#cw prion disease

[monochromayhem]

So I messed around on r/OriginalCharacter and

I’m… guys pick me up I’m scared how did I write any of this

[flock-of-cassowaries]

Hey, it’s me! The Fun Police.

All cops are bastards, but I don’t have the brutal force of the state behind me - just the willingness to be really didactic and irritating at a moment’s notice!

Anyway, a thing I learned after being infected by the Hannibrainworms is that cannibalism does not cause prion disease.

Prion disease, as far as anyone can tell, is a very, very rare affliction that arises randomly.

Cannibalism - particularly of the brain and central nervous tissues - is just an incredibly efficient vector for spreading prion disease within members of species (including humans and ungulates) that are vulnerable to it.

Eating the bodies of individuals with prion disease can also spread the disease between vulnerable species - hence, the BSE outbreak in the 1990s, and more recently, the unfortunate people who got it from being brave enough to eat squirrel brains. (The pickier eaters who only ate the squirrel meat were okay, in that case.)

The popular conception that cannibalism causes prion disease comes from the fact that at one point, a member of a group of people who practiced funerary cannibalism (eating the bodies of their deceased loved ones as a form of respect) developed spontaneous prion disease.

The consequences were absolutely devastating, but keep in mind - this group had mourned their dead this way for thousands of years without issue before one of their members spontaneously developed the misfolded protein disease; everything was fine until that person’s corpse infected his grieving loved ones, who in turn infected others (when they perished and were consumed).

It’s actually super-fucking sad, and the fact that it’s been flattened into a “divine consequences of immoral actions” example is… kinda just racism.

But yeah - good news for anyone whose gone to a Lecter dinner party, I guess.

…and also, bad news for anyone reading this post - recent research has shown that Hannibrainworms are extremely contagious, and if you’ve gotten this far, I’m sorry to inform you that you almost definitely have them.

[mizuribbons]

getting a new hyperfixation can be great! but why the fuck do i have to now have a hyperfixation on fUCKING PRION DISEASES OF ALL THINGS.

[tropicalcontinental]

[stoneagedevil]

If you are still taking requests, I have one for you 🥺 how would Hannibal and Anton react to the reader having cardiomyopathy (aka a weak heart). Because of her condition reader faints a lot and is danger of going into cardiac arrest if she gets scared or frightened. If you don’t feel comfortable taking this request, please feel free to ignore it. Thanks, love your work! :)

IMAGINES/HEADCANONS: Anton Chigurh x Reader | Hannibal Lecter x Reader

Reader with a weak heart/fainting condition.

TW/CW: Fainting, death, guns, cannibalism, reader being described as pretty, medication, break in.

——————

HANNIBAL:

Because you’re so heavily affected when frightened, both would tread extremely lightly around you. Of course, there’s only so much one can do when you lead the lives Hannibal and Anton do.

Hannibal would do everything in his power to keep you from finding out who he truly is. His worst nightmare had turned from his inner circle becoming wary of him, to you finding out, leaving him, fainting, or even going into cardiac arrest. He’d kill anyone for you as to not actually kill you because of your condition.

If the chance comes where you do faint around him, he’s incredibly quick in noticing the signs. If he can smell cancer, he can definitely sense days when your condition is a little worse than usual. He immediately wraps a cautious arm around your waist when you mention you’re feeling lightheaded.

There was an incident where you fainted, nearly clipping your head on the sharp edge of his dining room table. If not your Hannibal practically diving to cup your head, there surely would’ve been a trip to the ER.

As a doctor, he reminds you of your medication, keeping an extra bottle on his person at all times as well. He picks up your prescriptions, always ensuring they’re the right ones, if there is a change in medication, he monitors you in order to make sure you have no adverse reactions to the medicine.

Hannibal takes great care in ensuring that there is no cross contamination when cooking his special cuts, and your dinner. Hannibal already has to be on his toes when seeing a doctor, as tests could reveal his prion disease, induced by his taste for human flesh. But Hannibal also has to be careful with how he feeds you. Hannibal already understands the risks of cannibalism, not particularly concerned about brain damage and the like, but with your condition, a prion disease could make your weak heart that much weaker.

Despite the fact that he enjoys feeding his victims to his inner circle of investigators, he’d sooner cut off his right hand than feed you people. After all, despite being animals in his eyes, no person could ever be good enough for you to eat….

lest it was him being served.

ANTON:

Anton shows his concern for you in a different manner. Under no circumstances are you allowed on his trips. Besides the chance of stray bullets catching in your flesh sending you into a panic that’s sure to affect your heart, you must be kept at a perfect temperature keep your heart healthy. Anton doesn’t let you leave in the cold. He doesn’t let you leave in the sweltering heat. If you need something, he’ll get it himself and probably get it done quicker too.

Anton keeps your medication stocked, checking over the expiration dates, questioning on whether or not you’ve taken your dose for the day.

Before tracking down a target, he makes sure you’ll be well taken care of while he’s away.

There was an incident where a target had managed to track down where you live. In a phone call, Anton felt the tables had been turned on him when his target said that he’d kill his partner. Llewelyn Moss might have failed in saving himself and his wife, but Anton would certainly not.

Your heart leaped at the sound of gunfire shooting out your lock, and you scrambled for the bedroom, quickly locking the door, opening the window, and diving under the bed. You sure as hell weren’t jumping out your window, as you were on the second floor. Your hyperventilating and rising blood pressure led you to feel light headed, your vision fading to black.

At the sight of the lock being shot into pieces, Anton’s chest tightened uncomfortably, and his brow scrunched almost imperceptibly. He kicked open the door quickly checking the corners of the house with his pistol. Of course, he’d navigated your home a billion times over, could even do so with his eyes closed. The man who’d promised to kill you didn’t stand a chance against him, but he wasn’t concerned about that. The concern was whether you stood a chance against the intruder. Checking the pulse of the man he’d shot, he quickly set off to find you.

He came to your bedroom door first, swallowing thickly when he saw the lock shot out as well. He drew his pistol, entering the room swiftly. He took notice of the window, rushing to it and looking down. Nothing. He closed his eyes, trying to listen for a sign of you - and wouldn’t you know it, he heard soft breathing from under the bed. He kneeled, peeking under the bedskirt, his eyes being met with your pretty face.

Of course. You’re smart, while you may not be able to fight very well due to your condition, you were incredibly sly and an excellent trickster. His lips quirked up slightly at the thought of the target looking out the window and deciding to turn back to the living room to find you outside, only to be met with the barrel of Anton’s pistol and a swift shot to the face.

He would drag your unconscious body out from under the bed, lay you softly down onto it, and time your pulse. After making sure you were truly safe, he’d shut the window, and turn the temperature dial to the right level for you and your heart.

He’d then take a seat next to your bed, watching your chest rise and fall until you woke.

——————-

Thank you so much for saying you love my work! I very much appreciate it. I hope I met/exceeded your expectations with this.

[mossymandibles]

I'm sure it's all lore that will be revealed in due time, but could you tell us about some of the side effects of consuming the celestial flesh?

I’m definitely not good at working linearly and slow at story plot reveal right now anyway, so happy to answer lol

Also, I wasn’t sure how to gage how much context this answer needed so sorry in advance for the long answer 😭. And cw for graphic descriptions of disease/body horror stuff.

Tl;dr Eating Yvishnir eventually caused evolutionary entropy that sometimes causes horrors.

It’s said that Yvishnir (the body not in the ocean) was a fallen star from long ago, before humanity and the fall of Tartarus(ocean body). The primordials, (Furies and sea dragons) were the ancient fish and birds that fed on Yvishnir in order to sustain their size and godhood and multiply on Earth as its continued keepers. They grew jealous over humanity’s progress and out of fear they buried Yvishnir so humans wouldn’t find it, and hid themselves away. That’s how part of the creation myth goes anyway. Then Tartarus fell and uncovered Yvishnir once again, drawing the primordials out and changing the sea.

So when I say ‘eating the flesh’, I mostly mean the Crux. At first, when Yvishnir was discovered and exposed to the atmosphere, it produced something called Crux which permeated the corpse and oozed from it as a liquid, thought to be a type of otherworldly bacterium or ichor to help it decompose. It caused a sort of explosion of hyper biodiversity/evolution, starting with plants. Here are some examples, mostly some fungi:

Most Humans didn’t really consider eating the Crux of course.

There were a few eccentrics and cults however that started the ball rolling. They would mostly eat it from fungi that had grown around Yvishnir, as well as cooking with it. This caused versions of human evolution, where they began to evolve into the Myce and other species to repopulate as, genetically merging with fungi in order to survive the new world. They’re under the blanket term ‘Hox Strays’, who make up most of Marrowtide and other known civilization islands to this day. There are different variations of these and their mutations have ‘stabilized’ over many generations but that’s another story.

As for Yvishnir, there was a point where the Crux changed its properties, becoming more crystalline. Entropy took over the longer the body was exposed. Even the very insects that were feeding on it began to quickly horrifically mutate and grow. People would say that demons were being birthed from its rotted juices. The Crux began to bring on less desirable effects. Humans classified it as several new forms of horrific diseases ranging from otherworldly prions to the very DNA itself denaturing and mutating.

✨Some outcomes include but are not limited to;✨

>Victims known to have fits of uncontrollable laughter while bleeding from orifices. Several cysts that had broken out on the skin were found to contain bits of teeth, hair and even eyes, like they were growing them.

>Some victims became more beast-like but at the cost of their minds and insatiable hunger for more of the celestial flesh/Crux.

>Victims first described it as a tingling sensation in their chest and extremities. Their blood began to change its molecular structure to be crystalline as well. Cells became shard-like, until their blood eventually hardened completely. It could be seen poking through skin, like they were full of glass.

>Worse still, in a sort of sped up form of the first outcome, they can become a never ending cycle of constantly evolving body parts, growing biomass like cancerous tumors of body parts forever in bloom, eg. growing several hands from your eye or numerous organs. The body can’t sustain this and it pretty much ends in death.

These modern day effects were mostly observed by The Ladder and they determined that Yvishnir was not to be consumed by organisms any longer. In the modern day it is safely contained in Hearth, which is the name of the quarantined citadel outside of The Fever, serving god knows what purpose aside from genetic experiments they’re rumored to be continuing with the remaining crystalline Crux Root.

The primordials felt that those who continued eating the Crux were forsaken, punished for eating the god. They along with others had migrated far, far away at that point, populating the mountains of Zenith and oceans that no one dared to sail through. The body of Yvishnir faded into legends. Even people living within Fever and the isles surrounding it knew less and less about the body as time went on, more focused on surviving day to day.

Their are cases where people have somehow managed to preserve the liquid form of Crux, said to still be procured and preserved when the body was first uncovered and would thus have the least amount of risk involved.

Some people hunt mermaids for the soul purpose of searching the contents of their stomach, to see if they have remnants of Tartarus in them.

With Tartarus it’s all based on theory because no one is able to get down there to see wtf is going on, they only see the results.

[figitorynonsenseptii]

jashpeople approve we ball

anyways so. cracks knuckles lets GO

we're calling this the 'The Spongiform Encephalopathy" AU, or for better terms, "Soul Wasting"

new names for them because Why Not,,,,, I wanna,,,,,,,,,, this is for their infected forms:

Heart becomes Coronary

Soul becomes Pseudocoma

And Mind becomes Supranuclear

disclaimer im not all too medical & shit i just happen to think ~99% fatal disease are really fucking cool

cw for. You know. Pr ion Disease. its a horrific disease that i find interesting ok uhhh. but emphasis on horrific

summary: whole's body mysteriously breaking down Oh what the fuck we're wasting away. Shit goes to hell :(

ok so, in this, whole gets prion disease.

all is fine for a while, aside from occasional weird stuff in the headspace's functioning

but alas, things start breaking down

it starts with mind first, he gains a stagger, loses weight, tremors and such

naturally, soul is worried, heart too but he's standing by the belief that he's just really sick <he's not wrong to an extent??>

so, he's bedridden, sick. unfortunately, that also impairs the whole's thinking and all.... fuck.... oh dea r

his headaches get WORSE, the insomnia, coordination issues, insomnia begin to come in, so now soul's taking care of him since he is in a Bad state

at this point, here comes the part where it sounds like an infection au:

supranuclear becomes sensitive to bright light, frankly loses his whole logic motif? holes start tearing in his skin, spurs & stuff, the slow degenerative state of his body overall. his head is never upright anymore, etc etc (design coming,,, at some point)

soul continues to try and help him, but he's already long gone but results are unsuccessful

meanwhile, whole is losing balance, slurring, suffering a good amount of supranuclear's symptoms, just not on as much of a level. he's likely went to a hospital (hasn't had it diagnosed, likely, CJD is pretty hard to detect if i remember correctly) or the same bedridden predicament as him

they agree to throw it into apathy at some point. it's a husk of mind now.

at some point, soul's next.

his deterioration is much faster (a few weeks compared to the slow rate of... it), and this fucking freaks heart out because its predicament was. an unsavory experience, not one he wants to see again

he falls in depression and back like how he was during the worst of cacophony. Slurred speech, restlessness, muscle contractions, coordination problems, etc.

It undergoes similar degenerative changes, though with more happening to the teeth, ears, and legs.

unlike supranuclear, pseudocoma becomes frenzied.

First thing heart does is hide, after having agreed with Soul to lock him in that room after things got worse and worse. Unfortunately, the damned thing breaks out at some point.

And so, he pulls out the gun in a state of panic, (it could be contagious, it could spread.) {it's inevitable.} and shoots it, multiple times.

Pseudocoma, with staggered steps, summons its trident once more, fear and rationale lost to the deteoration of his mind.

The structures of the headspace finally begins to fall, cracks spur on throughout the "walls", heart feels hot pain within his head and chest. Everything's slowing down.

Finally, Heart's becoming Coronary.

7 minutes, feeling like forever, he wastes away like the other two, as whole passes.

Oh wtf ok i did not mean to do that much

yea. thats abt it. they do live on as sort of,, zombies afterward. (im leaving supranuclear's fate open ended)

good day! thats all harass me for more

[ask-the-parabalis-gang]

E L A F I P H O B I A

INCLUDES: Patchy Skelter, Dr. Nick Orgon CWS: Phobic reaction, paranoia, hypochondria (specifically centered around prions and CWD), mentioned description of a car crash

Fallen leaves crunched underfoot as the two strode along the narrow path through the forest. Patchy’s wonder-filled expression at the beautiful foliage around her was heavily contrasted by Orgon’s, though she didn’t mind; the time they spent together was still a treasure to her. Soft humming mingled with the sound of wind that rustled the multihued leaves, pulling a few from their branches and blowing them toward the ground, all of which Orgon seemed oblivious of as his cold eyes remained fixed on the ground before him - at least, until his name was called.

“Dr. Orgon?”

He glanced over at Patchy, who was watching him quizzically. “Are you okay? Sorry, you just seemed a little, ah… preoccupied.”

Orgon’s gaze lingered on his companion for a few seconds before returning to the ground ahead. “Ms. Skelter, I’m always preoccupied,” he murmured, hoarse voice low despite the fact that the two were the only ones in the area. 

“Anything I can help with?”

Bright green eyes widened with hope as Patchy shuffled ever so slightly closer to Orgon, keeping just enough distance to ensure his comfort. He shook his head in response, however, eliciting a soft sigh from Patchy. 

“Oh well, if you ever need anything, let me know!” she said, a warm smile on her face. “I know I say that a lot, but I really mean it!”

Deep inside, Patchy knew that nothing would come from her words. It had been years since the incident, and nothing had changed. It didn’t matter to her too much, however - she still loved him all the same. 

These thoughts were quickly wiped from her mind as she looked back up ahead, and she gasped, flinging out an arm to halt Orgon in his tracks.

“Look!”

Her voice was a whisper-shout as she pointed up ahead at a small clearing. “There’s two of them - oh my goodness, they’re so pretty!”

Orgon peered up ahead at where Patchy was pointing, easily spotting what had gotten her so excited. Two deer were grazing up ahead, tall and auburn in the light of the setting sun, and at the sound of her awestruck voice, they lifted their heads to look directly at Orgon, watching him with wide, far-too-innocent eyes.

They were too close for comfort - why were they so close? Why weren’t they running away? They had to be diseased, that was the only logical explanation. They had no fear of him, and they could sense his own. They were going to come for him, for both of them, and infect them. There was nothing he could do to stop them.

Orgon could feel his heart pounding in his chest as he stared ahead, rooted to the spot yet so desperately wishing to move, to run, before something horrible happened just like it did before. He felt, so ironically that it was almost funny, like one of them, like a godforsaken deer - trapped in the headlights of eyes that were far too kind, knowing the contamination and sin that lay beyond them, contamination that seeped from those familiar eyes that he thought he knew and leeched into the hearts of the innocent, contamination that he could feel embedded into his skin with every touch, making him feel so, so unbelievably cold-

He was going to die.

“Dr. Orgon-?!”

The voice dragged him back to reality with a jolt so abrupt that it pulled a strangled gasp from his throat, and he took several steps back, hands clenching into fists as he pressed his eyes shut. His body shuddered, not just with the fear that he was trying so desperately to suppress, but also with a far-too-familiar chill that mingled with the memories lingering in his mind.

The horrific sound of shattering glass and ice mixed with that of twisting, breaking metal tore through him like the bitter, unforgiving cold that consumed in its entirety, rending the sanity from his heart and leaving behind nothing but pure, unbridled terror-

Yet his hands remained so, so warm. 

Opening his eyes once again, he could see Patchy before him, her hands gently gripping onto his own as she stared up at him with fright. 

“Doc- oh my goodness, what happened? Was it the deer? Did you see something? Did I do something? Oh my- here, take a breath, a deep breath with me, okay? You’re safe, we both are.”

Orgon’s fingers intertwined with Patchy’s as he looked up, staring past her for a moment - thank God, they were gone now, but they could come back. He had to get off this path, he had to get away from where the deer might’ve been in case they were contaminated, in case- 

“Doc, look at me. Please try to take a breath.”

He forced himself to look back at Patchy, shakily doing as she instructed and earning a somewhat relieved smile from her. Her hands squeezed his own as she prompted him to take another deep breath, and then another, until his hands had stopped shaking and it was ever so slightly easier to keep his focus on her.

“You’re doing a good job,” Patchy murmured, taking a small step closer to Orgon. “How are you feeling right now? You don’t have to tell me what happened if you’re not comfortable doing so, but-”

“I don’t like deer,” Orgon forced out through gritted teeth, his voice startlingly higher than usual. God, he sounded so weak - Patchy likely thought he was insane now, for having such a ridiculous fear. 

She hadn’t been there. All she saw were thin legs and twitching ears and wide, innocent eyes, not looking past their harmless demeanor and seeing disease, weakness, prions infecting those that were oblivious to their presence. Oh, how he longed to see innocence there too - how he wished to be oblivious as he had once been, long ago.

But she saw innocence in him, too, and that scared Orgon more than anything. He couldn't be oblivious, not when she was in danger, not when he could lose her.

“Oh- oh my goodness, I had no idea,” Patchy fretted, looking down. “I’m sorry, I really didn’t- I didn’t even know there was a phobia for deer! They’re just so cute - then again, so are dogs, and Pith has something similar too - I’m so sorry, I really didn’t know, but I’ll keep that in mind… do you want to go home now? Do you-”

“Yes.” Orgon’s gaze was fixed behind Patchy once again, where the two deer had once been. They were nowhere near that part of the woods, but he was still so afraid. Pathetic, really. He was pathetic - and still so goddamn cold. “I would like that.”

[selamat-linting]

WELCOME (new pinned)

✨ Erase, mid-20s but not mid, he/him and she/her. cwk (if you know you know). transmisogyny exempt, southeast asian, and very much broke. marxist-leninist with cringe interests, the block button is free to use btw. and im critical against religion and spirituality as a whole. im also critical against psychiatry and pro abolishing the family and marriage, and copyright laws. im open to people asking questions about basic dialectical materialism and indonesian politics / history ✨

Warnings :

-I try always, but im bad at tagging. esp for suggestive/sexual content. so, minors dni, sorry. feel free to drop an ask if i mistagged a post or forgot to put appropriate content warnings.

-anyway potentially triggering / squick posts are usually grouped in #mental illness posting, #suggestive, #nsft, #thirstposting #kink stuff #sa cw #suicide cw #abuse cw #religious trauma #religion #racism #transmisogyny #transphobia

-blank blogs get blocked

interests, personal lore, important posts to read and other stuff under readmore

Post Highlights

list of posts i recommend to read and use

list of us terrorism, political intervention, and war crimes against humanity

some reading material on usa's collaboration with nazis during the holocaust

short reading list about us imperialism

free palestine masterposts

family abolition reading list

japanese ww2 atrocities

donation links for palestine

For indonesians

i doubt there's many of you on tumblr but *shrugs*

a short thread on west papua's history

resources on free west papua (might need to use a vpn or anyonymox to access)

news, analysis, history, and general resource of learning indonesian politics/issues in both indonesian and english

Other resources

stuff around the web that could make your life easier

diy hrt wiki

free media and piracy resources

reddit's /r/piracy megathread (backup version on rentry)

Interests

(written as of november 2023)

Main fandoms : parahumans, homestuck, the locked tomb, slenderverse, disco elysium, pro wrestling, pmmm, yuyuyu

White boy of the month (has won this award since september 2023) : cm punk

characters i relate way too much for it to be normal : aradia megido, rose lalonde, taylor hebert, cunoesse, denji, ulixes the echo maker, ishmael (moby dick), johnny truant, jennifer check.

other hobbies : building houses in the sims 4, learn web programming, urban exploration (though im not doing this as often as i'd like these days), listening to music and going to local shows

other things i like : mice, prion disease, marine biology, piracy

currently doing : reading house of leaves, running a cm punk sideblog @punkitypunker, transforming the willow creek sims 4 world, going insane in general

[bludraws094]

fun fact!

(cw for cannibalism)

in the song “suburbia overture / greetings from mary bell township! / (vampire) culture / love me, normally”, one of the lyrics is “i got kuru from your sister and died laughing in jail”

kuru is a rare prion disease that is caught by eating human brains, and one of the symptoms is laughing

he got arrested for cannibalism and then died from a disease caused by cannibalism

[pissfizz]

hey uhh any chance you can put a cw on the posts mentioning prion disease? Medical paranoia moment

Oh shit yeah sorry!!!

[d1cks1e-st1x]

the characters i drew btw!!! a lot are off model cuz i drew them from memory

‼️ cw for mentions of pretty much every form of abuse, sexual assault, suicide, alcohol abuse, pedophilia and cannibalism. it’s a story with lots of dark themes please approach with caution. ‼️

Sebastian (chupacabra). butcher who sold human dubiously sourced meat. kept animals to keep up appearances of selling meat that was not a person and abused them more or less for the hell of it. died after contracting rabies from one of the dogs he kept. doesn’t look half bad for 30 (he is 21).

Chul Moo (kumiho). a serial rapist and murderer. but like we stay silly. killed himself to escape arrest. died with that cigarette in his mouth.

Delun (qilin). medical prodigy who made several healthcare breakthroughs and tried to distribute medical care for free. died by sudden respiratory attack and didn’t get medical attention fast enough. autism creature.

Abayomi (pheonix) (as a tiny doodle). a recovered alcoholic who became a substance abuse counsellor. carried a lot of guilt and self loathing about his alcoholism due to a fear of becoming like his father, who was also an alcoholic, and abused him and his other parent. died due to liver failure induced by a relapse. gods saddest most miserable creature.

Aishik (abaia). the youngest character, only 18 when he died. he worked at an orphanage. died trying to save a child when the building collapsed. all of the evil people make fun of him for actually having taken care of orphans like some kind of good guy stereotype.

Anna (wolpertinger). an elementary/middle school teacher who was so so niceys and would never ever ever do something bad (child molester). died after being poisened by one of her victims. women’s wrongs etc.

Chiyo (baku). a religious and spiritual leader who upon creation my sister realized was accidentally a little cult leadery but like she’s good like imagine if there was a cult leader but genuinely a good person who improved people’s lives. died due to complications with a variety of chronic illnesses. i wont her.

Austin (dropbear). cannibal <3. he was raised by a single mother until he was 4, when his mother died suddenly and due to a concoction of shock, intrusive thoughts, grief, panic, and being 4, he started eating her. was in the foster system until he ran away age 12 and started living on the streets. ended up eating another person out of desperation and from there began developing an addiction to human meat. died by kuru (cannibalism induced prion disease). has tapeworms.

and these two are some of the Watchers!! the Watchers don’t have names but the characters refer to these two as Ouruborus and Dog respectively. Ouruborus is more heavily featured in an alternate version of the story i didn’t explain here (it’s a tournament arc) and Dog is more focused on in the main story. the two are the main speaker in their respective paths.

the other 4 characters not featured here are Chris (kelpie), Kal (hellhound), Chime (snow lion), and Daiki (raiju). Chris and Kal are the two other Evil Guys and Chime and Daiki are the other two Good Guys.

sorry to Dove for debuting ur characters for you but like you weren’t going to smh i gotta do everything myself!!!!

You should draw some FBoWs of your choice

i drew so many fbows of my choice

dove hasn’t really talked abt these guys anywhere but uhhhhh i think they’re cool so i’ll talk abt them for her

these guys are from my sisters oc story For Better Or Worse (fbow). it’s a story set in the afterlife, where after death, humans wake up with the head of the animal they are deemed most similar to in life. they spend time in this afterlife realm until they feel closure, and in this time they gradually transform into their creature until they have fully changed, and then they’re reincarnated as that animal. the realm is run by Watchers, unsettling non human creatures who, though not malicious, cannot truly understand human emotion in the same way humans cannot truly know how ants feel.

the story focuses on 12 characters who were so exceptional in life that they woke up with the heads of mythical creatures. 6 were exceptionally good and 6 were exceptionally evil. they can’t reincarnate in these forms because their creatures can’t exist, so the Watchers tell them that they need to either Better or Worse in order to change into real animals and reincarnate. if they fully transform before getting better/worse then they’ll be stuck in the afterlife forever.

you should ask her abt them they’re really cool and swag!!!

[stainlesssteellocust]

I wonder if you can get kuru from eating your own flesh

[newdougsblog]

hi, can you please elaborate on that thing you said about prion diseases being transmissible via plants?? like wHat?

Hi, thanks for the question! I’m more than happy to elaborate ☺️

CW: Description of scientific experiments that caused harm to animals

An experiment done in 2015 (the full scientific paper can be found HERE) exposed plant roots to the brain matter from hamsters infected with prion diseases. (Yes, hamsters are often used in research related to prions, along with mice. That’s because they can serve as models for how the human body might react, and can be infected with infectious prion proteins derived from human tissues.) When other hamsters were fed these plants, they developed prion diseases. They also exposed the plants to waste from infected hamsters and deer and detected that the infectious prion proteins had attached themselves to the leaves and roots of the plants. Upon doing the same experiments with non-infected material, no such signals were found on the plants. Even infectious material in the soil can bind to the plant.

It’s quite an interesting experiment—the researchers exposed the plants to infectious materials from humans, deer, hamsters, and mice. All of them were detected in the plants. These results demonstrate prion protein’s resilience, adaptability, and efficiency in bridging biological barriers between species.

I totally rambled there, but I hope this answers your question!!

[snarp]

Now’s a good time for Mad Cow Disease to make a comeback in the US...

[newdougsblog]

So I was bored and started scrolling through the notes and reblog tags for this post and saw some really interesting questions/responses! If it's alright with y'all, I'd like to answer some of them to the best of my ability.

I've tagged the lovely individuals who posted the responses, so if that includes you, hello! If someone else already responded to what you said, I apologize in advance! I just think this stuff is very cool and enjoy talking about it.

I once again want to state that I am not an expert on prions, but currently work in a prion lab, which I would hope gives me a bit more knowledge and experience to work with than the average person when it comes to this topic. That being said, if I've said something that you know is blatantly wrong, please let me know! I'm always happy to correct and learn from my mistakes.

Ok, let's dive right in! Detailed conversation of prion diseases under the cut!

Quick shout-out to @grison-in-space who was spitting FACTS about the transmission of prions via soil. I unfortunately saw your reblog after I started making this post and am too lazy to transfer everything, but I see you, icon. Here's the post with their wonderful addition if you'd like to read about it: CHECK IT OUT!

On a very similar note, I'd like to start with this question someone messaged me with. I answered it in a post, but just want to promote it because making new friends is fun:

@extracrunchyboybutter

Sorry, friend, but I'm literally gonna copy and paste my answer to ya. Thanks again for the question, I really enjoyed answering it!

An experiment done in 2015 (the full scientific paper can be found HERE) exposed plant roots to the brain matter from hamsters infected with prion diseases. (Yes, hamsters are often used in research related to prions, along with mice. That’s because they can serve as models for how the human body might react, and can be infected with infectious prion proteins derived from human tissues.) When other hamsters were fed these plants, they developed prion diseases. They also exposed the plants to waste from infected hamsters and deer and detected that the infectious prion proteins had attached themselves to the leaves and roots of the plants. Upon doing the same experiments with non-infected material, no such signals were found on the plants. Even infectious material in the soil can bind to the plant.

It’s quite an interesting experiment—the researchers exposed the plants to infectious materials from humans, deer, hamsters, and mice. All of them were detected in the plants. These results demonstrate prion protein’s resilience, adaptability, and efficiency in bridging biological barriers between species.

@lockrum

When a regular prion protein misfolds, it can then "pass on" that misfolded conformation to other prion proteins, resulting in an accumulation of these misfolded, infectious proteins. The development of prion diseases is very similar to that of Alzheimer's. Both diseases are known as proteinopathies. A proteinopathy is a disease caused by abnormal protein structures that disrupt normal cellular and bodily functions. These similarities result in slight overlaps between our studies and those being done on Alzheimer's. Hopefully, we can help each other out!

...So to answer your question, it's not so much "asymptomatic." It's more that prion diseases have a very long incubation period. Very sorry for how sidetracked I got!

@wheatless

UGH YES YOU ARE SO RIGHT

Prions can withstand proteases (enzymes that catalyze and speed up the breakdown of proteins), heat, formaldehyde, and radiation. As a result, they can remain in certain external environments for years. They're very annoying.

@morgrimmoon

In regards to the transmission of CWD between animals and humans, studies have shown that it can be transferred to humans. My lab actually published one study about just that!

@fell-reverie

I totally understand and respect this point. That being said, I think there are a lot of ways to combat rhetoric. Approaching this specific argument from a scientific point of view is, in my opinion, the most effective way to do it. I'm not the most qualified individual to get into this point, though.

Nonetheless, this gave me and others the opportunity to talk about something that we think is super cool!

@acavatica

Ok this one just made me smile. I was just there like "that's me! I'm the prion researcher!!"

AND YES, PRIONS ARE TERRIFYING BUT THEY'RE SO. COOL.

@interplanet--janet

First of all: LOVE the username!

Second of all: Ohhhh that book sounds so interesting!!! Thank you for the book rec, friend!

Alrighty, that's all for now, folks! If you made it this far, thanks for reading! Hope everyone has a nice holiday season free of prion diseases 😊

stop saying "cannibalism causes prion diseases" this is a common misconception

gonna preface this by saying I'm not trying to be weird or edgy here I just have an interest in diseases and find it frustrating to constantly see people spreading misinformation abt how they originate and spread

this misconception comes from an epidemic of kuru, a type of prion disease (you might also seem em referred to as TSEs) that broke out among the Fore people of Papau New Guinea in the 1950s. until colonial rule, the Fore people practiced a form of funerary cannibalism in which a loved one's flesh, including organs, would be consumed after they died. this practice isn't exclusive to the Fore, and has no profound inherent dangers; cooking and eating human flesh doesn't have any more health risks associated with it than eating the flesh of an animal. what started the epidemic wasn't the practice of cannibalism, but rather a stroke of incredibly, incredibly bad luck.

(more under the cut; there's cannibalism and disease talk, but nothing graphic.)

a prion disease is caused by infectious prions in the brain. this is a type of misfolded protein that can cause other proteins to become misfolded as well. the misfolding of these proteins results in a deadly neurodegenerative disease. CJD (creutzfeldt-jakob disease), one type of prion disease, is capable of spontaneously occuring in otherwise healthy individuals with no family history of the disease; this is likely what happened to one unfortunate member of the Fore community. most of the time, only contact with brain and spinal tissue transmit this prion disease, so the women and children who traditionally ate these tissues soon began to present symptoms of the disease. the rest is fairly self explanatory; the community has no experience whatsoever with the disease, so doesn't know how to stop the spread; the afflicted die, and when they are eaten, the disease spreads to a new set of people, they die, the disease spreads more, et cetera. this continues until the practice of funerary cannibalism is brought to an end, and the last known sufferer of the disease dies in 2009.

so there's a couple things to note here. firstly, CJD, the disease that likely struck the initial sufferer, is incredibly rare. it affects roughly one in a million people, and only 85% of these cases are the result of spontaneous generation. secondly, the only reason that it was able to spread to such a degree is because cannibalism was practiced regularly in this culture. to act as though any cannibalism (ESPECIALLY in a culture where cannibalism is not normal) will lead to prion disease is absolutely absurd. the likelihood of even encountering someone with a prion disease is wildly low, and even then, if the brain and spinal tissue are avoided, the disease most likely won't transmit between the consumer and the person being eaten.

ultimately, saying that cannibalism will give you a prion disease is as absurd as saying that going to the doctor for a blood transfusion is going to give you HIV. blood transfusion might be capable of spreading HIV, but in normal circumstances, this will not happen. there is nothing inherent to blood transfusion that causes HIV, just as there's nothing inherent to cannibalism that causes prion diseases. yes, cannibalism would most likely give you a prion disease; if you happened to live in a community that already regularly practiced cannibalism, where a prion disease was already running rampant. yes, cannibalism will give you a prion disease; if you happen to stumble into one of the one people per million who has one, fail to recognize a single symptom that might deter you, and then choose to eat brain or spinal tissue rather than meat.

once again, this isn't trying to be some weird edgy cannibalism joke, i just think it's important that people have an understanding of where diseases come from and how they spread. kudos if you read this whole tangent