freak shit is my new decoration

and then thinking about all the people who call her cold or uncaring or clinical about what she has to do to save earth. eva stratt, who had silly t-shirts and vodka and favorite meals stored in the Hail Mary and treated with the same level of importance as the finely tuned equipment and the centrifuge the entire planet relies on for salvation.

and then thinking about eva stratt nodding and saying, “yeah, I’m pretty awful. that’s why i’m in charge” with a neutral expression and even believing it. as if crafting the most beautiful coffin and homage to her soon-to-be dead friends won’t haunt her always.

thinking about eva stratt being the first person on the “eva stratt is a monster” train, welcoming ryland grace aboard and knowing she believed in him more than anyone else.

Ok, there's a lot of well-meaning misinformation around from people who are just repeating what they've heard, so please, take it from someone with >25 years of experience of anal play of various kinds:

On cleanliness...

Not only do you not need to douche, but also, for most people most of the time, it's better if you don't. If you need to be absolutely clean as a whistle for a porn shoot or something, go for it. But otherwise, your gut is an amazing self-balancing system, that will take care of itself so long as you don't sabotage it by hosing it out. Douching can easily cause an upset gut that you'll then blame on the anal instead. So consider not doing that.

Unless you have a medical condition that precludes such, you have the ability to tell if you "need to go", based on sensations in the sphincter. If you don't have the feeling that you need to go, or at least reasonably could go, then you don't need to worry about anything; you can hop straight on that dick if you want to; it'll be fine.

If you follow the above advice, then 95% of the time it'll come out completely clean, 5% of the time there will be the tiniest amount of shit, an amount that can be cleaned in 2 seconds with a wet wipe or similar. And, you were going to clean it at least that much afterwards anyway, right?

Some further general tips:

Do: enjoy a good amount of fibre generally in your diet on a daily basis if you want things to come out clean.

Don't: make sudden drastic changes to your diet or take laxatives/anti-diarrhoea meds to try to vacate it or placate it. Once again, your gut is an amazing self-balancing system if you will kindly just let it do its thing.

Finally, some things I've generally assumed:

I assume you know about basic safe sex and can make your own decisions in that regard re what's an acceptable risk to you. I'm not going to tell you always use condoms or never do such-and-such because you know what, I'm not the boss of you. Use them or not, do things or not, it's your call.

You are welcome! And, it depends on what you mean by "permanently loosening".

A lot of people think (and talk) about the anal sphincter like it's an elastic band that can lose its tension over time if stretched too much, and it's not. Like any muscle, the sphincter muscles can atrophy (in which case it would lose its tension), but atrophy comes from disuse, not from stretching.

The sphincter muscles are muscles, and can be stretched like other muscles, and retain their stretchiness (or not) dependent on whether it's maintained by frequent stretching.

The muscle tone, on the other hand (that which keeps them* closed when not needing to be open) is—just like any other muscle—maintained by regular use.

*Plural because we have an internal and external sphincter; the former is involuntary, and it automatically releases when when your body decides it's time to go; the external sphincter then remains closed until such a time as you're ready to go and consciously release it.

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Also prev tags:

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.

the new season has been out since mid-April and we are already halfway through it. i know the WTNV team has been posting about it on their social channels for months leading up to it. i dont think we are doing anything differently, promotion-wise, than we did with the first three seasons which seemed to find their audience much more quickly.

personally i find it rather frustating given the amount of work we put into this show, but im not really sure what to do about it. i know part of it is down to the fact that audiofiction is a far more competitive field than it used to be, and there's also so much noise and chaos in the world these days that its hard to find anything, and so many terrible problems that fiction feels less important.