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bump1nthen1ght · 3 months ago

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A Very Monstrous Kinktober (2024) Day 10 - Knotting

Kink: Knotting

Pairing: GN!Reader x M!Werewolf

Other Kinks: Dirty Talk

Word Count: 1425 words

Kinktober Masterlist

“I don’t know if this is a good idea.”

You’re impressed by Ricky’s composure. His cock is bright red, fur clumping together with sweat as his dick bobs with pulsing blood, already leaking precum.

“But I’ve been practicing so hard.” You whine, eyes darting between your boyfriends throbbing knot and the dildo half inside you, your hand slowly pushing it in and out. “I want it so bad, Ricky. Can’t we at least try?” The dild sinks to its base, fake silicone balls pressed right up to your ass. “Don’t you want to knot me?”

“I d-do. Trust me.” Rick pants, cock twitching as he watches your hole take the entire dildo like it’s nothing. “But…you’re human. And my knot is-”

“So big. I know.” You say with drool practically dripping down your chin, eyeing up his throbbing cock. The idea of Ricky, fully seated inside you, plugging you full of his cum and cock, makes your heart jump. You imagine sitting there for hours, warming his cock as his knot finally deflates, knowing you’ve been properly claimed by your big handsome werewolf boyfriend. “That’s what these are for.” You point at the bottle of lube by your side and the dildo currently splitting you open. “I want this honey. I’m not scared.” You emphasize your moans as you force the dildo even deeper, hoping the erotic display is enough to overcome his (rational) fear.

It seems to be effective, if the way Ricky bites his lip and his hand wraps around his knot are any indication. You let your thighs spread wider, hand running up your chest and stomach as you arch your back. Batting your eyelashes and pouting your lip, you look like something out of a virus disguised as porn ad.

“Can we at least try? Please?”

Ricky’s tail thumps behind him, an unmistakable sign that your plan is working. Ricky’s looks quickly from your face to your hole, both desperate and wanton.

“.....Okay.”

You practically squeal with joy, quickly pulling the dildo out and placing it to the side. You fall eagerly onto your back, legs spread wide and grabbing for the lube. “Hold on!” Ricky laughs, slightly flattered by your excitement. “How about you get on top? It will be a little easier that way.” You nod, only a little disappointed on not being mounted and pounded like an animal, but you understand Ricky wants to take it slow. Besides, he always makes the cutest faces when you ride him; Ears twitching, eyes all scrunched up.

You crawl towards your boyfriend on all four knees, relishing the ways his eyes drink up your body as you slide in between his legs and onto his lap. You get a fresh squirt of lube onto the palm of your hand, wasting no time as you grab onto his knot and slicken it up. Ricky squeaks, his eyes going wide.

“Got to get you nice and sensitive, mister.” You purr, already sitting up on your knees and lining yourself up with his tapered tip. “Because we’re not going anywhere for a while.”

Despite all that earlier hesitance, Ricky eagerly puts his paws on your waist, adjusting you so his head perfectly notches against your hole. His tongue wets his lips, his nostrils flaring as he smells your arousal for him. His cock twitches against you, and you smirk.

You go nice and slow as you sink onto Ricky’s cock, the stretch familiar and comfortable, something you’ve done several times before. You arch your back as you do, leaning back to feel all of him scrape over your insides, watching the way he takes shaky breaths, the ways his claws slightly dig into your sides.

You finally reach the end, dick snugly seated inside you. You can feel his cock jumping as his tip reaches the end, right up against the spot that drives you crazy. Your hips swivel, biting your bottom lip at the jolt of electricity that shoots up your spine. A rumbling growl radiates from Ricky’s chest, his lips curled back in a snarl as you squeeze around his shaft.

“S-should you move, or me?”

Ricky takes another deep breath, pressing the pads of his fingers into your abdomen.

“Y-you. I don't know If I-” Ricky’s voice hitches, another shuddering breath, “I don’t know if I could control myself.”

That sentence alone makes your body pulse, whole body tightening. Ricky curses under his breath.

Resting your hands on his furry chest, you knot your fingers in the sweaty strands and find purchase, lifting up your hips until your unsheathed to the tip. You slowly sink yourself down again, looking Ricky right in the eye, planting a kiss on his wet nose.

“See, I told you baby. I’ve been practicing.”

You rise up quicker this time, setting yourself down with a little more bounce. Ricky grunts, and you can feel his thighs tense under you.

Pressing your chest against his, you start bobbing yourself up and down, up and down, never quite sinking to the base. Just working yourself on his cock, stoking the slow-burning fire in your belly. You can tell it’s driving Ricky wild, your panting breaths mixing together as he fights the urge to force you down himself. You’re sure you’ll have finger shaped bruises on yourself tomorrow.

“Feelin’ good?”

“Yeah.” Ricky pants, muzzle now knotche into the crook of your neck. His thighs twitch as you once again only reach 3/4th, so good yet not quite enough. He needs you around him, all of him.

A paw moves up your back, pushing just a bit on your spine. You chuckle between breathy moves.

“What is it, baby? You want more?.”

“Yes.” Ricky growls in your ear, his voice the deepest you’ve heard it. It takes you by surprise, once again jerking and squeezing his cock in arousal.

“Well, if you want it-” You squeal as the hand on your back turns into a grip, pressing you chest to chest and finally losing it, forcing his dick all the way to the base. The hand around your hips digs in, holding you in place as he starts fucking into you like you’re a sex toy.

“Oh, f-u-uck!” You slur out your vowels, each hit against your insides sending spots behind your eyelids.

“Feel so-” Ricky snarls against your neck, canines clicking, his long tongue slobbering over your neck, “-fucking-” a wet nose presses aginst your pulse, hot trails of breath across your skin, “-good. Shit!”

Ricky sinks deeper into his seat, balls slapping against your ass with each powerful thrust. Those powerful thighs generate quite a force, a bruising one that will leave you sore for days from now. But it’s the good kind of pain, the kind that has your stomach clenching and your mouth open in a pant.

It isn’t long before the base of Ricky’s cock starts to swell, halting your smooth fall to the end of his cock. Butterflies come to life in your stomach, still aware enough to know what's coming.

“Gonna fucking knot you.” Ricky grunts, mouth open and pressed against your neck. His canine’s knick at your pounding pulse. “Gonna keep you full of me for hours.”

“Uh-huh! Please, Ricky!”

“Such a fucking knot-slot. Fucking tempting little whore.” Ricky bites down on your neck, still gentle despite his rougher tone. It’s the heat of the moment, talking to you the way he knows you like it.

“Yes, I’m your little knot slut. I want it!” You circle your hips around, grinding down and letting the sparks fly in your stomach. “Please!”

Something presses against your hole, something throbbing and swollen. You moan and force your lower half to relax, to match the talk you were spouting earlier. Lube squelches, mixing with your sweat and slick and make it all the easier to sink it inside.

“Ah!”

“Fuck!”

The knot burns as it enters, thought not nearly as bad as if you were unprepared. But the pressure is enough to send both you and Ricky over the edge, bodies interlocked and trembling as Ricky’s cock shoots jets of cum inside you. It’s enough that it would normally spurt out the sides of his cock and onto his legs, but with his knot so firmly place, not a drop is wasted.

The two of you sit like that for a while, your head nestled in his chest fur as you catch your breath, RIcky’s still hard cock just throbbing inside of you.

“Told ya-” You say between a breath, “-I could do it.”

#my writing #reader insert #monster x reader #monster romance #gender neutral reader #kinktober #kinktober 2024 #werewolf x reader #x reader

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covid-safer-hotties · 3 months ago

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Also preserved on our archive

Not covid specific, but good to remember: Masking and other airborne disease prevention keeps you from getting other diseases like the flu too. Covid's not the only threat to your long-term health out there.

By Felicity Nelson

A study of around 500,000 medical records suggested that severe viral infections like encephalitis and pneumonia increase the risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Researchers found 22 connections between viral infections and neurodegenerative conditions in the study of around 450,000 people.

People treated for a type of inflammation of the brain called viral encephalitis were 31 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. (For every 406 viral encephalitis cases, 24 went on to develop Alzheimer's disease – around 6 percent.)

Those who were hospitalized with pneumonia after catching the flu seemed to be more susceptible to Alzheimer's disease, dementia, Parkinson's disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Intestinal infections and meningitis (both often caused by a virus), as well as the varicella-zoster virus, which causes shingles, were also implicated in the development of several neurodegenerative diseases.

The impact of viral infections on the brain persisted for up to 15 years in some cases. And there were no instances where exposure to viruses was protective.

Around 80 percent of the viruses implicated in brain diseases were considered 'neurotrophic', which means they could cross the blood-brain barrier.

"Strikingly, vaccines are currently available for some of these viruses, including influenza, shingles (varicella-zoster), and pneumonia," the researchers wrote in their paper published last year.

"Although vaccines do not prevent all cases of illness, they are known to dramatically reduce hospitalization rates. This evidence suggests that vaccination may mitigate some risk of developing neurodegenerative disease."

In 2022, a study of more than 10 million people linked the Epstein-Barr virus with a 32-fold increased risk of multiple sclerosis.

"After reading [this] study, we realized that for years scientists had been searching – one-by-one – for links between an individual neurodegenerative disorder and a specific virus," said senior author Michael Nalls, a neurogeneticist at the National Institute on Aging in the US.

"That's when we decided to try a different, more data science-based approach," he said. "By using medical records, we were able to systematically search for all possible links in one shot."

First, the researchers analyzed the medical records of around 35,000 Finns with six different types of neurodegenerative diseases and compared this against a group of 310,000 controls who did not have a brain disease.

This analysis yielded 45 links between viral exposure and neurodegenerative diseases, and this was narrowed down to 22 links in a subsequent analysis of 100,000 medical records from the UK Biobank.

While this retrospective observational study cannot demonstrate a causal link, it adds to the pile of research hinting at the role of viruses in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.

"Neurodegenerative disorders are a collection of diseases for which there are very few effective treatments and many risk factors," said co-author Andrew Singleton, a neurogeneticist and Alzheimer's researcher and the director of the Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias.

"Our results support the idea that viral infections and related inflammation in the nervous system may be common – and possibly avoidable – risk factors for these types of disorders."

This study was published in Neuron.

Study link: www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(22)01147-3?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0896627322011473%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

#mask up #covid #pandemic #covid 19 #wear a mask #public health #coronavirus #sars cov 2 #still coviding #wear a respirator #flu #influenza #shingles #meningitis #varicella-zoster

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henrikvanderhussy · 3 days ago

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How to play the original Secrets Can Kill in 2025 without game discs

oh my god I almost just wrote 2015 instead of 2025

I've successfully been playing the original SCK for the past couple hours (including "changing discs" and reopening save files), but it's possible I could run into problems later, so no promises that this is a perfect solution.

This method still requires installing the game files, so I think it'll only work on Windows, sorry Mac users. I'm using Windows 11. I was also able to install and open the game on a Windows 10 computer, but I didn't actually attempt to play it there.

All you need are copies of the game .iso files and a virtual hard disk drive program. The post got long, so details are under the Keep Reading. It's not actually complicated, but apparently I talk a lot lol

The .iso files:

.iso files are digital replicas of optical discs (CDs, DVDs, etc). You probably don't have the original Secrets Can Kill discs, so you will need to...acquire these files.

[NOTE: My personal ethics say to not pirate shit from small studios or independent creators. HeR is a small studio and if people don't buy stuff from them, they can't afford to make new games. However, the original SCK is abandonware and literally can't be purchased, so imo, it's perfectly acceptable to pirate it.

I want to strongly discourage anyone from pirating any of the other games which can be purchased. They have 50% off sales all the time (including through today, 1/5/25) and a bunch of the games are as low as $5 when on-sale. The digital downloads don't come with any kind of restrictive licenses, so if you get a new computer, you can transfer the files and keep your games forever. Pls keep supporting HeR so that we can maybe keep getting new games]

I recommend getting the SCK .iso files from archive.org. That link will take you to a software search for Nancy Drew Secrets Can Kill. As of this post, there's only 1 result that's actually for the original SCK.

Anytime you're downloading software from a site where anyone can upload stuff, there's always a possibility of viruses. Check and see if the uploader seems sketchy (Are there comments on any of their uploads warning about viruses? Is the account brand new?). You could run the files through a virus checking program, but apparently .iso files frequently throw false positives. The SCK uploader seemed legit, but I initially downloaded and installed these on an old computer that I don't use, just in case.

There will be a bunch of files available to download. You specifically need to download the "ISO IMAGE" files. There should be two of them- disc 1 and disc 2. After downloading, I recommend moving the files out of your downloads folder because you'll need to access them frequently.

The virtual hard disk drive program:

Like I said above, .iso files are digital copies of physical discs. Similarly, the way to use the files is via a digital version of a physical disk drive. "Mounting" the .iso files to a virtual disk drive is analogous to inserting a disk into a physical drive.

Windows 8 and above has a built-in ability to mount .iso files, but when I tried that, I got a notice that the file was corrupted. The internet recommended that a dedicated program might have more functionality. I chose the Elby Virtual CloneDrive program, which is free.

Installing the game:

After downloading and installing the virtual disk drive software, navigate to your .iso files, and right click on the file for disc 1. Scroll to "Open with", and choose "Mount Files with Virtual CloneDrive". It will now show up as a CD drive in This PC in the file explorer:

Double-click to open the drive and scroll to "setup.exe". Open the file to run the game installer.

The game will install in a typical way. I think the only non-default option I chose was "No, I will install DirectX myself". I didn't actually install DirectX, but everything is working fine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idk, maybe now it's built-in to Windows or something.

Running the game:

To run the game, just open the game shortcut like a normal program. If you can't find the shortcut or didn't create one during the install, go to your C: drive -> Program Files (x86) -> Nancy Drew -> Secrets Can Kill -> Game.exe

In order for the game to run, you need to have Disc 1 still mounted to your virtual drive. Unless you specifically unmounted it, it should still be there, but if you get a pop-up that says to insert the disc, the problem is probably that the disc isn't mounted.

I was expecting that I would have to run the game in Compatibility Mode to handle that it was made for fucking Windows 98, but I didn't have to do anything. It just worked with no adjustments. A miracle!!

Changing discs:

The original Secrets Can Kill was too big to fit on a single disc at the time it was made! They split it across multiple discs by location. The school is on disc 2, while all other locations are on disc 1. So if you need to move from the diner to the school for example, you have to change discs.

When you need to change discs, you'll get this screen:

WITHOUT closing the game program, minimize the game. Easiest way is by either pressing the windows key or alt+tab. Navigate to your .iso files, right click on the new disc, and choose Mount.

Navigate back to the game and click OK. Easy as that!

Whenever you fully exit and re-open the game, you have to open it with disc 1 mounted. So if you saved while at the school, you'll open the game with disc 1, load your save, and immediately switch over to disc 2.

And I think that's everything! Phew! This got a lot longer than I planned on. Feel free to send me questions if you're having trouble, but I may not know the answer. I'm not an expert in this stuff, I just spent some time poking around at it last week is all.

Have fun! Go manatees!

#clue crew #cluecrewplaythru #sck #sck og #nancy drew games #her interactive #ccptfortnight

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mariacallous · 1 year ago

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Updated vaccines against Covid-19 are coming, just as hospitalizations and deaths due to the virus are steadily ticking up again.

Today, the US Food and Drug Administration authorized new mRNA booster shots from Moderna and Pfizer, and a panel of outside experts that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted to recommend the shots to everyone in the United States ages 6 months and older. Once Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Mandy Cohen signs off on the recommendations and the vaccines are shipped, people can start getting the boosters.

The recommendation is projected to prevent about 400,000 hospitalizations and 40,000 deaths over the next two years, according to data presented at the meeting by CDC epidemiologist Megan Wallace.

This year’s mRNA vaccines are different from the 2022 booster in a key way. Last year’s shot was a bivalent vaccine, meaning it covered two variants: the original one that emerged in China in 2019, plus the Omicron subvariant BA.5, which was circulating during much of 2022. This fall’s booster drops the original variant, which is no longer circulating and is unlikely to return. It targets just the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5, which was dominant throughout much of 2023.

Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines work by introducing a tiny piece of genetic material called messenger RNA, or mRNA, that carries instructions for making SARS-CoV-2’s characteristic spike protein. Once it is injected, cells in the body use those instructions to temporarily make the spike protein. The immune system recognizes the protein as foreign and generates antibodies against it. Those antibodies stick around so that if they encounter that foreign invader again, they will mount a response against it.

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the virus has acquired new mutations in its spike protein and elsewhere. These mutations result in new variants and subvariants that diverge from the original virus. When enough mutations accumulate, these new versions can more easily evade the antibodies created by previous vaccine doses or infections.

The constantly evolving nature of the virus is the reason health regulators decided last year to update the original mRNA vaccines, which were designed against the version of the virus that first appeared in 2019. This year, once again, the virus has changed enough to warrant an updated booster.

In June, an advisory committee to the FDA recommended that this fall’s booster be a monovalent vaccine—targeting only the then-dominant XBB.1.5 subvariant.

At that meeting, committee members reviewed evidence suggesting that the inclusion of the original variant may hamper the booster’s effectiveness against newer offshoots. “The previous bivalent vaccine contained the ancestral spike and thus skewed immune responses to the old spike,” says David Ho, a professor of microbiology at Columbia University whose research, which is not yet peer-reviewed, was among the evidence the FDA panel reviewed. “This is what we call immunological imprinting, and it results in lack of immune responses to the new spike.” He thinks taking out the old variant should optimize the immune response.

But over the past few months, even newer Omicron offshoots have arrived. Currently, EG.5.1, or Eris, is the dominant one in the United States, United Kingdom, and China. Meanwhile, a variant called BA.2.86, or Pirola, has been detected in several countries. Pirola has raised alarm bells because it has more than 30 new mutations compared to XBB.1.5.

Even though the new boosters were formulated against XBB.1.5, they’re still expected to provide protection against these new variants. “The reason is, while antibodies are important in protection against mild disease, the critical part of the immune response that’s important for protecting against severe disease is T cells,” says Paul Offit, a professor of vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania and member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee.

These cells are a different part of the immune response. Unlike antibodies, which neutralize a pathogen by preventing it from infecting cells, T cells work by eliminating the cells that have already been invaded and boosting creation of more antibodies. Both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccines produce long-lasting T cells in addition to antibodies.

It’s why, Offit says, when the Omicron wave hit in late 2021 and peaked in January 2022, the US didn’t see a dramatic increase in hospitalizations and deaths even as cases rose significantly: People’s T cells kicked into gear, even when their antibodies didn’t recognize the Omicron variant.

“In some ways,” says Offit, when it comes to vaccine booster development, “it almost doesn’t matter what we pick to target” because the coronavirus has yet to evolve away from T cell recognition. “Everything works.”

Scientists think T cells are able to protect against severe Covid because they’re recognizing parts of the virus that have remained unchanged throughout the pandemic. “I suspect that as we continue to vaccinate, there are some conserved regions [of the virus],” says Jacqueline Miller, Moderna’s head of infectious diseases. “So even with the accumulation of mutations, we’re still building on previous immunity.”

People who have hybrid immunity—that is, have had a Covid infection and have also been vaccinated—seem to have the best immune responses to new variants, she says, which suggests that previous exposure shapes and improves immune responses to new variants. Preliminary studies show that antibodies generated by previous infections and vaccinations should be capable of neutralizing Pirola.

Earlier this month, Moderna issued a press release saying that clinical trial data showed that its updated booster generated a strong immune response against Pirola, as well as the more prevalent Eris variant.

In a statement to WIRED, Pfizer spokesperson Jerica Pitts said the company continues to closely monitor emerging variants and conduct tests of its updated monovalent booster against them. Data presented at Tuesday’s CDC meeting showed that Pfizer-BioNTech’s updated booster elicited a strong neutralizing antibody response against both Eris and Pirola.

The FDA expects that Covid-19 vaccines will continue to be updated on an annual basis, unless a completely new variant emerges that requires a different approach. “We will always be a little behind the virus,” says Ho. “In this instance, we won’t suffer too much, but that might not be the case going forward. Surveillance is imperative.”

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incorrectbatfam · 11 months ago

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If you could create and add a new DC character, what would they be like?

I'm going to tell you about David, and knowing you guys, you'll agree with me when I say he should have his own comic.

David has been my best friend literally since we were 8. He is the only constant I've had through my life. He introduced me to the drums and helped me get a motorcycle after I got my license. We are each other's platonic ride or die. If he asked me to bury a body, I'd do it no question, and I know he'd do the same for me.

That said, I clearly have the braincell in this friendship.

Don't get me wrong, he's smart in certain aspects. He's a talented musician, good athlete, taught himself to fix most plumbing issues, speaks decent Japanese, easily clicks socially, and is super empathetic. But in others, he's like a plate in a knife drawer.

Some highlights from over the years:

He ate the brown paper bag his lunch came in on a field trip

He thought hot chocolate was just cocoa powder (no milk or water) in a mug and the microwave would melt it. His sister had to call the fire department

He gave a stray dog his scarf for warmth and never saw that scarf again

He licked the dust off an XBox controller

He got a speeding ticket outside the DMV literally five minutes after getting his license

He made gender reveal cupcakes to come out to the rest of our friend group when we were 17, but he threw them into a Ziploc and they jostled around his backpack for half a day before lunch

He thought closing a browser tab would get rid of a computer virus

He tried hotboxing his own car while driving

He almost seasoned his food with pepper spray before someone stopped him

He had a tire swing on a tree in his backyard. He decided to stand on it while swinging and smacked his forehead against a branch in front of him. It was literally the most hollow thwock ever, as if confirming his lack of braincells. He then proceeded to get pissed off and punch the tree. He said it was his most gender-affirming experience

He brought me along on a family road trip and used me as a footrest in the car

He frequently writes drum tabs the way he'd write guitar ones (in short the two are very different kinds of sheet music and I'd need three hands to play them). He absolutely knows better. I think he's messing with me at this point

He mistook wasabi powder for matcha

He once got drunk at a frat party, crawled out the lawn of the house, and began eating grass like a cow

I wanted to know what kissing a dude was like out of curiosity and this was before he started physically transitioning, so to make it a more "authentic" experience, he gargled Gatorade beforehand

He tried to make his first battle jacket with washable Crayola markers

He also tried to dye his hair with his sister's watercolors

He's worn the same sweatshirt since he was 14 and I think I can count on one hand how many times I've seen him wash it (I was over at his house a lot)

He's the motherfucker that wears running shorts in the snow

He thought his area code would automatically change when we moved to a new state

He once kicked a soccer ball into an oncoming train

BONUS: when he came out to his parents, they were accepting and while he was at school, his dad mounted a fish on David's bedroom door because men I guess

So yeah, if I worked at DC, I'd insert David in the background of every comic just being his chaotic himbo self. David is beyond space and time. There could be a battle on fucking Oa and David would just be there doing a kickflip. That's who I'd choose.

#character idea #original character #personal #batfamily #batfam #batman family #justice league #gotham #batman #dc comics #superheroes #don't try this at home #transgender #lgbtq #story #himbo #tw swearing #tw food mention #tw alcohol mention

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zzprompto · 5 months ago

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☆ my man

yuuji itadori x ftm reader [he / him]

sypnosis : itadori comforts a dysphoric reader who he finds staring at themselves in the mirror. (meant to be viewed as romantic.)

the lowercase is intentional !

- warnings : non-sexual nudity, female genitalia mentions.

once again, [name] finds himself infront of the mirror. he's staring at his body, the way there was two mounts of flesh on his chest instead of a flat line. he wondered if it was better that he stayed off as a woman.

despite all his staring, [name] hated it. he hated how his body looked.

all of his curves, his tits, his feminine looking features - they made him feel like less of a man. no other man had parts like his is what he always thought. he constantly put himself down because of his body, feeding himself lies due to the things he's heard spread by mouth. those words were like a virus that had settled into his mind and never left. he hated his body, and all the things that made him more 'feminine'. it was all because of other people. people that didn't understand people like him.

a small sigh escaped [name]'s lips. he was growing more and more frustrated as he stared at his body, at his chest more specifically. it made him feel all sticky, like he was strolling about on a hot and humid day, his clothes sticking to his skin and sweat pouring own his back. it was an awful feeling, and he always felt it staring at himself.

begrudgingly, [name] slips on his binder. he picks it up from the counter and slowly puts it on. he questions what the point of it was, it didn't even look like it helped him at all. it was just a contraption that squeezed his lungs and made every breath living hell. it was painful being trans. it was painful being in a body that didn't belong to you. it was painful being in a body that made you sick the more days that passed by.

as [name] was putting his binder on, a small knock on the bathroom door was heard, followed by said door opening. it revealed the one and only yuuji itadori - [name]'s boyfriend. he saw [name] struggling to put his binder on so he immediately rushed over to help. he helped the other pull the binder down, making sure it was in the correct position, covering everything.

"i take it you were having issues with your binder? that's why you were taking so long to come out?" yuuji says, a small laugh following soon after. he grinned at his boyfriend, enjoying to see him in any state - whether he was dishevelled, as handsome as ever or just about his normal day. he loved it all, and he most importantly loved [name].

[name] just sighed in response to yuuji's question. he didn't feel like answering it, mostly because he didn't want to worry yuuji. he cared too much sometimes, and as much as [name] loved it, he felt like he didn't deserve it. he felt like a fake man such as himself didn't deserve all the care and love yuuji showed him.

"yeah.. binder issues." [name] muttered as he took his shirt from the shelf of the bathroom, slipping it over his head to hide his binder. "we can go now, i've put it on now. i'm ready." he grumbled under his breath, pushing past yuuji.

however, it was clear yuuji didn't like how [name] was acting right now. he could tell something was wrong. yuuji gripped [name]'s shoulders and held him still, not letting him move. all his his training made him quite strong too, so [name] definitely couldn't move even if he tried. "i'm not letting you go until you tell me what's wrong. you seem off." yuuji states, frowning slightly at [name].

[name] sighed once more, crossing his arms over his chest to hide himself and his chest further. "i just don't get it. i don't get why you still put up with me, and i don't get why i'm stuck in a body that provides me with.. all the parts i don't want!" [name] explained his frustrations, a small groan escaping his lips soon after. yuuji seemed even more worried after hearing [name] speak.

"hey.. i put up with you because i love you." yuuji replies, ruffling [name]'s hair and grinning. he was always so cheerful, determined to brighten anyone's day - especially [name]'s. "no matter if you're stuck in this body that you hate, or a body that's the one you like. i don't care about your body, [name]. only you." the pink haired boy continued, cupping [name]'s cheeks and kissing him softly.

the trans boy looked away, a frown on his face. he pulls away from the kiss, wanting to hide away once more from the whole world. "but.. i have tits. i have a vagina. i'm not a man. i'm just playing dress up.. people will still see me as a woman no matter how hard i try and change myself." he muttered, tears forming in his eyes. "god, i'm even acting like a stereotypical woman now, huh? letting my emotions get the best of me." [name] mumbles as tears flow down his face.

yuuji wraps his arms around [name]'s body, resting his chin on the other boy's head. "sh.. sh.. calm down. none of that matters, [name]. you can have any parts, and you'll still be a man. you've worked harder than those who have been given what you want. you're fighting for your transition, for you to be comfortable in your body. that's manly as hell." yuuji mumbles, kissing [name]'s forehead. [name] looks at his boyfriend in disbelief, unsure of what to say.

"you're my man, [name]. whether or not you have the parts of a 'man', i don't care. i see you as a man, and i always will." yuuji whispered softly into [name]'s ear, kissing it after he stopped speaking. he rocked [name] in his arms too, wanting him to feel comforted by his presence.

[name] was starting to feel slightly better. sure, what yuuji said was a little and perhaps even the bare minimum, but it made him feel even better than before. he wiped his tears away, looking at yuuji with a small smile.

"thank you.. i still don't know how you put up with me.. but i'm glad you do nontheless." [name] chuckled softly as he moved back to gaze yuuji in the eyes. his eyes were now full of love, rather than the malice that were in them when he stared at his reflection earlier. "i guess i feel a little better about my.. situation." he mumbled.

yuuji pressed a kiss to [name]'s nose, still holding him close. "i'll always put up with you because you have a nice ass. exactly my type, you know?" yuuji chuckled and he winked over at [name] who retaliated by rolling his eyes.

"oh yeah, sorry. mr. 'i like someone tall with a nice, big ass.' you absolute perv." [name] muttered, pinching yuuji's cheeks inbetween his fingers. he was feeling better than before, loving all this teasing with yuuji and the playful banter. it made him forget his dysphoria.

yuuji leaned into [name], whispering into his ear. "you're my handsome man, alright? my man. i don't want to see you upset. if something is up, tell me, okay. don't stare at yourself in the mirror hating yourself." yuuji mumbled.

the salmon haired boy then kissed [name] on the lips. he held the trans boy close too, not wanting to let him go just yet. he wanted [name] to know that there was a pair of arms always willing to go around him and support him.

"i love you, my man." yuuji mumbled into [name]'s hair before kissing it softly. the other boy hummed in response and nodded. "i love you too."

and, as time went on, yuuji continued to support [name] with his transition and any dysphoria. he made sure his man was never alone.

- author's note : hope you guys enjoy this :) for any trans guys out there - you are loved and totally valid <3 don't feel like you are alone! there are people like you around the world. you are never alone.

- navigation : masterlist : request

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thoughtportal · 2 months ago

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A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears)

PublicAffairs, 288 pp., $28.00

But don’t worry—it almost never comes to this. As one park service PSA noted this summer, bears “usually just want to be left alone. Don’t we all?” In other words, if you encounter a black bear, try to look big, back slowly away, and trust in the creature’s inner libertarian. Unless, that is, the bear in question hails from certain wilds of western New Hampshire. Because, as Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling’s new book suggests, that unfortunate animal may have a far more aggressive disposition, and relate to libertarianism first and foremost as a flavor of human cuisine.

Hongoltz-Hetling is an accomplished journalist based in Vermont, a Pulitzer nominee and George Polk Award winner. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears) sees him traversing rural New England as he reconstructs a remarkable, and remarkably strange, episode in recent history. This is the so-called Free Town Project, a venture wherein a group of libertarian activists attempted to take over a tiny New Hampshire town, Grafton, and transform it into a haven for libertarian ideals—part social experiment, part beacon to the faithful, Galt’s Gulch meets the New Jerusalem. These people had found one another largely over the internet, posting manifestos and engaging in utopian daydreaming on online message boards. While their various platforms and bugbears were inevitably idiosyncratic, certain beliefs united them: that the radical freedom of markets and the marketplace of ideas was an unalloyed good; that “statism” in the form of government interference (above all, taxes) was irredeemably bad. Left alone, they believed, free individuals would thrive and self-regulate, thanks to the sheer force of “logic,” “reason,” and efficiency. For inspirations, they drew upon precedents from fiction (Ayn Rand loomed large) as well as from real life, most notably a series of micro-nation projects ventured in the Pacific and Caribbean during the 1970s and 1980s.

None of those micro-nations, it should be observed, panned out, and things in New Hampshire don’t bode well either—especially when the humans collide with a newly brazen population of bears, themselves just “working to create their own utopia,” property lines and market logic be damned. The resulting narrative is simultaneously hilarious, poignant, and deeply unsettling. Sigmund Freud once described the value of civilization, with all its “discontents,” as a compromise product, the best that can be expected from mitigating human vulnerability to “indifferent nature” on one hand and our vulnerability to one another on the other. Hongoltz-Hetling presents, in microcosm, a case study in how a politics that fetishizes the pursuit of “freedom,” both individual and economic, is in fact a recipe for impoverishment and supercharged vulnerability on both fronts at once. In a United States wracked by virus, mounting climate change, and ruthless corporate pillaging and governmental deregulation, the lessons from one tiny New Hampshire town are stark indeed.

“In a country known for fussy states with streaks of independence,” Hongoltz-Hetling observes, “New Hampshire is among the fussiest and the streakiest.” New Hampshire is, after all, the Live Free or Die state, imposing neither an income nor a sales tax, and boasting, among other things, the highest per capita rate of machine gun ownership. In the case of Grafton, the history of Living Free—so to speak—has deep roots. The town’s Colonial-era settlers started out by ignoring “centuries of traditional Abenaki law by purchasing land from founding father John Hancock and other speculators.” Next, they ran off Royalist law enforcement, come to collect lumber for the king, and soon discovered their most enduring pursuit: the avoidance of taxes. As early as 1777, Grafton’s citizens were asking their government to be spared taxes and, when they were not, just stopped paying them.

Nearly two and a half centuries later, Grafton has become something of a magnet for seekers and quirky types, from adherents of the Unification Church of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon to hippie burnouts and more. Particularly important for the story is one John Babiarz, a software designer with a Krusty the Klown laugh, who decamped from Big-Government-Friendly Connecticut in the 1990s to homestead in New Hampshire with his equally freedom-loving wife, Rosalie. Entering a sylvan world that was, Hongoltz-Hetling writes, “almost as if they had driven through a time warp and into New England’s revolutionary days, when freedom outweighed fealty and trees outnumbered taxes,” the two built a new life for themselves, with John eventually coming to head Grafton’s volunteer fire department (which he describes as a “mutual aid” venture) and running for governor on the libertarian ticket.

Although John’s bids for high office failed, his ambitions remained undimmed, and in 2004 he and Rosalie connected with a small group of libertarian activists. Might not Grafton, with its lack of zoning laws and low levels of civic participation, be the perfect place to create an intentional community based on Logic and Free Market Principles? After all, in a town with fewer than 800 registered voters, and plenty of property for sale, it would not take much for a committed group of transplants to establish a foothold, and then win dominance of municipal governance. And so the Free Town Project began. The libertarians expected to be greeted as liberators, but from the first town meeting, they faced the inconvenient reality that many of Grafton’s presumably freedom-loving citizens saw them as outsiders first, and compatriots second—if at all. Tensions flared further when a little Googling revealed what “freedom” entailed for some of the new colonists. One of the original masterminds of the plan, a certain Larry Pendarvis, had written of his intention to create a space honoring the freedom to “traffic organs, the right to hold duels, and the God-given, underappreciated right to organize so-called bum fights.” He had also bemoaned the persecution of the “victimless crime” that is “consensual cannibalism.” (“Logic is a strange thing,” observes Hongoltz-Hetling.)

While Pendarvis eventually had to take his mail-order Filipina bride business and dreams of municipal takeovers elsewhere (read: Texas), his comrades in the Free Town Project remained undeterred. Soon, they convinced themselves that, evidence and reactions to Pendarvis notwithstanding, the Project must actually enjoy the support of a silent majority of freedom-loving Graftonites. How could it not? This was Freedom, after all. And so the libertarians keep coming, even as Babiarz himself soon came to rue the fact that “the libertarians were operating under vampire rules—the invitation to enter, once offered, could not be rescinded.” The precise numbers are hard to pin down, but ultimately the town’s population of a little more than 1,100 swelled with 200 new residents, overwhelmingly men, with very strong opinions and plenty of guns.

Hongoltz-Hetling profiles many newcomers, all of them larger-than-life, yet quite real. The people who joined the Free Town Project in its first five years were, as he describes, “free radicals”—men with “either too much money or not enough,” with either capital to burn or nothing to lose. There’s John Connell of Massachusetts, who arrived on a mission from God, liquidated his savings, and bought the historic Grafton Center Meetinghouse, transforming it into the “Peaceful Assembly Church,” an endeavor that mixed garish folk art, strange rants from its new pastor (Connell himself), and a quixotic quest to secure tax exemption while refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the IRS to grant it. There’s Adam Franz, a self-described anti-capitalist who set up a tent city to serve as “a planned community of survivalists,” even though no one who joined it had any real bushcraft skills. There’s Richard Angell, an anti-circumcision activist known as “Dick Angel.” And so on. As Hongoltz-Hetling makes clear, libertarianism can indeed have a certain big-tent character, especially when the scene is a new landscape of freedom-lovers making “homes out of yurts and RVs, trailers and tents, geodesic domes and shipping containers.”

If the Libertarian vision of Freedom can take many shapes and sizes, one thing is bedrock: “Busybodies” and “statists” need to stay out of the way. And so the Free Towners spent years pursuing an aggressive program of governmental takeover and delegitimation, their appetite for litigation matched only by their enthusiasm for cutting public services. They slashed the town’s already tiny yearly budget of $1 million by 30 percent, obliged the town to fight legal test case after test case, and staged absurd, standoffish encounters with the sheriff to rack up YouTube hits. Grafton was a poor town to begin with, but with tax revenue dropping even as its population expanded, things got steadily worse. Potholes multiplied, domestic disputes proliferated, violent crime spiked, and town workers started going without heat. “Despite several promising efforts,” Hongoltz-Hetling dryly notes, “a robust Randian private sector failed to emerge to replace public services.” Instead, Grafton, “a haven for miserable people,” became a town gone “feral.” Enter the bears, stage right.

Black bears, it should be stressed, are generally a pretty chill bunch. The woods of North America are home to some three-quarters of a million of them; on average, there is at most one human fatality from a black bear attack per year, even as bears and humans increasingly come into contact in expanding suburbs and on hiking trails. But tracking headlines on human-bear encounters in New England in his capacity as a regional journalist in the 2000s, Hongoltz-Hetling noticed something distressing: The black bears in Grafton were not like other black bears. Singularly “bold,” they started hanging out in yards and on patios in broad daylight. Most bears avoid loud noises; these casually ignored the efforts of Graftonites to run them off. Chickens and sheep began to disappear at alarming rates. Household pets went missing, too. One Graftonite was playing with her kittens on her lawn when a bear bounded out of the woods, grabbed two of them, and scarfed them down. Soon enough, the bears were hanging out on porches and trying to enter homes.

Combining wry description with evocative bits of scientific fact, Hongoltz-Hetling’s portrayal of the bears moves from comical if foreboding to downright terrifying. These are animals that can scent food seven times farther than a trained bloodhound, that can flip 300-pound stones with ease, and that can, when necessary, run in bursts of speed rivaling a deer’s. When the bears finally start mauling humans—attacking two women in their homes—Hongoltz-Hetling’s relation of the scenes is nightmarish. “If you look at their eyes, you understand,” one survivor tells him, “that they are completely alien to us.”

What was the deal with Grafton’s bears? Hongoltz-Hetling investigates the question at length, probing numerous hypotheses for why the creatures have become so uncharacteristically aggressive, indifferent, intelligent, and unafraid. Is it the lack of zoning, the resulting incursion into bear habitats, and the reluctance of Graftonites to pay for, let alone mandate, bear-proof garbage bins? Might the bears be deranged somehow, perhaps even disinhibited and emboldened by toxoplasmosis infections, picked up from eating trash and pet waste from said unsecured bins? There can be no definitive answer to these questions, but one thing is clear: The libertarian social experiment underway in Grafton was uniquely incapable of dealing with the problem. “Free Towners were finding that the situations that had been so easy to problem-solve in the abstract medium of message boards were difficult to resolve in person.”

Grappling with what to do about the bears, the Graftonites also wrestled with the arguments of certain libertarians who questioned whether they should do anything at all—especially since several of the town residents had taken to feeding the bears, more or less just because they could. One woman, who prudently chose to remain anonymous save for the sobriquet “Doughnut Lady,” revealed to Hongoltz-Hetling that she had taken to welcoming bears on her property for regular feasts of grain topped with sugared doughnuts. If those same bears showed up on someone else’s lawn expecting similar treatment, that wasn’t her problem. The bears, for their part, were left to navigate the mixed messages sent by humans who alternately threw firecrackers and pastries at them. Such are the paradoxes of Freedom. Some people just “don’t get the responsibility side of being libertarians,” Rosalie Babiarz tells Hongoltz-Hetling, which is certainly one way of framing the problem.

Pressed by bears from without and internecine conflicts from within, the Free Town Project began to come apart. Caught up in “pitched battles over who was living free, but free in the right way,” the libertarians descended into accusing one another of statism, leaving individuals and groups to do the best (or worst) they could. Some kept feeding the bears, some built traps, others holed up in their homes, and still others went everywhere toting increasingly larger-caliber handguns. After one particularly vicious attack, a shadowy posse formed and shot more than a dozen bears in their dens. This effort, which was thoroughly illegal, merely put a dent in the population; soon enough, the bears were back in force.

Meanwhile, the dreams of numerous libertarians came to ends variously dramatic and quiet. A real estate development venture known as Grafton Gulch, in homage to the dissident enclave in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, went belly-up. After losing a last-ditch effort to secure tax exemption, a financially ruined Connell found himself unable to keep the heat on at the Meetinghouse; in the midst of a brutal winter, he waxed apocalyptic and then died in a fire. Franz quit his survivalist commune, which soon walled itself off into a prisonlike compound, the better to enjoy freedom. And John Babiarz, the erstwhile inaugurator of the Project, became the target of relentless vilification by his former ideological cohorts, who did not appreciate his refusal to let them enjoy unsecured blazes on high-wildfire–risk afternoons. When another, higher-profile libertarian social engineering enterprise, the Free State Project, received national attention by promoting a mass influx to New Hampshire in general (as opposed to just Grafton), the Free Town Project’s fate was sealed. Grafton became “just another town in a state with many options,” options that did not have the same problem with bears.

Or at least—not yet. Statewide, a perverse synergy between conservationist and austerity impulses in New Hampshire governance has translated into an approach to “bear management” policy that could accurately be described as laissez-faire. When Graftonites sought help from New Hampshire Fish and Game officials, they received little more than reminders that killing bears without a license is illegal, and plenty of highly dubious victim-blaming to boot. Had not the woman savaged by a bear been cooking a pot roast at the time? No? Well, nevertheless. Even when the state has tried to rein in the population with culls, it has been too late. Between 1998 and 2013, the number of bears doubled in the wildlife management region that includes Grafton. “Something’s Bruin in New Hampshire—Learn to Live with Bears,” the state’s literature advises.

The bear problem, in other words, is much bigger than individual libertarian cranks refusing to secure their garbage. It is a problem born of years of neglect and mismanagement by legislators, and, arguably, indifference from New Hampshire taxpayers in general, who have proved reluctant to step up and allocate resources to Fish and Game, even as the agency’s traditional source of funding—income from hunting licenses—has dwindled. Exceptions like Doughnut Lady aside, no one wants bears in their backyard, but apparently no one wants to invest sustainably in institutions doing the unglamorous work to keep them out either. Whether such indifference and complacency gets laundered into rhetoric of fiscal prudence, half-baked environmentalism, or individual responsibility, the end result is the same: The bears abide—and multiply.

Their prosperity also appears to be linked to man-made disasters that have played out on a national and global scale—patterns of unsustainable construction and land use, and the climate crisis. More than once, Hongoltz-Hetling flags the fact that upticks in bear activity unfold alongside apparently ever more frequent droughts. Drier summers may well be robbing bears of traditional plant and animal sources of food, even as hotter winters are disrupting or even ending their capacity to hibernate. Meanwhile, human garbage, replete with high-calorie artificial ingredients, piles up, offering especially enticing treats, even in the dead of winter—particularly in places with zoning and waste management practices as chaotic as those in Grafton, but also in areas where suburban sprawl is reaching farther into the habitats of wild animals. The result may be a new kind of bear, one “torn between the unique dangers and caloric payloads that humans provide—they are more sleep-deprived, more anxious, more desperate, and more twitchy than the bear that nature produced.” Ever-hungry for new frontiers in personal autonomy and market emancipation, human beings have altered the environment with the unintended result of empowering newly ravenous bears to boot.

Ignoring institutional failure and mounting crises does not make them go away. But some may take refuge in confidence that, when the metaphorical chickens (or, rather, bears) finally come home to roost, the effects are never felt equally. When bears show up in higher-income communities like Hanover (home to Dartmouth College), Hongoltz-Hetling notes, they get parody Twitter accounts and are promptly evacuated to wildernesses in the north; poorer rural locales are left to fend for themselves, and the residents blamed for doing what they can. In other words, the “unintended natural selection of the bears that are trying to survive alongside modern humans” is unfolding along with competition among human beings amid failing infrastructure and scarce resources, a struggle with Social Darwinist dynamics of its own.

The distinction between a municipality of eccentric libertarians and a state whose response to crisis is, in so many words, “Learn to Live With It” may well be a matter of degree rather than kind. Whether it be assaults by bears, imperceptible toxoplasmosis parasites, or a way of life where the freedom of markets ultimately trumps individual freedom, even the most cocksure of Grafton’s inhabitants must inevitably face something beyond and bigger than them. In that, they are hardly alone. Clearly, when it comes to certain kinds of problems, the response must be collective, supported by public effort, and dominated by something other than too-tidy-by-half invocations of market rationality and the maximization of individual personal freedom. If not, well, then we had all best get some practice in learning when and how to play dead, and hope for the best.

#article #new hampshire wildcats #the new republic #bears #ecology #economics #urban planning

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chapel-of-rizztual · 5 months ago

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Mountain gets sick. It’s rare that he does, rare for any ghoul really, but somehow some human virus got him. Rain volunteers to look after him, he isn’t exactly high maintenance when he’s sick, just clingy. All he wants is to be held and pet and loved on a little while he tries to sleep away the sickness. Rain doesn't mind it. He actually quite likes it.

Unfortunately for Mountain, on day three of his sickness, his rut hits. He wakes up with an all too familiar burning feeling in the pit of his stomach, knot throbbing and his cock rock solid between his legs. He cries when it doesn’t go down. Rain reassures him that it’s fine, that he’ll look after him and make him feel better but Mountain just cries more when Rain tries to touch him. He’s too weak, too overwhelmed and overstimulated from being so ill, his skin too sensitive.

Rain ends up cockwarming him for a while. It’s just enough to take the edge off his rut but not too much that it overwhelms him completely. He lies next to Mountain, chest to chest, his leg thrown over Mountains hip, with the earth ghoul buried deep inside him. Mountain keeps his face buried in Rains neck, he has since he got sick, giving the occasional lick to his scent glad.

It only lasts a few hours before Mountain is letting out a painful whine, rolling his hips lazily. “M-more.” His voice is croaky and a little high pitched from not being used. “Please. Need more.”

Rain coos at him, brushing away the few strands of hair that had fallen into Mountains face.

“Yeah? Ready for more now?”

Mountain nods, rolling his hips with a little more enthusiasm before collapsing back into bed with a cry.

“Cant do it.” His eyes well with tears. “I’m so exhausted, but I- I need it.” He chokes a sob.

Rain brushes away the tears on his cheeks with the pad of his thumb.

“I’ve got you, babyboy. I said I’d look after you, didn’t I?”

Mountain nods and he let out a pitiful sniffle. Rains doesn’t say anything else, just slips Mountain out of him causing him to whine.

“Lie on your back, darling. Let me take care of you.”

Mountain does as he’s told, he couldn’t fight back even if he wanted to. He moves very sluggishly onto his back, looking up at Rain with expectant eyes as the water ghouls straddles his hips. It’s only then that Rain gets a good look at his face and notices just how sick Mountain looks. His lips are dry and chapped, his skin ghostly pale and chalky. His normally bright eyes are dull and almost scarily lifeless, dark circles set deep beneath his eyes. His hair is limp and lifeless, damp with sweat and matted from the little care. Rain still thinks he looks beautiful.

“Oh my darling.” He rubs up and down At Mountains chest, watching as his breath hitches. “You really got hit with a double edged sword, didn’t you.”

Mountain whines and nods, pouting a little as his hips jump upwards. He has no control over it, it’s just instinct at this point.

“I’ve got you.” Rain whispers. He sinks down onto him without another word. Mountain gasps, his hands gripping at Rains thighs but he makes no moves to stop him.

Rain rides him slowly, not wanting to overwhelm him, but also wanting to give Mountain an out of he wanted it. He moves his hips in slow figure eights, running his hands over any part of Mountain he can reach. Mountain struggles to keep his eyes open, it’s a battle Rain watches in slight amusement until eventually Mountain loses and his eyes slip closed. He’d think he was asleep if it wasn’t for the little moans and whimpers he was letting out.

“Such a good boy, Mount. Doing so well for me.” Rain praises as he pets over his chest. “Feeling good, baby? You’re being so good for me.”

Mountain doesn’t last long. Rain didn’t expect him to. It was only a matter of minutes before he’s pawing at Rains thighs with a whine.

“Rain, I’m gunna- need to-“ His voice is breathless and high pitched. “Knot. Gunna knot.”

Rain grabs at his hands, squeezing them. “That’s it, baby. Knot me. Make yourself feel better.”

Rain watched at Mountains eyes screw shut and his mouth drops open with a long moan as his knot pops inside Rain. Rain lets out a little grunt as it does, feeling himself gets stretched out. He feels as he gets flooded with warmth as Mountain starts to cum.

“I can feel you.” He hums, rubbing at his lower stomach. “Can feel you filling me with your kits.”

Mountain moans.

“Filling you with my kits.” He cracks his eyes open and Rain can see there’s a little more life in them now, a little glint. “Gunna take this time, I know it.” He slurs out.

Rain can’t help but smiling at the blissed out expression on Mountains face.

“Feel any better?”

Mountain nods.

“You didn’t cum.” He pout up at Rain.

“Don’t worry about that, baby. This wasn’t about me, just wanted to make you feel better.” Rain thumbs over Mountain bottom lip with his thumb. Mountain parts his lips and sucks the digit into his mouth with a hum.

“Can we cuddle again now? I’m so tired and I don't like you being this far away.” He mumbles around Rains thumb.

“You’re literally inside me.” Rain chuckles at him.

“Yeah but that’s still too far away.” Mountain pouts, pawing at Rains hips.

Rain moves them both, carefully so he doesn’t tug on the knot, so they’re back in their original position, chest to chest, his leg over Mountains hip. Mountain immediately buries his face back into Rains neck, inhaling his comforting scent.

It takes him a matter of seconds to fall asleep, a gentle purr rumbling through his chest. Rain can’t help smiling as he runs his fingers through Mountains hair. It had been the first time he’d seen Mountain this content the whole time he’d been sick.

#the band ghost #ficlet #this was meant to be 3 paragraphs long #oops #my writing

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covidsafecosplay · 3 months ago

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The People’s CDC COVID-19 Weather Report: October 14, 2024

The People's CDC has released another updated report on COVID-19 data and action items for the United States of America.

Highlights:

According to data last updated 10/5/2024, the CDC’s national wastewater map shows 16 states with “High” or “Very High” wastewater levels.

According to the Wastewater COVID-19 National and Regional Trends dashboard, all regions continue to show a downward trend over the last several weeks.

Many Bay Area counties are set to reimplement mask mandates in hospitals from November 1 through Spring 2025. Some of the rules apply to only certain healthcare staff while others include visitors and patients. Though these mandates are limited in scope, duration, and geography, a few are expanded compared to last year’s Bay Area mask rules, a sign that pressure on decision makers is working.

In the past week, the California Department of Public Health reported that 6 new cases of bird flu (H5N1) were confirmed in dairy workers in California, with each case being connected to contact with infected cattle in California’s Central Valley. While there is yet no documented human-to-human transmission, each new case presents a greater risk of the virus mutating to spread from human to human.

The Texas State Affairs Committee posted notice of a hearing at the Capitol on October 16 to discuss, among other things, “Unmasking Protestors.” Opposition is mounting, and people are organizing.

Read the rest of the report here:

Please note that the CovidSafeCosplay blog and its admin are unaffiliated with the People's CDC or its management, and are simply sharing the resource.

Via the People's CDC About page:

The People’s CDC is a coalition of public health practitioners, scientists, healthcare workers, educators, advocates and people from all walks of life working to reduce the harmful impacts of COVID-19. We provide guidance and policy recommendations to governments and the public on COVID-19, disseminating evidence-based updates that are grounded in equity, public health principles, and the latest scientific literature. Working alongside community organizations, we are building collective power and centering equity as we work together to end the pandemic. The People’s CDC is volunteer-run and independent of partisan political and corporate interests and includes anonymous local health department and other government employees. The People’s CDC is completely volunteer run with infrastructure support being provided by the People’s Science Network

#news #covid news #covid isn't over #covid 19 #covid-19 #bird flu #h5n1 #health news #bird flu news #people's cdc #the people's cdc #mask up #still coviding #long covid #us news

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boytumms · 7 months ago

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A dude who catches a virus that lies dormant and flares up occasionally like cold sores do - the initial infection had his stomach swell up like he's very very VERY pregnant, rapidly over the course of a week from how intensely his body fought the virus, and then he was "sick" with it for a month or two before the swelling went down. Now every time he's stressed, or traveling, or his immune system is occupied/worn down in other ways, he puffs up, his abdomen filling with fluids from his body fighting the infection. He doesn't get quite as big as he initially did, but he'll spend a week growing, and a while after that waiting for it to go away, and he's changed his wardrobe to have clothes that fit him in case he has a flare.

(Now imagine him getting knocked up and having the immune system changes that come from a pregnancy. Dude gets WAY bigger than he's supposed to ehehehehehehe)

Ooo that’s so good, the fluid build up on top of being pregnant??? Imagine having multiples with that condition as well, just his luck he gets knocked up with twins or triplets. He’s bloating up constantly, having to go to a doctor to drain the fluid build up every other week or more. At 9 months his poor tummy is absolutely massive, the fluid inside him making him look nearly twice as big as he’s suppose to be, and twice as heavy.

When he goes into labor, it triggers the worst fair up he’s had yet, causing his belly to fill up rapidly with more fluid. The pressure quickly becomes so unbearable he thinks he might actually burst, his body straining painfully around his contracting belly. Stuck under the added weight, he can’t move or call for help, there’s no one around and he’s unable to get to the hospital. He’s forced to give birth alone, clutching his swelling stomach as he desperately tries to push through the blinding pain, each contraction making him scream as the pressure mounts higher and higher.

His babies kick and writhe inside him, eager to leave as their space gets tighter from the fluid build up. Each push feels like torture, and soon enough his belly is so tight and full he’s scared if he keeps pushing his tummy might really burst. It hurts so much all he can do is scream and cry in pain as the pressure forces his babies down, stuck crowning around a huge head while his belly creaks and groans, hoping they come out before it’s too late

#ask #anonymous #mpreg #hyperpregnancy #hyper preg #birth #belly kink

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covid-safer-hotties · 4 months ago

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also preserved on our archive

By Erica Sloan

These days, it’s tempting to compare COVID-19 with the common cold or flu. It can similarly leave you with a nasty cough, fever, sore throat—the full works of respiratory symptoms. And it’s also become a part of the societal fabric, perhaps something you’ve resigned yourself to catching at least a few times in your life (even if you haven’t already). But let’s not forget: SARS-CoV-2 (the virus responsible for COVID) is still relatively new, and researchers are actively investigating the toll of reinfection on the body. While there are still a lot of unknowns, one thing seems to be increasingly true: Getting COVID again and again is a good deal riskier than repeat hits of its seasonal counterparts.

It turns out, SARS-CoV-2 is more nefarious than these other contagious bugs, and our immune response to it, often larger and longer-lasting. COVID has a better ability to camouflage itself in the body, “and it has the keys to the kingdom in the sense that it can unlock any cell and get in,” says Esther Melamed, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of neurology at Dell Medical School, University of Texas Austin, and the research director of the Post-COVID-19 program at UT Health Austin. That’s because SARS-CoV-2 binds to ACE2 receptors, which exist in cells all over your body, from your heart to your gut to your brain. (By contrast, cold and flu viruses replicate mostly in your respiratory tract.)

It only follows that a bigger threat can trigger an outsize immune response. In some people, the body’s reaction to COVID can turn into a “cytokine storm,” Dr. Melamed tells SELF, which is characterized by an excessive release of inflammatory proteins that can wreak havoc on multiple organ systems—not a common scenario for your garden-variety cold or flu. But even a “mild” case of COVID can throw your immune system into a tizzy as it works to quickly shore up your defenses. And each reinfection is a fresh opportunity for the virus to win the battle.

While you develop some immunity after a COVID infection, it doesn’t just grow with each additional hit. You might be thinking, “Aren’t I more protected against COVID and less likely to have a serious case after having been infected?” Part of that is true, to an extent. In the first couple years after COVID burst onto the scene, reinfections were generally (though not always) milder than a person’s initial bout of the virus. “The way we understand classic immunology is that your body will say to a virus [it’s seen before], ‘Oh, I know how to deal with you, and I’m now going to deal with you in a better way the second time around,’” says Ziyad Al-Aly, PhD, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine and the chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System.

But any encounter with COVID can also cause your immune system to “go awry or develop some form of dysfunction,” Dr. Al-Aly tells SELF. Specifically, “immune imprinting” can happen, where, upon a second (or third or fourth) exposure to the virus, your immune cells launch the same response as they did for the initial infection, in turn blocking or limiting the development of new antibodies necessary to fight off the current variant that’s stirring up trouble. So, “when you get hit an [additional] time, your immune system may not behave classically,” Dr. Al-Aly says, and could struggle with mounting a good defense.

Pair that dip in immune efficiency with the fact that your antibody levels also wane with time post-infection, and it’s easy to see how another hit can rock your body in a new way. Indeed, the more time that passes after any given COVID infection, the less of a “competitive advantage” you’ll have against any future one, Richard Moffitt, PhD, an associate professor at Emory University, in Atlanta, tells SELF. His research found that, while people who got sick initially during the delta phase were less likely to get reinfected during the first omicron wave (as compared to folks who were infected in a prior period), that benefit leveled off with following omicron variants.

There’s also the fact that no matter how your immune system has responded to a prior strain (or strains!) of the virus, it could react differently to a new mutation. “We tend to think of COVID as one homogeneous thing, but it’s really not,” Dr. Al-Aly says. So even if your body successfully thwarted one of these intruders in the past, there’s no guarantee it’ll do the same for another, now or in the future, he says.

Getting COVID again and again is especially risky if it previously made you very ill. Dr. Moffitt’s study above also found that the “severity of your first infection is very predictive of the severity of a reinfection,” he says. Meaning, you’re more likely to have a severe case of COVID—for instance, requiring hospitalization or intensive care, such as ventilation—when reinfected if you had a rough go of it the first time around.

It’s possible that some folks are more prone to an off-kilter immune response to the virus, which could then happen consistently with reinfections. The antibodies created in people who’ve had severe cases “may not function as well as those in folks who’ve had mild infections or were able to fight the virus off,” Dr. Melamed says. Though researchers don’t fully understand why, some people’s immune systems are also more likely to overreact to COVID (remember the cytokine storm?), which can cause serious symptoms—like fluid in the lungs and shortness of breath—whenever they’re infected.

Being over the age of 65, having a chronic illness or other medical condition, and lacking access to health care have all been shown to spike your risk of serious outcomes with a COVID infection, whether it’s your first or fifth fight with the virus.

But you’re not home free if you’ve only had, say, a brief fever or cough with COVID in the past; Dr. Moffitt points out that a small subset of people in his research who had minor reactions with their initial infection went on to be hospitalized with a repeat hit. The probability of that might be lower, but it’s still a possibility, he says.

Even if you’ve only had “mild” cases, each reinfection strains your body, upping your chances of developing long COVID. A 2022 study led by Dr. Al-Aly found that COVID reinfections also increase your risk of complications across the board, regardless of whether you recovered just fine in the past or got vaccinated. In particular, it showed that reinfection raises the likelihood that you’ll need hospitalization; have heart or lung problems; or experience, among other possible issues, GI, neurological, mental health, or musculoskeletal symptoms. “We use the term ‘cumulative effects,’” Dr. Al-Aly says, “so, multiple hits accrue and then leave the body more vulnerable to all the potential long-term health effects of COVID.”

That doesn’t mean your experience of a second (or third or fourth) infection will necessarily be worse, in and of itself, than what you felt during a prior case. But with each new hit, a fresh batch of the virus seeps into your system, where, even if you have a mild case, it has another chance to trigger any of the longer-term complications above. While the likelihood of getting long COVID (a constellation of symptoms lingering for three months or longer post-infection) is likely greatest after initial infection, “The bottom line is, people are still getting diagnosed with long COVID after reinfection,” Dr. Moffitt says.

Researchers don’t totally know why one person might deal with lasting health effects over another, but it seems that, in some folks, the immune system misfires, generating not only antibodies to attack the virus but also autoantibodies that go after the body’s own healthy cells, Dr. Al-Aly says. This may be one reason why COVID has been linked to the onset of autoimmune conditions like psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis.

A different hypothesis suggests that pieces of the virus could linger in the body, even after a person has seemingly “recovered” (reminder that SARS-CoV-2 is scarily good at weaseling its way into all sorts of cells). “Maybe the first time, your immune system was able to fully clear it, but the second time, it found a way to hang around,” Dr. Al-Aly posits. And a third theory involves your gut microbiome, the community of microbes in your GI tract, including beneficial bacteria. It’s conceivable that “when we get sick with COVID, these bacteria do, too, and perhaps they recover [on initial infection], but not on the second or third hit,” he says, throwing off your balance of good-to-bad gut bugs (which can impact your health in all sorts of ways).

Another unnerving possibility: The shock to your system triggered by COVID may “wake up” a latent (a.k.a. dormant) virus or two lurking in your body, Dr. Melamed says. We all carry anywhere from eight to 12 of these undetected bugs at a time—things like Epstein-Barr, varicella-zoster (which causes chickenpox and shingles), and herpes simplex. And research suggests their reactivation could be a contributing factor in long COVID. Separately, the systemic inflammation often created by COVID may spark the onset of high blood pressure and increased clotting (which can up your risk of stroke and pulmonary embolism), as well as type 2 diabetes, Dr. Melamed says.

There’s no guarantee that any given COVID infection snowballs into something debilitating, but each hit is like another round of Russian roulette, Dr. Al-Aly says. From a sheer numbers standpoint, the more times you play a game with the possibility of a negative outcome, the greater your chances are of that bad result occurring. And because every COVID case has at least some potential to leave you very ill or dealing with a host of persistent symptoms, why take the risk any more times than you need to?

Bottom line: You should do your best to avoid COVID reinfection and bolster your defenses against the virus. At this stage of the pandemic’s progression, it’s not realistic to suggest you can avoid any exposure to the virus, given that societal protections against its spread have been rolled back. But what you should do is take some common-sense precautions, which can help you avoid any contagious respiratory virus. (A cold or the flu may not pose as many potential health risks as COVID, but being sick is still not fun!)

It’s a good idea to wear a mask when you’re in a crowded environment (especially indoors), choose well-ventilated or outdoor spaces for group hangouts, and test for COVID if you have cold or flu-like symptoms, Dr. Al-Aly says. If you do get infected, talk to your doctor about whether your personal risk of a severe case is enough to qualify for a Paxlovid prescription (which you need to take within the first five days of symptoms for it to be effective).

The other important thing you should do is get the updated COVID vaccine (the 2024-2025 formula was recently approved and released). Unlike getting reinfected, the vaccine triggers “a very targeted immune response…because it’s [made with] a specific tiny part of the virus,” Dr. Melamed says. Meaning, you get the immune benefit of a little exposure without the potential of your whole system going haywire. Getting the current shot also ensures you restore any protection that has waned since you received a prior jab and that you have an effective shield against the dominant circulating strains. Plus, research shows that being vaccinated doesn’t just lower your chances of catching the virus; it also reduces your risk of having a severe case or winding up with long COVID if you do get it.

So, too, can the deceivingly simple act of keeping up with healthy habits—like exercising regularly, eating nutritious foods, and clocking quality sleep. Maintaining this kind of lifestyle can help you stave off other health issues that could increase your risk of harm from COVID, Harlan Krumholz, PhD, a cardiologist at Yale University and founder of the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE), tells SELF. “Given that we will be repetitively exposed to the virus, the best investments we can make are in our baseline health,” he says.

Doing any (or all!) of the above is a big act of compassion for yourself, the people you love, and your greater community. “For the average person, it’s like, ‘Oh, COVID is gone,’ but they’re just not seeing the impact,” Dr. Al-Aly says, noting the invisibility of long COVID symptoms like disorienting brain fog and crushing fatigue. The truth is, in plenty of people, just one more infection could be the difference between living their best life and facing a devastating chronic condition.

#mask up #covid #pandemic #covid 19 #wear a mask #public health #coronavirus #sars cov 2 #still coviding #wear a respirator #lokng covid

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bulkyphrase · 17 days ago

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Werewolf Steve Rogers: a rec list

For the last list of 2024, please enjoy some of my favorite fics about wolfy Steve. Features classic comics capwolf and MCU werewolf goodness.

The Law Runneth Forward and Back by Sineala (@sineala) (Stony, Teen And Up Audiences, 11,798 words)

Summary: It's been three weeks since Tony saved Steve's life at Mount Rushmore, and they're not talking about it. It's going to drive Tony insane. But they've got bigger problems, because Nightshade has turned Steve into a werewolf. Again. And all Steve seems to want is to be near Tony. Also available as a podfic read by RsCreighton (@rosecreighton)

Have Sunlight, Too, and Clover by chaosmanor, yamyamyam (Stucky, Explicit, 15,426 words)

Summary: Steve wakes up in the future, only to find that... everyone but him is part wolf now?! Hydra's attempts to replicate the super-soldier serum resulted in a virus that induced wolf-y features and WELP that went poorly. Now he's tracking down an actual full-on werewolf with the Avengers, y'know, to pass the time, when suddenly his body decides to wolf up after all. Dramatically. Meanwhile, that full-on werewolf they were chasing turns out to be oddly familiar...

More below the cut!

and I may never see the light by Effing (@effingunicorns) (Frostshield, Explicit, 8,111 words (WIP))

Summary: Steve is a monster hunter who's sort of but not really sleeping with the vampire next door. And then things get hairy. (Because every ship deserves more trashy monster AUs.)

A Matter of Language by DepressingGreenie (@depressinggreenie) (Thundershield, General Audiences, 774 words)

Summary: Clint is pretty sure Thor has been using some sort of magical mind reading to understand Steve. Also available as a podfic read by Akaihyou (@akaihyou)

(We Are Not) Monsters by lionessvalenti (Gen, General Audiences, 1,630 words)

Summary: Steve wakes up after his transformation to find he wasn't the only were-creature in the jungle that full moon.

A Good Man by quigonejinn (@quigonejinn) (Steggy, Not Rated, 1,541 words)

Summary: The one where the Super Soldier Serum causes lycanthropy.

You Know Where To Find Me by a_sparrows_fall (Stony, General Audiences, 31,307 words)

Summary: After an Avengers mission goes awry, Steve takes a leave of absence from the team, and he and Tony part on bad terms. But then Steve gets turned into a werewolf, and he finds his shapeshifting linked to his feelings about Tony, who’s had a terrible accident. If Steve never sees Tony again, will he be stuck in wolf form forever? A closely-canon compliant 616 Capwolf story.

Nights When the Wolves Are Silent, and Only the Moon Howls by Cluegirl, Defiler_Wyrm (@cluegrrl, art by @defilerwyrm) (Stony, Mature, 77,612 words)

Summary: “Could you drop all that stoic shit and be my freaking-the-hell-out wingman for just like, five seconds here?” Steve wasn’t sure he could think of anything he wanted less to do than to freak out about his wounds just then though, so he reached across his chest and gingerly patted Sam’s clenched knuckles. “It’ll be fine,” he promised, believing it. “Serum’s handled worse.” “You know, I actually believe you,” Sam allowed after a long second of glaring. “Which is deeply alarming, considering how much of your connective tissue I’ve touched in the last 4 hours. Now you wanna tell me what Russoff’s men did to you that made it look like you got mauled by a bear?” Steve flinched, then breathed the memory down to size. “Not a bear,” he murmured. “Wolves.”

Instinctual by mariana_oconnor (@mariana-oconnor) (Stony, Teen And Up Audiences, 17,095 words)

Summary: The true effects of the super soldier serum are top secret. Only a few people know the truth - the serum turned Steve Rogers into a werewolf. Steve still hasn't found a way to tell Tony, even though they've been in a relationship for months. He can't bring himself to explain that he's a monster. But when they are clearing out an AIM base, that decision is taken out of his hands.

Work of Art by veryvincible (@veryvincible) (Stony, Mature, 5,656 words)

Summary: Tony smelled… off. Wrong. He smelled strange in a way that would justify the cold, Steve thought. There was a metallic layer to blood that Steve was used to smelling, and in Tony, that was distinctly not present. So, Steve concluded, Tony must have had an iron deficiency. Something to that effect, at least. He became faint without warning, he was chilly as the dead, and he was as pale as any man Steve had ever seen. - Tony Stark is a vampire. It's common knowledge, at this point. Somehow, Steve isn't aware of that little fact.

A Little Confused But He Got the Spirit by jellybeanforest (@jellybeanforest-a-go-go) (Stony, Mature, 3,298 words)

Summary: On their third date, Steve decides to come clean about his lycanthropy. Tony is surprisingly understanding, almost too much so. Based on a prompt by DepressingGreenie. For the 2021 Cap-IronMan Holiday Exchange.

Under the moon, I howl for you by captainstars (@capnstars) (Stony, Teen And Up Audiences, 1,047 words)

Summary: Tony had been in quite a few fucked up situations in his lifetime. Being stuck in a cave together with Steve who had been turned into some kind of half wolf half man, while trying to maintain his secret identity, sure took the cake. —-

howling for you by starvels (dinosaur) (@starvels) (Stony, Explicit, 4,922 words)

Summary: Steve wakes up because the moon is screaming at him. He howls just once before he slips off the bed and slips out of his skin.

#steve rogers #marvel fic rec #pretend i posted this a few days ago on the night of the full moon

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