#Elaz's Thoughts

[elazul-sasayaki]

I need to feel the pressure building. To feel my skin stretching tight. To feel my mobility slipping away as everything gets harder and harder to bend simply because my body is running out of room to put more of whatever is filling me up.

I need to be a massive blimp. ~w~

[jcmarchi]

A Sprayable Gel Could Make Minimally Invasive Surgeries Simpler And Safer - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/a-sprayable-gel-could-make-minimally-invasive-surgeries-simpler-and-safer-technology-org/

A Sprayable Gel Could Make Minimally Invasive Surgeries Simpler And Safer - Technology Org

More than 20 million Americans undergo colonoscopy screenings every year, and in many of those cases, doctors end up removing polyps that are 2 cm or larger and require additional care. This procedure has greatly reduced the overall incidence of colon cancer, but not without complications, as patients may experience gastrointestinal bleeding both during and after the procedure.

Researchers at MIT have developed a new gel, GastroShield, that can be sprayed onto the surgical sites via catheter, through an endoscope, pictured. This gel forms a tough but flexible protective layer that controls and prevents delayed bleeding and mechanically reinforces the tissue, sealing up perforations that might appear after the polyp is removed and enabling wound healing to occur. Illustration by the researchers / MIT

In hopes of preventing those complications from occurring, researchers at MIT have developed a new gel, GastroShield, that can be sprayed onto the surgical sites through an endoscope. This gel forms a tough but flexible protective layer that serves as a shield for the damaged area. The material prevents delayed bleeding and reinforces the mechanical integrity of the tissue.

“Our tissue-responsive adhesive technology is engineered to interact with the tissue via complimentary covalent and ionic interactions as well as physical interactions to provide prolonged lesion protection over days to prevent complications following polyp removal, and other wounds at risk of bleeding across the gastrointestinal tract,” says Natalie Artzi, a principal research scientist in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the senior author of the paper.

In an animal study, the researchers showed that the GastroShield application integrates seamlessly with current endoscopic procedures, and provides wound protection for three to seven days where it helps tissue to heal following surgery. Artzi and other members of the research team have started a company called BioDevek that now plans to further develop the material for use in humans.

Gonzalo Muñoz Taboada, CEO of BioDevek, and Daniel Dahis, lead scientist at BioDevek, are the lead authors of the study, which appears in the journal Advanced Materials. Elazer Edelman, the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science at MIT and the director of IMES, and Pere Dosta, a former postdoc in Artzi’s lab, are also authors of the paper.

Adhesive gels

Routine colon cancer screenings often reveal small precancerous polyps, which can be removed before they become cancerous. This is usually done using an endoscope. If any bleeding occurs during the polyp removal, doctors can cauterize the wound to seal it, but this method creates a scar that may delay the healing, and result in additional complications.

Additionally, in some patients, bleeding doesn’t occur until a few days after the procedure. This can be dangerous and may require patients to return to the hospital for additional treatment. Other patients may develop small tears that lead the intestinal contents to leak into the abdomen, which can lead to severe infection and requires emergency care.

When tissue reinforcement is required, doctors often insert metal clips to hold tissue together, but these can’t be used with larger polyps and aren’t always effective. Efforts to develop a gel that could seal the surgical wounds have not been successful, mainly because the materials could not adhere to the surgical site for more than 24 hours.

The MIT team tested dozens of combinations of materials that they thought could have the right properties for this use. They wanted to find formulations that would display a low enough viscosity to be easily delivered and sprayed through a nozzle at the end of a catheter that fits inside commercial endoscopes. Simultaneously, upon tissue contact, this formulation should instantly form a tough gel that adheres strongly to the tissue. They also wanted the gel to be flexible enough that it could withstand the forces generated by the peristaltic movements of the digestive tract and the food flowing by.

The researchers came up with a winning combination that includes a polymer called pluronic, which is a type of block copolymer that can self-assemble into spheres called micelles. The ends of these polymers contain multiple amine groups, which end up on the surface of the micelles. The second component of the gel is oxidized dextran, a polysaccharide that can form strong but reversible bonds with the amine groups of the pluronic micelles.

When sprayed, these materials instantly react with each other and with the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, forming a solid gel in less than five seconds. The micelles that make up the gel are “self-healing” and can absorb forces that they encounter from peristaltic movements and food moving along the digestive tract, by temporarily breaking apart and then re-assembling.

“To obtain a material that adheres to the design criteria and can be delivered through existing colonoscopes, we screened through libraries of materials to understand how different parameters affect gelation, adhesion, retention, and compatibility,” Artzi says.

A protective layer

The gel can also withstand the low pH and enzymatic activity in the digestive tract, and protect tissue from that harsh environment while it heals itself, underscoring its potential for use in other gastrointestinal wounds at high risk of bleeding, such as  stomach ulcers, which affect more than 4 million Americans every year.

In tests in animals, the researchers found that every animal treated with the new gel showed rapid sealing, and there were no perforations, leakages, or bleeding in the week following the treatment. The material lasted for about five days, after which it was sloughed off along with the top layer of tissue as the surgical wounds healed.

The researchers also performed several biocompatibility studies and found that the gel did not cause any adverse effects.

“A key feature of this new technology is our aim to make it translational. GastroShield was designed to be stored in liquid form in a ready-to-use kit. Additionally, it doesn’t require any activation, light, or trigger solution to form the gel, aiming to make endoscopic use easy and fast,” says Muñoz, who is currently leading the translational effort for GastroShield.

BioDevek is now working on further developing the material for possible use in patients. In addition to its potential use in colonoscopies, this gel could also be useful for treating stomach ulcers and inflammatory conditions such as Crohn’s disease, or for delivering cancer drugs, Artzi says.

The research was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation.

Written by Anne Trafton 

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

You can offer your link to a page which is relevant to the topic of this post.

[sunaleisocial]

A sprayable gel could make minimally invasive surgeries simpler and safer

New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/a-sprayable-gel-could-make-minimally-invasive-surgeries-simpler-and-safer/

A sprayable gel could make minimally invasive surgeries simpler and safer

More than 20 million Americans undergo colonoscopy screenings every year, and in many of those cases, doctors end up removing polyps that are 2 cm or larger and require additional care. This procedure has greatly reduced the overall incidence of colon cancer, but not without complications, as patients may experience gastrointestinal bleeding both during and after the procedure.

In hopes of preventing those complications from occurring, researchers at MIT have developed a new gel, GastroShield, that can be sprayed onto the surgical sites through an endoscope. This gel forms a tough but flexible protective layer that serves as a shield for the damaged area. The material prevents delayed bleeding and reinforces the mechanical integrity of the tissue.

“Our tissue-responsive adhesive technology is engineered to interact with the tissue via complimentary covalent and ionic interactions as well as physical interactions to provide prolonged lesion protection over days to prevent complications following polyp removal, and other wounds at risk of bleeding across the gastrointestinal tract,” says Natalie Artzi, a principal research scientist in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the senior author of the paper.

In an animal study, the researchers showed that the GastroShield application integrates seamlessly with current endoscopic procedures, and provides wound protection for three to seven days where it helps tissue to heal following surgery. Artzi and other members of the research team have started a company called BioDevek that now plans to further develop the material for use in humans.

Gonzalo Muñoz Taboada, CEO of BioDevek, and Daniel Dahis, lead scientist at BioDevek, are the lead authors of the study, which appears in the journal Advanced Materials. Elazer Edelman, the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science at MIT and the director of IMES, and Pere Dosta, a former postdoc in Artzi’s lab, are also authors of the paper.

Adhesive gels

Routine colon cancer screenings often reveal small precancerous polyps, which can be removed before they become cancerous. This is usually done using an endoscope. If any bleeding occurs during the polyp removal, doctors can cauterize the wound to seal it, but this method creates a scar that may delay the healing, and result in additional complications.

Additionally, in some patients, bleeding doesn’t occur until a few days after the procedure. This can be dangerous and may require patients to return to the hospital for additional treatment. Other patients may develop small tears that lead the intestinal contents to leak into the abdomen, which can lead to severe infection and requires emergency care.

When tissue reinforcement is required, doctors often insert metal clips to hold tissue together, but these can’t be used with larger polyps and aren’t always effective. Efforts to develop a gel that could seal the surgical wounds have not been successful, mainly because the materials could not adhere to the surgical site for more than 24 hours.

The MIT team tested dozens of combinations of materials that they thought could have the right properties for this use. They wanted to find formulations that would display a low enough viscosity to be easily delivered and sprayed through a nozzle at the end of a catheter that fits inside commercial endoscopes. Simultaneously, upon tissue contact, this formulation should instantly form a tough gel that adheres strongly to the tissue. They also wanted the gel to be flexible enough that it could withstand the forces generated by the peristaltic movements of the digestive tract and the food flowing by.

The researchers came up with a winning combination that includes a polymer called pluronic, which is a type of block copolymer that can self-assemble into spheres called micelles. The ends of these polymers contain multiple amine groups, which end up on the surface of the micelles. The second component of the gel is oxidized dextran, a polysaccharide that can form strong but reversible bonds with the amine groups of the pluronic micelles.

When sprayed, these materials instantly react with each other and with the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, forming a solid gel in less than five seconds. The micelles that make up the gel are “self-healing” and can absorb forces that they encounter from peristaltic movements and food moving along the digestive tract, by temporarily breaking apart and then re-assembling.

“To obtain a material that adheres to the design criteria and can be delivered through existing colonoscopes, we screened through libraries of materials to understand how different parameters affect gelation, adhesion, retention, and compatibility,” Artzi says.

A protective layer

The gel can also withstand the low pH and enzymatic activity in the digestive tract, and protect tissue from that harsh environment while it heals itself, underscoring its potential for use in other gastrointestinal wounds at high risk of bleeding, such as  stomach ulcers, which affect more than 4 million Americans every year.

In tests in animals, the researchers found that every animal treated with the new gel showed rapid sealing, and there were no perforations, leakages, or bleeding in the week following the treatment. The material lasted for about five days, after which it was sloughed off along with the top layer of tissue as the surgical wounds healed.

The researchers also performed several biocompatibility studies and found that the gel did not cause any adverse effects.

“A key feature of this new technology is our aim to make it translational. GastroShield was designed to be stored in liquid form in a ready-to-use kit. Additionally, it doesn’t require any activation, light, or trigger solution to form the gel, aiming to make endoscopic use easy and fast,” says Muñoz, who is currently leading the translational effort for GastroShield.

BioDevek is now working on further developing the material for possible use in patients. In addition to its potential use in colonoscopies, this gel could also be useful for treating stomach ulcers and inflammatory conditions such as Crohn’s disease, or for delivering cancer drugs, Artzi says.

The research was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation.

[sienna-writes]

On the Border of Blinking | update 2

more poems ! yay :)

Writing poetry is so comparatively stress free than my other projects right now - so I can confirm that this anthology continues to be a joy to write! I am absolutely loving how it is coming along and it feels more naturalistic than my previous collection. There are hints of weirdness here and there because I’m Weird, nice to meet you - but overall it feels a lot more grounded and I love it! I think I hid, to a certain extent, my personal experiences behind a lot of nonsensical images previously so this feels more honest, a bit more scary... and also braver :)) [Having said that, nothing against my old poems I still really love some of them but I was definitely still finding my footing and experimenting so some were pretty messy. and that’s okay !! without the mess, the ‘mistakes’, etc, i wouldn’t have gotten to this current collection :) ].

One thing I'm noticing is that for an anthology i wanted to be about living presently, moment to moment, blink to blink — it's incredibly ?? nostalgic ? :")

it's definitely becoming a trend that i cannot stick to the concept i commit to but i'm honestly not too concerned about it at this point. I'm very proud of how it's shaping up to be and so glad that I'm still able to write poetry while my unfinished short stories and novel collect dust. [will get around to them ... am just ... so tired ......]

cw: abuse (only for the first one and not in depth)

the poems;

witness, weary

I wrote this the morning after a particularly ... heated night in my family and it explores the fatigue of living in an environment that can be violent at times, where you are gaslit, terrified and caught in the midst of it all, feeling trapped. It explores, in a paradoxically ~quiet~ (muted maybe ?? i am a writer but can't words) tone, the denial that follows afterward. How it is played down if you have the courage to bring it up again, or more realistically, ignored entirely and left un-talked about. How it hurts less if you pretend it didn't happen. It is gentle to mirror a house becoming still after its storm and people occupying less space when they are hurting, so as not to cause a bigger scene.

these are the moments i held my breath

this one is relatively self explanatory ! the most memorable moments I have held my breath in my life lmao :”) and then i cheated and added another in where I probably should have been holding my breath but was young and stupid and panicking and Did Not. 

infinite

i love this poem so, so much. It is honestly just a bunch of "maybes" that developed into something that just indescribably ✨aches✨ whenever i revisit it. I doubt anyone would feel that same ache, but it's cathartic for me at least. I don't think I had a plan going into this, it just spiralled out of me and then with editing it has become a new fav of the anthology. The lines all rely on each other, so above is the first line :) ^

I sat in the park and imagined

So this poem is about standing on the moon and imagining, clearly. :D

lol

i was sitting. in a park. imagining: hey what if a bomb exploded right now? and then started to write a poem about that situation. I kind of like it! It is unlike anything I've written before, and I'm learning to accept that kind of scenario as a positive. It was more comedic than i thought it would be, but then again my humour is often incredibly unfunny to everyone but myself and close friends so idK man. it's an amusing read to me. :")

unholdable

an incredibly short poem ! for me anyway ! I never thought I'd be able to write a poem under 500 words in the last anthology. (there were some big bois). then when writing this collection I was like huh ok my poems are pretty varied yay, and then b o o m this one was a mere 97 words and the lowest until then that i had written was 233. I think it's a good sign - I'm becoming a more economical writer and saying what I crucially want to say without diluting the meaning. also, it shows I'm experimenting more with structure and form and im ✨always✨ down for that.

measurements

human insignificance through the lens of blue whale facts !! no I'm not kidding :) yes that is genuinely this poem :)) pls end me :D <3

i jest, yet unironically love this concept even if im not ✨fully✨ comfortable with the execution yet. It's almost there it just needs some final tweaking I think.

snatched

a haiku about a deer eating grass in a graveyard in the snow :) cus that's a thing i witnessed and it was eerily beautiful :) and haiku's are a beautiful form :)

conclusion;

it's going ! good ! I could share lines this time because i am not yet submitting these poems. i plan to with some but again, I've only recently written them so haven't gotten around to it yet :"D not looking forward to it ahah submitting is painful and takes me way longer than it should.

tag list (ask to be added/removed!):

@alicewestwater @elaz-ivero @coffeeandcalligraphy @hanwatchingmovies @chloeswords @nev-953 @justahufflepuffnerd @writerschronicles @august-iswriting @jennawritesstories @jaydewritesfiction @avakrahn @chewingthescenery

[usatokkiss]

uh oh cringe alert

so like, has anyone thought about this ship sakljsafkslaf what would they even be called???? blelise?? elaze?????

[elaz-ivero]

The Sun Ballad Project//  Chapter One - Death & Divinity

Finally,  I have conquered my fears and begun my adult fantasy novel under the project name of ‘The Sun Ballad’. From two years of worldbuilding and drafting up possible storylines, scrapping them and then starting over again I’m finally confident in my skills as a storyteller to communicate to others this amazing world and story I’ve been planning for years. Of course, this is draft zero but getting these scenes out of my mind and on to paper is the best feeling imaginable. 

Hopefully, you’ll come along with me as I try and unravel this concept and turn ideas into words on a page. You can follow this project’s progress on nanowrimo the link is in the Ballad tag on my profile. 

Events that happen in this chapter;

- Grave Robbery 

- A healthy dose of light exposition 

- Dead deer noises 

- Boys in skirts��

- and finally attempted murder, all in good fun of course

Chapter One; Death & Divinity introduces The Sun Ballad projects main character, Yhw, the laws of the afterlife and death as well as Yhw’s placement in his society as a magical archivist. It sits around 7,628 words and has a three scene structure split into two parts as Yhw journeys to find a grave to take from. 

 Death & Divinity introduces three key characters including my main character; 

Yhw is a 23-year-old Medivan Magical archivist who, in the first chapter stumbles across the dead body of the late Tolvian prince, as he takes from the boys grave his jawbone, a battered book and a turquoise earring, a custom unique to Mediva, he is confronted by a lone solider in gold armour, with his life threatened Yhw challenges his own beliefs, barely escaping and unbeknownst to him taking the dead prince’s soul with him the consequences of which become paramount in Chapter Two. Yhw as a narrator is realistic and explores his differing interpretations of events around him. As a servant he’s lived his whole life being dispensible, taking care of oxen underground and then serving his mentor cooking and doing laundry. He isn’t at the bottom of the pecking order and unfortunately, he uses his position as an archivist to exploit the kingdoms trust in him and traces spells intentionally withheld from the public and selling them to tight-lipped peasants. His age has brought him wisdom and yet his sheltered nature in the conservative town of Boudow results in him making childish decisions. 

And also introduced his main mentor figure; 

Erin is a 37-year-old Magan who’s spent his life learning the ins and outs of the intricate magic system of casting, he’s built a reputation of being a skilled archivist although he doesn’t live up to it. While Yhw adheres to the majority of the rules and cultural stipulations Erin tries to find loopholes, in Mediva you have to cover everything below your jawline and Erin has decided that applies to everyone except himself and I’ve really enjoyed exploring his and Yhw’s relationship through their different takes on keeping society happy. 

The first line!!!: 

I find the best way to open a story is to emulate the tone of the tale you’re about to tell and although it is kind of a cliche fantasy opening introducing a place rather than a character I feel like it establishes the scenery and thus allows the characters to feel slightly more real in their space. 

This chapter was really fun to write because It took me writing this chapter to realise that some of the best worldbuilding you can do comes when you’re trying desperately to get 1,000 words out. The vague idea of a watchman keeping the town safe at night developed and grew into a fully fleshed out group of people with unique lifestyles and ways of speaking. I also love chapters that are bookended, something introduced in the beginning reappears with new meaning in the end. The introduction of the nightmen pays off when at the end of the chapter Yhw, after his life is threatened runs into the nightmen and there’s this natural sense of relief since readers automatically know who they are and that they provide some safety/protection. Yes, Yhw’s life is threatened in the first chapter, when he takes from an unnamed boys grave a stranger appears in gold armour and attempts to remove Yhw’s head from his shoulders.

Here’s an excerpt from the altercation; 

Ugh, I love me some long run-on sentences that reflect the characters feelings and thought proces. 

Death & Divinity truly sets the stage for a dark fantasy novel and does what I feel all first chapters should do, make the reader question, question the narrator’s reliability and the true nature of events. It’s a long Chapter that could possibly be split in half but that would be dividing it into one chapter of light exposition and one filled with all the drama and inciting incidents. I learned not only to write and worldbuild from what you’ve written but to also not be afraid to reorganize, after the initial draft I immediately changed the ending of the chapter, which gave it so much more impact and opened up the possibility for a new way to begin Chapter Two. 

Till next time, stay strung along the unbeaten path,

-Elaz

[clusterassets]

New world news from Time: Competitive Video Gaming Could Be the Newest Olympic Sport. Here’s What It Would Look Like

The space could pass for a TV control room at any major sporting event. A few dozen workers were wearing headsets, looking at a maze of computer screens. A producer barked directions. But here, footsteps away from the frigid beach in the coastal South Korean city of Gangneung—which is hosting figure skating, hockey and other arena ice events at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang—NBC wasn’t covering curling. Instead ESL, a company that organizes competitions in e-sports, or competitive video gaming, was streaming the semi-finals of a tournament hosted by Olympic sponsor Intel on the Olympic Channel.

The stakes were particularly high, and not just for the competitors. The International Olympic Committee is considering adding e-sports to the Olympic Games. Yes, video games may soon be an Olympic sport, and two days before the Feb. 9 Opening Ceremonies in PyeongChang, e-sports were getting a trial run.

One control room screen displayed seven different camera angles honed in on Mikolaj Ogonowski — screen name “Elazer” — of Poland, and Canadian Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn, the lone woman in this pre-Olympic tournament. They were playing StarCraft II, a science fiction strategy game. Two of the shots showed close-ups of a hand of each player, their fingers pounding on a key board like a caffeinated court reporter. “For e-sports fans, watching someone’s fingers move that quickly,” says Mark Cohen, senior vice president of live events and experiences at ESL, “is like watching Usain Bolt run.”

E-sports, which started their rise in 1990s internet cafes of South Korea, are now a $1.5 billion business, according SuperData research. The best players can make millions; tournaments fill arenas around the world. In 2017 people worldwide watched over 266 million hours of professional e-sports competitions involving Dota 2, a popular battle game, on Twitch, the streaming service that Amazon purchased for nearly $1 billion back in 2014. (Twitch also streamed the ESL/Intel StarCraft II event in Gangneung). The NBA will launch its own e-sports league in May.

Intel/ESLSasha “Scarlett” Hostyn of Canada competes in the Intel Extreme Masters e-sports tournament in Gangneung, South Korea on February 7, 2018.

Amid all this growth, the concept of video games in the Olympics does not sound as crazy as it would have just a few years ago. One challenge for the e-sports advocates: to the uninitiated, games like StarCraft II are much more difficult to follow than, say, curling. Still, Olympic organizers are on a permanent quest to draw younger audiences, and an e-sports competition might outrage your uncle but appeal to millions of engaged, digitally-connected video game fans.

“There’s really no question in my mind that e-sports will be in the Olympics,” says Michael Lynch, head of consulting at Nielsen Sports and Entertainment. Lynch, who used to run Visa’s global sponsorship marketing business, including its Olympics efforts, thinks China — an e-sports power — could push to add competitive gaming to the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, which will be held in Beijing. “It’s not a question of if,” says Lynch, “but of when.”

Read more: The Varsity Sport of the Virtual World

The South Korea event had the trappings of a major athletic competition, minus a crowd of spectators: since Intel only signed as an IOC sponsor in June of 2017, the organizers couldn’t secure a larger venue. So they held the tournament at a wedding hall near the Gangneung coast. But the Olympic rings appeared in the backdrop of the slickly-produced pregame show, no small feat given how closely the IOC guards that trademark. One of the analysts mapped moves on a telestrator. An Intel rep discouraged the media from asking the competitors questions prior to the games, as if they were superstitious pitchers in the dugout before their start. “Please don’t interact with the players,” she said.

Some e-sports stars have trainers, psychologists, and even nutritionists — a sound body can help players focus in front of their screens. “E-sports has all the qualities of a regular Olympic sport,” says gamer Sean “Probe” Kempen, 21, of Australia, who lost in the round of 16 in South Korea. “You need mental skill and physical skill. The physical skill is harder to see, but it’s there,” says Kempen. E-sports requires muscle memory, and hand-eye coordination, to move pieces around the screen and take down your opponent. Kempen, who’s 5’7″ and 121 pounds, compares a gamer twitching a keyboard to the swing of a tennis racket. “The different between a high-level player, and an extremely high level player, is mechanical skill,” he says. “Being quicker than your opponent makes a big difference.”

E-sports is only getting more competitive. “People don’t know that we train five, eight, 15 hours a day,” says Aleksandr “Bly” Svusuyk, of the Ukraine. “One mistake can cost me money and fame.” At 29, Svusuyk calls himself “a grandpa” in the e-sports world. He also points out that he’s married, contrary to the perception that people spending 15 hours a day playing video games must be averse to social interaction.

The reality is that the world’s best video gamers will carry more clout, with more people, than the skeleton gold medalist at the 2018 PyeongChang Games. The Olympics may need e-sports more than e-sports needs the Olympics. “We’re going to keep growing anyway,” says Kempen. “If the Olympics happens, they happen. We have the audience already.”

If the e-sports tournament in Gangneung were an actual Olympic event, fans around the world would have been treated to a monumental upset. “Oh my God, this is pure madness!” the play-by-play announcer said as Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn beat Yoo Jin “sOs” Kim of South Korea. Kim is the second all-time leading money winner in StarCraft II history — he’s made almost $500,000 in prizes —and Scarlett downed him on his home turf. “I thought I had no chance,” says Hostyn, who won the $50,000 first-place check. “Going in, I was very scared of him.” After the victory, Hostyn chugged some cider with her friends. One day, she might be heading to a podium too, to be draped in gold.

February 08, 2018 at 07:05PM ClusterAssets Inc., https://ClusterAssets.wordpress.com

[elazul-sasayaki]

I need some kind of Soup Buffet, of the all-you-can-eat variety.

Load me up on soups, stews, and various breads and grilled-cheeses to go with, and let me eat until I'm as full as a fantasy-setting's inn's cauldron, sloshing about with every attempt at reaching for more.

I want soups and stews and all kinds of drinkable meals that come with little sammiches I can dip in them, and enough of them that I end up walking out of the restaurant looking and sounding like a waterballoon of a person. ~w~;;;

To quote a friend over on twitter:

"'The Witch's Cauldron' would be an amazing name for it.

Fill your bowl as often as you like. Or, perchance you'd like to try one of our special funnels?"

[elazul-sasayaki]

So, just feel the need to put this out there again to give folks a slightly better understanding of me:

BEING fatter is a mental-health need for me.

GETTING fatter is a very much so horny/sexual need.

The idea of being a helpless blob of fat isn't what turns me on, but the idea of getting there, especially with help is.

I guess something about "Someone else wants to help me grow fatter, too" also factors into that.

[elazul-sasayaki]

...

Why are a LOT of my personal hornyposts/kinkposts getting tagged with "BBW" when they break the usual containment of my mutuals? Even when it's not because of a specific mutual (Lookin' at you, Brenda, haha), it still ends up tagged as such, despite the many, MANY times I try to make it as clear as I can that I'm a guy without straight up mentioning dick.

Only makes the past comments on my catwolf's ref sheet calling him "wife/waifu material" that much more frustrating. x-x

[elazul-sasayaki]

Feels weird being a gainer/feedee who can't handle more than three donuts in one sitting without feeling sick…

Yet if you tell me there's a whole pot of chicken-and-dumpling soup available, or a beef-and-barley, or a hearty stew, I -WILL- eat until I struggle to swallow. >.>;;

[elazul-sasayaki]

Ooof, cutting it close on funds to start off the month, but I barely scraped by with some help from a friend. Gotta remember to pay him back on thursday.

Hilariously enough, with his help, I managed to keep to my usual budget for worktime expenses, but have little in the way of home-food. Oh well?

The nice thing, though, is that my actual worktime spending has been cut in half (or more) thanks to a single purchase change, so I should be able to actually get some home-food, though I hate how much the basics are starting to cost these days. >.<

Half of my low-spoons options are 50% more. x-x

Thinking of nabbing some pasta to cook up, even though that's also 50% more, but it was so cheap to begin with, so it's not as painful in the short-term.

Still gotta work out how to do sauce without causing myself digestive strife. Dunno if I got the right spices already.

Anyone happen to know any good low-effort, hopefully low-cost sauce recipes I could feasibly prepare?

(And if anyone feels like helping out with a couple bucks for food money, my ko-fi is always an option. Much appreciated!)

[elazul-sasayaki]

So, much to my delight, I seem to have regained a little bit of my lost weight (only a few pounds) and it has stuck for about a week now.

I feel pretty good about it, and hope I can regain the rest in a reasonably short amount of time. And then maybe gain even more. ~w~

I mean, I would absolutely love to regain it in an -unreasonably- short amount of time, but I have neither the resources nor in-person support to properly pull that off...

Need an eating coach/feeder/high-grade enabler in order to eat enough for that. >.>;;;

[elazul-sasayaki]

Random thought, but it kinda amuses me just how many seemingly non-feedist folks, who are into the ladies and not the guys, follow me here, when I did not know them as a friend or acquaintance elsewhere before they followed me. I typically horny-post about feeding, fat, inflation, micro stuff, most often in a combination of those, and yet, they still follow, sometimes even like the thought (especially when it's just as funny as it is horny).

And then there's the fact that I am moots with SO MANY wonderful trans folks. Somehow mostly the ladies and femme-leaning nbs.

I'm just sitting here, overflowing my corner as my ever-horny ace self, just hoping a passerby happens to have a snack for me to maybe help me spill out even further, hehehe... ~w~

... Why are we ace folks so much more horny than folks who actually have a typical or semi-typical sex drive? >.>;;;

[elazul-sasayaki]

Sudden random core memory unlocked.

I just remembered would would best be described as my earliest proto-fursona...

In Kindergarten and First Grade... I would pretend to be a wolf with metal fur, named Spike.

Kinda wanna reimagine him, maybe give him a new name too...

[elazul-sasayaki]

I gotta say, I am amused by and love the fact that so many of the folks who follow me (probably for my horny posts and art reblogs, hehe) are people who are so much fatter than me, at sizes I have so far only dreamed of being...

Makes me wonder just how utterly massive I'd get if my "final weight based on total weight of all my followers" post was somehow real. ~w~