across linoleum,  moving back to the desk. Uraraka closed her eyes, willing her breathing to even out. Nausea returned and clawed at the back of her throat. The demon was back, pleading to be released from the confines of her closing throat.

Pregnant? Really? She and Bakugou had been very careful, using condoms the each time they had sex They had only had sex four times. Uraraka wracked her brain for the details of each instance but it all came down to the pleasure and not the important things like condoms or birthcontrol. She had never thought to go on birth control until that moment.

The cyclical rise and fall of her chest from deep breaths allowed her to calm down and slowly she uncurled from the fetal position. She was released after Recovery Girl did one more check and Uraraka stood on wobbly legs. There was nobody to share this with, not that she would be able to spill in the first place. Her way of coping was to push it to the back of her mind and not believe it . It wasn’t the brightest decision but for now it was the best one.

“Uraraka-san!” Two voices called as she left the infirmary, causing her to jump a little. She was too wrapped up in her thoughts to notice that Midoriya and Iida had been waiting patiently for her.

Uraraka stiffened but tried to keep her emotions under control. “W-What are you two doing here?”

Iida pushed his glasses up. “We came to see how you were doing of course. You gave us all quite the scare! You really need to take more care of yourself! You knew you were sick and you still did not take proper precautions in going to see the doctor.”

Her bespectacled friend never failed to make her giggle with his odd way of speaking. “I’m sorry, Iida-kun! But Recovery Girl said-” I’m pregnant.She couldn’t tell her friends this, she realized. If she really was pregnant then she would have to tell them whose baby it was. Bakugou would need to know first, out of courtesy.

Bakugou was a ticking time bomb, literally, and his reactions to this particular situation were unpredictable. Would he be happy? Would he freak out? Uraraka was leaning towards the latter.

“She said that it’s just from exhaustion.” Uraraka hated lying but she knew it would come in handy these next few weeks.

Midoriya frowned and Iida’s mouth pulled into a thin, disappointed line. He launched into a lecture about how she really needed to take better care of herself and if she knew she was sick she should’ve rested up. Midoriya said that he would make her soup and despite her protesting that she really was fine now they dropped her off at her dorm room, soup still promised and Iida still ranting.

Finally able to lay down she flopped face first into her pillow and exhaled. This was all a disaster. She didn’t like having people doting on her and taking care of her; she had been independent for quite some time now considering her parents were always out of the prefecture for work. She was used to nursing herself back to health. Having her friends forcing soup down her throat made her sick again.

Midoriya brought the soup by a half hour later and Uraraka took it with a smile and said that she really just wanted to rest right now, thanking him all the while. Midoriya didn’t look convinced but respected her wishes and left her be. The soup was tasty and left her feeling full and lethargic, content to staying in bed propped against plushy pillows for the remainder of the night.

Her mind did somersaults trying to come to terms with what Recovery Girl had said, her hands fleeting over her stomach more than once. She couldn’t imagine a human growing beneath her skin and inside of her. She couldn’t imagine herself carrying a child for nine months, growing bigger and bigger. She didn’t want to even think of the excruciating pain of childbirth. She didn’t want to think about how she would have to give up her dreams of becoming a hero in order to raise a child.

Yet, if she was pregnant, she couldn’t see herself giving it up.

But she wasn’t. There was no way. Her body was just tricking her and tricking the nurse. She was definitely just sick.

Uraraka didn’t know how long she laid there and pondered her future for but there was suddenly a knock at her door, jerking her from her wandering mind. Half of her wanted to ignore it but the knocking became more persistent, and that could only mean one thing. It had her scrambling from the sheets and stumbling over her own two feet. She opened the door just a crack and peeked out. Deja vu struck when a familiar pair of crimson eyes glared down at her. Strong hands forced the door open, long enough for him to slip past and close the door behind him.

“See what happens when you don’t listen to me?” Bakugou chastised, lifting her chin with his finger to force her to look at him.

Uraraka pouted. “I really didn’t think there was anything wrong!”

Bakugou lowered his voice as if they weren’t the only two people in the room. “You were literally vomiting this morning! How the hell does that say you’re okay in any shape or form?”

“I don’t know!” Uraraka threw her hands up.

Bakugou sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. There was practically steam coming from his palms and his nostrils but Uraraka knew he was trying to stay calm. “You scared the shit out of all of us, y’know. You scared the shit outta me .”

“I’m sorry.” Uraraka touched his cheek and he covered her hand with his. The contrast between the softness of their skin was striking, Bakugou’s palm littered with tiny nicks and scars from the usage of his quirk. Uraraka only had the pads of her fingers that added to the innate softness of her hands.

“What did the old hag say?”

Uraraka snorted. “Don’t call Recovery Girl that. She’s healed your sorry ass many times.”

Bakugou nipped her thumb playfully. “Oi, language.”

Uraraka tipped her head back and laughed. “Don’t you dare tell me to watch my language, Mr. King of Explodo-Kills.”

“That was a great name, I don’t care what that Midnight bitch thinks.” Bakugou shook his head. “Just tell me what the old woman said, come on.”

Uraraka bit her lip. Lying seemed to be in order again. She hadn’t wanted to lie to Iida or Midoriya earlier and she sure as hell didn’t want to lie to Bakugou. She couldn’t remember the last time she had even told such a big lie. Though there was no proof yet that she was actually pregnant, the thought was still there, the elephant in the room, only visible to her.

“It’s just from overworking myself, like I thought.” Her voice was as steady as she could possibly make it.

Bakugou stared hard at her and Uraraka swallowed around a gulp of air. Then there was a soft kiss pressed to her lips. “Stupid girl,” mumbled Bakugou and Uraraka grinned as he spoke through their kiss.

“You’re the stupid one for thinking that it would be anything else. You should listen to me more often.”

Bakugou scoffed. “In your fucking dreams.”

Instead of replying, Uraraka insistently kissed the scowl off his face, now that the threat of being sick was out of the way. They tumbled into the bed, soft kisses linking them together for a long while. The feeling of Bakugou’s strong arms caging her in made Uraraka feel secure. With every brush of Bakugou’s tongue against her own and across her jaw, Uraraka felt sparks pop beneath her skin. Bakugou had that effect on her, dazzling her senses with his entire being.

It was Uraraka’s biggest secret that Bakugou was gentle. He handled her as if she were thousand year old China, as if she would shatter into microscopic pieces if touched the wrong way. Despite what Kaminari, Kirishima and Sero had said after their fight, she was far from fragile.

It all felt incredibly domestic, lying in bed with Bakugou, slow kisses tilting the world ever so slightly and making her dizzy. The comfort and exhaustion from the day made Uraraka fall asleep against his chest, blankets cocooned around their hips. She didn’t feel sixteen years old, curled up to her secret boyfriend after sneaking him into her room. She felt like this was meant to be, that she was much older and living the life she was supposed to be living.

The next morning she was brought back down to earth, bent over the toilet, head curled over the rim. Her stomach purged into the water below and hot tears burned behind clenched eyelids.

The words morning sickness swam through her hazy mind and it caused her to puke once more. She briefly wondered if she should take Recovery Girl’s advice and get some sort of physical proof of pregnancy. The idea made her dig crescent moons into pudgy thighs.

Only one person could really help her right now. It was the same person who she had collapsed in front of the day before. It wouldn’t be too hard; it would mean that she would be exposing her secret, a secret that was only half of her’s to share.

Another lie told wouldn’t hurt, right?

In Come the Stretchers

before we begin--

Putting aside the grammar (which I’ll tackle-- re-editing it all at some later date (to be decided)), I did forget to add the italics I had to the last text. I’m going to go make those changes now. Enjoy slanted words in any re-reads.

   I, personally, feel that stretching is something each and every one of us should do on a daily basis. It isn't difficult. I wonder how anyone can go their lives without thinking about it. They're your muscles! Stretch them! They love to be used! "How do you actually stretch though, Curtis? I have this chart for 30+ different ones, and my heart is head over heels in love with that one woman using the treadmill. What am I to do with myself?"    I'm going to answer these questions and more because it is from my experience that I've had to learn how to bring back my body from some level of debilitation that isn't easy to address in full. So, we're going to skip that part and get straight to what I prescribe and why after some more talking.    They don't teach you how important stretching is in school, especially in ways that kids will comprehend. For instance, you go to gym class, and then sometimes stretching is given some attention. It all depends on the activities planned for the day. (This assumption might not accurate because I don't remember gym class, but the disappointment is there.) One glaring issue is: when we all go stretching, we hold the positions for-- what? 15 seconds? And there are the kids that complain at 10 seconds and those that change before all the others. Therefore I blame the kids. That is no where near long enough! A stretch should go on for one minute minimum up to 30 or so. I'm not blaming the teachers or the school board or the guy in the big chair or any of those people responsible for training athletes, etc. Realistically, typically our bodies move when it's time, and the ramifications of injury or what I call "muscle deformation" don't affect those in the early game. And the balance of money and time is always taking precedence over the enhancement of the next generation. Though, putting all this cynicism and pessimism aside, it will be attempted herein to shed some light on the importance of stretching through Curtis' eyes.    The very root of our muscles is somewhere to the lower right of the back. This point is where the beginnings of muscle formation begin. As we age, there is gravity, stress, injury, and neglect that pull them together towards this point. These things take control of our bodies, and can be forgiven to an extent. Yet, as blunt as it sounds, one or more of these things will eventualy come to you. This happens to everyone. From your head to your feet, the compession of the body is inevitable. Let's try to stave it off, why don't we?    Ignorance is nothing new when it comes to human intelligence and progress. Truth is: there aren't very many people on this planet that actually care about muscles. And we all know those people are crazy; that all happen to live fluidly and with ease. For those that want to break free of age, gravity, stress, and neglect, I have some good news: There are two stretches (three and/or four for those that want to push it to the limit) that will greatly help. How one begins depends wholly on who you are: Whether you've been injured, are afflicted by the symptoms of severe muscle deformation from age or neglect-- stress contributes some incredible amount, and so does one's constitution. At least, for those affected by the above, a stretching regimen will have to be personalized for you. Sadly, in today's day, the only people that seem to understand this (though most likely not with the same reasoning) are in the minority. So, let's break this down. I'm going to put the stretches at the very bottom because that's a nice place for them. We'll begin with how stress, gravity, and age play their hand in this. Stress    Stress stems from worry. When we worry or fear, at least, from a survivalist perspective, we are trying to perservere - to stay alive. Instinctually, the unconscious reaction to fear, of being killed, for instance, is to become as small as possible (among other things that aren't relevant here). So then many are, when stressed, tightening up their muscles in one way or another to become smaller. You might say the stress in humans is quite different from the stress felt by animals in the "wild." Rather than knowing you can run away, humans have worked themselves into a reality where running away isn't an option. Rather than feeling stress over a relatively short period of time, man is sustaining his feelings of stress day-in, day-out. Anyone can guess how this affects us on the physiological level. In muscle talk: this is bad. Generally, we're allowed those two days off to unwind. Still, one's occupation is not the be-all, end-all; particularly when there are myriad avenues worry leverages its priority amongst everything else. Gravity and Age and a teaspoon of Neglect    These two and 1/2 items are, more or less, the same thing. We feel gravity unceasingly and we age unceasingly. Neglect just takes advantage of the two and takes our muscles along for the ride. Besides that, there's not a whole to cover here.  You do, however, have to admire astronauts that've made it to space; for they know the absence of gravity. Do astronauts stretch? Let us ponder on that notion.    Basically, the longer we go neglecting our muscles, the more they knot up, tense up, and become a hinderance on the body. Think of muscles as having their own memories. When they aren't reminded of the things that are important, that memory goes off lodging itself somewhere deep in the recesses of its brain. You might think it's pretty darn handy to be able to feel the things that they once remembered. Kind of a tongue-in-cheek speculation when the ways muscles tell us they're is a bad state are usually through pinched nerves and pain, etc. But if you want them to go back to the way they were, then you'll have to slowly have them remember by actively stretching. I insist that a little bit of stretching can do absolute wonders for those who's muscles have been the victim of age and neglect and all this other nasty stuff. Injury, cause for individualizing    How injury takes root in our muscles is as diverse as the number of injuries we can pass onto them. Luckily muscles pretty well always end up looking the same way after enough time passes (when nothing's done about it). Old injuries from your childhood can surely be felt by an experienced masseur or masseuse. (Don't blush. I know you can.) Unless you were brought up under a rock and plan to continue living under a rock, you'll experience one or more injuries. What you can do about it is: something.    And this is where you have quite a few options. You can go see a chiropractor, massage therapist, your GP, fitness instructor, physiotherapist, read up on the interwebs, and more. Don't be lazy - is what I'm trying to say. However, while I do encourage someone who's afflicted by one thing or another to do something, I do very much prescribe to the belief that your thing may not be what one professional or another can address. You might need the help of someone else.  Additionally, I strongly believe that exercising to prevent an injury from recurring is also common sense. It'll save you money. It'll save you the inconvenience. It'll make your body happy.    I did touch on constitution earlier. There are indeed some folks out there that have been dealt a hand that can be described as unfortunate in one vein or another. As with what I'd written earlier: a personalized regimen is surely the only way to treat your body as everyone is different from the other. This takes time and experimentation, and above all, the determination to find an answer. When all else fails, there is [almost] always a solution. I'd like to reiterate: For some people, the only way to treat their body is something they must learn for themselves through self-discovery. There are times when a professional can only share their understanding of how things work. 90% of the time this is definitely foolproof. Folks that make up the other 10% are probably some of the most frustrated. I was among them. When I say deformation - Is it a word?    A deforming of muscles is apparent. I call it deforming. People that've studied and know all the proper words likely call it the receding of muscles.**  Those suffering from severe muscle deformation definitely need their own plan. It's extremely time consuming bringing back your muscles from such recession. You'll go months with very little sign of improvement; and there's no way around the laws of cause of and effect. For instance, aftereffects of stretching in persons with severe muscle deformation may experience dizziness or have a difficult time catching their balance. One's equilibrium is a sensitive thing. The most you or I can do is be confident in knowing that the stretch is good for us and, whether we like it or not, the effects of stretching on a body that has been neglected for so long will go through some very dramatic changes. This has to do with nerves, the pressure on them (from knots), and the brain in its attempt to deal with it all; to get you to a feeling of normalcy despite all the muck going around under the surface.    Though, before you go blaming anything, think about how long you've been alive and compare that to how much time you spend on maintaining your body. Most people don't even consider that their muscles require maintanence. Like USB ports: plug it in and go. (Some unclear, not very relevant techno-simile for saying when waking, consciousness is injected into reality.) They do! They really should be!    From the time you're born you're given what can arguably be considered a perfect body. (Folks that weren't born with muscles will have to forgive my assertion.) Gradually the tissue of the muscles begin to retreat. If we use another personalification, they no longer know they need to move this way or that way. When, for however many years, a muscle is used only to contract, its learned range of motion is decidedly changed. Scar tissue, by way of nature, builds and builds forming new knots which push old ones deeper; and the cycle continues in this way. Usually I use the term muscle deformation in the context of muscles with noticably or severely inhibited range of motion, but in reality, there are so many things we cannot see with the naked eye. The area in focus will be affected by lots of groovy stuff.    For those persons, such as the elderly and/or severely afflicted so, taking up stretching can be incredibly frustrating. What can appear so easy to others like those depicted in stretching illustrations is not easy. In fact, some of those stretches are quite literally detrimental to one's betterment. Do these people go to their GP for advice? Do they go to a physiotherapist for clarification? Do they get the advice they need to help themselves? I assume most don't do anything. It is confusing, misleading. The stretches make you sore and hurt. These people accept their bodies aren't like they once were, and that's it. That's all there is to it. So, the big question is "Why?" For starters: Why do these stretches hurt? - It's because of gravity. For those stretches that have the person stand: that's too much weight! It's, plainly, too much stress on the joints. The protection and support that muscles provide is absent. The joints are held too firmy by what's underneath.* - It's because of injury. When a muscle is torn (in anaerobic excercise too) and/or strained, it is forced to compensate for the space, building more tissue there. This creates knots. Knots, and the scar tissue in them, hold the healthy muscle back. It hurts because the fibres are stretching to make healthy bonds again.    Now, what will be described below should be consumed with the implicit theme. To be more direct, be aware! Talk, deliberate, criticize, and do so as to feel more comfortable with one idea or another. It doesn't matter if it came from here or some place else. As long as it encourages you to care more about your muscles. At the very least, the stretches I have to offer come with various considerations. From my experience, I've put together a rough sketch of what can be contemplated and tried; that, I hope, is helpful. Stretch Points - Hold a stretch for 1/5/15/30 minute(s) or more. How long one holds a stretch depends on two things: 1) The nature of the injury/injuries and 2) How the stretch makes you feel. The latter may not present itself until the next day. - Warming up in one way or another will help, but for some, this is not an option. Don't think too much about it. After 5 minutes or so of a light stretch, the area will naturally warm up. How long this takes depends on the person. Just means one has to be more patient. - Listening to music may help to stay patient. - Never quickly assume a position. - Do not force a stretch beyond what is moderately comfortable. - Unexpected sensations from stretches described below include, but are not limited to, tingling, pain behind the right ear, pressure behind the eyes, tightness in the forehead. - Depending on how and where a knot forms, one or more sensations will manifest when stretching. These feelings will change over time. The rule of thumb being: the worse off the muscles, the more dramatic the changes in the body. Stretching stretches #1: Simple neck stretch - Let head hang forward to where it is comfortable. Lace hands behind the head, applying force back into them with the neck.  Use counter pressure with your arms, gradually increasing strain to a comfortable level over the course of the first minute or so. - Sitting position is recommended. Be comfortable. - Allow head to raise some as well before applying pressure. Be comfortable. Benefits and cautions: Someone who has limited range of motion of the head, looking left to right, will find this stretch very good. Someone with a plain stiff neck, also, will benefit greatly from repeated use of this stretch. May cure headaches. Note: Please be thoughtful if you are a person with whiplash. Even if you are gentle, you may experience soreness and/or stiffness. Expect discomfort. Through experimentation users will have to learn what is too much strain. #2: Simple back-with-legs-up stretch - Lay on back with legs up against a wall. - Do not force your butt firmly against the wall if it is not bearable. - Using one's bed is a convenient apparatus to stretch on before going to sleep. Be comfortable. - Pair this stretch with the simple neck stretch above for added effect. - Users can alternate between legs stretched out and bent at the knee. Benefits and cautions: May cure any number of pinched nerves in the back and/or neck. Note: Persons unable to scoot closely to the wall: please do not be discouraged! Everyone starts somewhere!

#3: Simple wrist stretch - Use a countertop or other comfortably accessible surface edge to rest fingertips of both hands on. Fingertips facing up. - Slowly lean into wrists over the course a minute or so. - Adjust strain during stretch as needed. - This stretch can be done almost anywhere by placing your hands on your hips. Bear in mind: stretch should be held for at least 2 minutes as about the minimum. Benefits and cautions: Reduces forearm stiffness. May cure Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Q&A Q: How often do I do these stretches? A: That’s something, I feel, that should be left to the individual and how their body reacts. Q: I had a broken neck/wrist/back. How long should I hold these stretches for? A: That is, again, something you'll have to learn for yourself. I don't know what  your physiotherapist says. Perhaps they've already made a plan for you. Q: Of all the professionals out there, who do you think is the best? A: That all depends on what's going on with your body, yea? Maybe a chiropractor is a good idea. Maybe a massage therapist is a good idea. Who knows? One thing I do know is: it's important to try things and find out which of them works. That being said, especially with stretching, you have to make an effort to see results. Someone who tries stretching once, then says it didn't work, may as well have never bothered to in the first place. Q: Can I trust these direction and what you have to say? A: There is risk in everything. I can tell you what's worked for me and some of those that I know. That's about it though. If you're skeptical, as I wrote earlier, consult learned professionals. Q: Is there a chance things will get worse if I stretch?

A: Yes. The body and brain is incredibly complex. It's up to you to learn what a good pain is and what a bad pain is to make progress. The knots in our muscles are almost like a game of Whac-A-Mole. As knots work their way out of our bodies, new ones spring up. How these new knots affect our nervous system all depends on where they are, how big they are, etc... There is no world where stretching is bad for you. The sensations may be alarming; there may be good days and bad days. What you go through all depends on what you've done with your body.

Q: Can stretching replace visits to a chiropractor or the like? A: Maybe. Probably. The potential is there. Along with all my other wacky ideas, I do strongly feel that stretching will definitely strengthen the bonds in our bodies, making it more durable against the troubles these professionals practice to remedy. * Someone familiar with anatomy or learned professional can explain better

** Probably

4.92/10 Experience points