So, something problematic has come to my attention in the Invincible fandom. Now, I LOVE Invincible. Like a lot. The show is amazing. But with that being said…
PLEASE STOP RECOMMENDING IT TO PEOPLE WITHOUT TELLING THEM HOW VIOLENT IT IS!!!
I see tons of posts from people talking about how the ultraviolence took them by surprise and they can’t bring themselves to watch anymore. I understand that people want to avoid spoiling the show for potential new fans, but they should at LEAST know that there are yaknow… Brains, and guts and ketchup going all over the place sometimes.
It may be rated TV-MA, but so is Bojack Horseman. A show with lots of sex jokes, cursing, and heavy subject matter. But nothing with even close to the same shock value as Invincible. Ultraviolence is an extremely common trigger for people, and the rating system often isn’t actually enough to prepare new viewers for what they’re getting into.
So, If you’re recommending it to people, please let them know ahead of time that sometimes there’s a stray eyeball or 10. You can tell them at least that much without spoiling them on the plot.
That being said, we’re all free to gush about it and discuss it and enjoy it to our hearts content. It’s a good show that promises to only get better with the upcoming seasons. I’m glad to see it gaining popularity, and I really hope to stick with this fandom for the long haul!
So I wanted to know what kind of crystal could go in a wizard staff, right? so I googled “big crystal,” as one does, and got an Etsy ad for This
And as you all know I Am currently taking a geology class, so I am probably more emotionally invested in minerals than usual. But that is…very obviously not a natural crystal.
So I did some looking around on Etsy.
Now, these shops all seem to advertise to the “witchy”/“spiritual healing” type of person. And there are a lot of them. Crystals are a Big Thing on Etsy. And ALMOST ALL of them are obviously artificially cut into the same sort of prism with a triangular pyramid top, regardless of the actual sort of crystal it is supposed to be.
Even like, fucking, obsidian. Obsidian is volcanic glass, it doesn’t form crystals at all, it is notacrystal
I’m not throwing any shade at people who are into crystals for like witchy reasons, but it really seems like if crystals are spiritually important to you, you should know what a crystal is…right…?
So there I am. Caught in the helpless anger and distaste of looking at geologically inaccurate Etsy crystals.
And as I scroll, I start to see items in…interesting shapes:
“Oh,” I think to myself. “Oh no.”
But it is too late. I have heard the siren’s song, singing to me of knowledge that will destroy me, but that I cannot help but seek.
These…elongated objects are almost always ambiguously described as “massage wands,” “crystal healing wands,” and other such innocuous things. The egg-shaped objects are, um, “yoni eggs.”
…Right. Okay.
Maintain the youthfulness of my sacred organ.
IT’S A SEX TOY. SAY IT. BITCH, IT’S A SEX TOY, IT’S OKAY, SERIOUSLY, THERE’S NO SHAME IN IT, SAY IT WITH PRIDE, SAY IT WITH YOUR CHEST,
OKAY.
Okay. I’m good. I’m fine.
Actually, you know what, never mind. There is shame in this and I want it to be never acknowledged again.
Additionally, I am not fine.
Why the fuck are there so many of these—
At this point I stop and start googling.
Now, Selenite is the crystalline form of gypsum. It is also known as satin spar. Selenite is brittle and breaks easily, and has a Mohs hardness scale of 2.
For those unfamiliar with the Mohs hardness scale, a mineral with a hardness of 2 is soft enough that it can be easily scratched with a fingernail. It also is dissolved by moisture.
NO. DON’T PUT THAT IN YOUR BODY???? DON’T PUT THE GYPSUM, WHICH HAS A MOHS HARDNESS SCALE OF 2, IS BRITTLE AND BREAKS EASILY, AND IS WATER SOLUBLE, INSIDE YOUR LITERAL ACTUAL VAGINA??????????
I try to reassure myself with the fact that these things are probably not actually selenite, because making a dildo out of such a soft mineral in the first place would be very difficult. Having seen fluorite before, I feel pretty certain that the fluorite yoni eggs are probably actually just glass.
I google fluorite.
Okay.
Further exploring online shows me that fluorite is soluble in various strong acids.
Some guys on a forum in 2004 have strong contradictory opinions on this.
(I google the pH of the vagina.)
I don’t understand how pH works. I give up on the solubility question and google the toxicity of fluorite:
I now know at least one orifice fluorite does not go inside.
Science.
No, dear followers, my journey did not end here.
I have opened Pandora’s box, except Pandora’s box is filled with minerals God did not intend to be anywhere near the vagina carved into the shape of dildos. Etsy is advertising me sex toys I wish I could forget.
And vaginal steam herbs.
It seems that there is potentially a correlation between wanting to steam your vagina and wanting to put rocks in it. I know, groundbreaking discovery.
Okay, so we’re talking therapy substitute therapy substitute.
(I begin to think about how desperately we need universal health care. Maybe I just need someone, something, to blame.)
At this point, I realize that I haven’t done any googling on whether dildos made of rocks are a good idea at all. So, very tentatively, as if typing it more slowly will make it any less observed by the FBI, I google whether quartz should be used…internally.
First result that pops up:
That’s, uh. That’s reassuring.
I decide I’m incapable of unpacking this particular suitcase.
There are, of course, a small handful of articles debating the safety of rose quartz sex toys. But I’m getting the feeling that this is not a normal question to have in the first place. I close the tab with little relief.
Etsy is still enthusiastically recommending me things that hurt me psychologically.
…pleasure chalk?
How can I describe the fear that this image struck in me, reader?
Pleasure Chalk? What could that be?
Is knowing worse, or is not knowing? I scarcely have a choice:
I check in with my emotions.
Is this relief? Am I relieved that they are eating the dirt instead of fucking it? One review complains about the taste. I don’t know what they expected.
I try in vain to struggle against the tide, to return to the relatively normal side of Etsy. I begin to resent, no, hate, these deceptively aesthetically pleasing hippie shops eagerly spreading medical misinformation and things as yet unknown.
This, unlike the other “crystals” I have shown, appears to show naturally grown crystals. They are, of course, quartz crystals, and $45 comes off as extremely overpriced. I have a quartz crystal I got for a dollar at an Eastern Kentucky rock festival, about the size and quality of the ones in the photo.
Quartz is the most common mineral in the Earth’s crust. But at least this is regular levels of annoying.
Then I see this:
Well, I see the photo and the price, and I think, that looks like a regular quartz crystal. There’s no way a regular quartz crystal is $1,347.
I read the description:
I am crying. I don’t want to google any of this. I am beyond googling. I no longer desire knowledge.
THATS A QUARTZ CRYSTAL. MOTHERFUCKER THAT’S QUARTZ. SIO2, MOST COMMON MINERAL IN THE EARTH’S CRUST. ITS FUCKING QUARTZ IM—
I click on a malachite.
The malachite promises to protect me from emails. And at this, darkest hour, I want to be protected.
I have been broken. I have been lured to my demise.
Big Brother: loved.
Geology lab I’m supposed to be doing: incomplete.
God: unmerciful.
This post has everything. Price gouging quartz, eating dirt, and fucking poisonous rocks.
Please don’t fuck or eat anything that you don’t 1000% know is safe, for fucks sake
Dean believing that he was the thing that truly killed Cas. If Cas hadn’t loved him, Cas wouldn’t have died. If Dean hadn’t loved Cas, Dean wouldn’t have let himself die.
why is it not more wellknown that women can have an actual literal disorder that not rarely makes them literally suicidal for up to 10 days every month before their period lmao like… teach this in class? it’s not a joke?
Wait what??
hereherehere (there’s more sites saying the same thing)
it’s called PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) and it’s basically PMS but make it Super Hardcore, it’s a hormonal disorder and to my knowledge they’re not exactly sure what causes it - there’s theories tho - but there seems to be little research on it anyway. As I said it’s similar to PMS in terms of symptoms [mood swings, lethargy, cramps, changed sleeping pattern, libido, appetite] but the symptoms get so severe that they are interfering with your daily life and impacting it negatively. Especially in terms of psychological symptoms, while it doesn’t go that far for everyone who has it and also not every month, a lot of the people who experience it are sent into a severe depressive episode beause of it and it’s really not rare at all for them to experience legitimate suicidal thoughts that go away the second they get their period (or up to two days in from what I’ve read).
I’ve read different claims on how many people it affects, some sources say 5%, others 8%, others say 2% so I don’t know about that, but menstruating people need to know this lmao. Not knowing that your suicidality is caused by a literal physical disorder that you have can be so dangerous, especially when you already struggle with such issues anyway or are trying to recover from mental illness and don’t realize that your “relapses” are symptoms of an actual disorder.
also I originally said women but of course this applies to menstruating trans men and nb folks too.
I’ll reblog this every time I see it because YUP
the amount of times me or friends are having a Seriously Bad Time and then a few days later be like “oh, i just got my period, everything makes sense now” and like, let out this huge sigh of releif because it means you’re not relapsing and it will go away soon…
This is about to be a long ass rant so ♀️ this is your warning but I felt this needed to be said.
This is the first time I have heard of PMDD. As a nearly 22 year old female who had to take a health class 7 - yes you read that correctly - 7 times (NYC likes to have health / sex ed in both science and PE classes at least where I went to middle/high school so 2x a year for 7th, 8th and 9th grade (with the PE classes being all female / FOCUSED ON THE FEMALE SIDE OF SEX ED TAUGHT BY FEMALE GYM TEACHERS / SPECIALIZED FEMALE INSTRUCTORS BROUGHT IN WHERE THEIR LITERAL JOB IS TO TEACH SEX ED TO TEENAGE GIRLS!!!) plus once in 10th after moving) I am appalled (but not surprised) by the public education system in the U.S especially considering that the two states - especially NY - where I had to take sex ed were considered “progressive” with their education. I don’t even want to think about what abstienance only states are not teaching ♀️.
There are so many things that I should not have had to learn about my body on my own - and that I am still apparently learning. The U.S education system has failed every single female (or trans male) student that has not been taught about THIS and other COMMON disorders or syndromes that biology tries to fuck us over with. I didn’t know what PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) was until I was 16, almost 17, and my endo diagnosed me. I thought that being in pain while BREATHING while on your period was normal. I thought that bleeding heavily (start to finish) for 10 (sometimes 10+) days was normal. Or having periods where I would sometimes go through 2 or 3 OVERNIGHT pads in as many hours was normal. I knew that not getting my period every month (sometimes not for 3 or 4) was not normal but I was relieved given how horrific my periods always were. It wasn’t until I found out that not shedding your unterine lining monthly increased your risk of cancer (also not taught to me in sex ed but by my endo) that I realized not getting my period was not something to be relieved by.
The fact that this is another fairly common thing that women have that is also not taught as part of sex ed baffles me. What I was taught in sex ed? Some women have longer cycles than others and some experience more pain during their cycles than others do. So I thought that my terrible periods were normal - that it was just something to deal with because it was the way it was. It wasn’t until I was put on birth control to regulate my periods that I started having “normal ones” (still heavy and painful cramping but no where near as hellish as they were before). The fact that I went YEARS of experiencing periods that were so awful that I would go throughout my day trying to move my body as little as possible or not breathe too deeply so I wouldn’t be moving my core muscles at times because I didn’t know that that was something I should be telling my doctors or my mom is not ok. A 12 year old girl should not be telling herself to ‘suck it up’ and finish getting ready because it’s ‘just my period’ and that it’s not an excuse my parents will let me stay home from school from.
And now, at 21, you’re going to tell me that PMDD exsists? That there is a reason my depression seems to exacerbated before my period? Uh, uh. Not cool sex ed, super Not. Cool. I’m sure there’s also a reason I feel downright homicidal during my period as well but I do know why? No, I do not. But I am a reasonable enough person to realize that becoming an irrantional level of irritated by hearing someone else breathing (quietly) is probably not great. Or being annoyed by feeling another human’s presence in the same house - not even the same room - where they are in no way, shape or form trying to interact with me and minding their own goddamn business is, again, not great. Can we please for the love of all that is holy start teaching girls, and boys, about common health issues that can arise (environmentally AND biologically) within their reproductive systems beyond STD/STIs or the consequences of failed contraception??? Jesus Christ ♀️. Thanks for coming to my pissed off Ted Talk.
Sometimes I wonder if my anxiety meds actually do anything.
Then I take them inconsistently for a week and have a mini panic attack about turning on the headlights on my new car. And then I go “Yeah. They work.”
“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”
