Disaster Bi, tagging very minimally. Multi-fandom blog, currently fixated on the Terror and Word of Honor, but also still the Magnus Archives and Hikaru no Go/Qi Hun. You can call me Leo. ey/eir or any pronouns.
Im not a parent, but I know that so many issues with kids misbehaving could be solved by giving them a simple task to complete instead of just yelling “stop” until they cry
Over the summer I went to an art museum with my S/O and their son (age 10). The son wasn’t as engaged as we’d hoped, but also we probably should have known.
He whined about and my S/O said “we went to legoland for you, this is for us adults” which is fine, but that didn’t stop him from whining about.
Immediately jumping into teacher mode, I pulled out my notebook and a pen and I said “hey, every time we stop to look at a painting for a while, I want you to draw it.” He didn’t draw a single picture. I showed him how to do it, still didn’t draw a single picture…but he also stopped whining. He couldn’t complete the task, but his focus was taken away from “I don’t want to be here” and was transferred to “what does this image look like? how can i draw this”
It doesn’t always work, but it teaches kid to channel energy and focus instead of wondering what “stop” means. Because “stop” really means “do something else”.
for some reason your icon being a knife gave me the really strong impression you were telling me all this information at knifepoint
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 not a crystal
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.
I’m absolutely ascending at this part of the entire post
I’m absolutely
ascending at this part of
the entire post
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
At trivia last night we were shown a picture of a jade fabergé egg and it immediately made me think of this post and I said “I hate it” out loud and then my teammate was like “why” and I didn’t know where to start so I just didn’t answer
Right now there’s a guy with a beard and glasses who loves chicken and waffles trying to get pussy from a girl who still calls herself adorkable in 2022 and never moved on from finding griffin mcelroy funny be grateful you have never had a relationship or had sex
the real blackpill forbidden truth people don’t want to admit is that ugly cringey people often form relationships with other ugly cringey people, and these relationships are often happier and involve better sex than the relationships between hot sophisticated people
I’m trying to imagine a life where “having a beard and glasses and loving an extremely common food in an extremely populous area of the US” and “finding a successful media personality amusing and liking a funny word” are just so horrifying and cringe that it’s a threat to be posted.
It seems like an amazingly paltry and petty one, but then I remember the assistant manager I worked under very briefly who was extremely upset that I did not agree with her (in 2005 in Victoria BC for the love of bob) that dyeing your hair an unnatural colour was the kiss of death to ever getting a job. She was pushing sixty, wanted you to believe she was pushing fifty, wore Smart Power Suits and early 2000s Corporate Middle Class Woman makeup along with a Stylish Mid-Length Haircut, and she was judgemental as fuck.
And I remember this one day when this lady came in.
It was an Irish Import company that considered itself very above brow which is in retrospect a hilarious of a store actively capitalizing on the Irish-Canadian diaspora’s kitsch idea of Ireland at best, but anyway. One of the things that we had a bunch of that we were trying to get rid of were these triangular wool woven shawls. Beautiful pattern, beautiful fabric, frankly a massive PITA to sell because they were also, as garments, very Grandmother.
So this woman comes in and she has a sensible mushroom cut, and round glasses (note that this is 2005: round glasses are not cool), un-chic jeans*, and a fanny pack (please understand that fanny packs were so uncool they were unable to see cool from the curvature of the earth), with a plain cotton t-shirt tucked in. She had no makeup on and while her face itself was totally within “mainstream normal-could-be-attractive” she was so utterly unadorned that people who just go with the TRAPPINGS would have said she was plain, or even ugly.
Her husband came in with her! He was similarly un-coolly attired, and similarly not hot by anyone’s standards. But they were friendly and nice with each other, and eventually I ended up asking her what she was looking for.
It turned out she was a classical harpist with a significant Celtic music repertoire and she had a concert coming up. In the way of most classical musicians, she was going to be wearing a black dress, and she was looking for Something to make it more interesting and eye-catching.
And I realized my perfect opportunity, which was to sell her one of these shawls we couldn’t get rid of. I showed her the shawl and its quality and the beautiful pattern of knotwork; I pointed out that she could fasten it over her shoulders, but also she could tie it around her waist and to show her this we found a mirror and she handed the fanny pack to her husband and tried it.
She seemed pretty happy about it, but then her husband spoke up. And what her husband said was, “Honey you look beautiful.” And he meant it. And she glowed.
Was her outfit gonna be something I’d wear? No, not ever remotely - especially not at 20, but even at my age now, I would want something with more edge to it. Was she going to be happy with it and have a great concert, and was it 1000% appropriate for every OTHER element of her personal style I could see? Hell yeah.
I rang her up, she paid, she thanked me, I wished her well on her concert, her husband bought a bunch of more kitschy stuff, they went on their way, I considered it a huge win: she got the piece she wanted for her concert, we got rid of stock we were desperate to get rid of without too much of a loss, everybody’s happy!
The assistant manager came bustling over and was like, “oh my god did she actually BUY that?” and proceeded to bitchily sneer and mock this woman and her husband while I just stared at her, not even on purpose, because I literally couldn’t believe someone could be that miserable of a bitch.
But there she was. Being that way.
I quit that job about a week and a half later, without notice, because jesus fuck life is too short to spend any time around that kind of bitter, mean, small-minded person if you don’t have to. Good grief. At twenty I was way too anxious and uncertain to have anything usefully cutting to say to the assistant manager, to my everlasting regret.
But jesus frogs and little apples, imagine being so miserable as that - so snipey and small.
So I mean I totally can imagine it because I REMEMBER that assistant manager, and she was a bitch, but I’d rather remember the couple with the lady I sold the shawl to. I hope they’re still happy together, and still give just as few fucks about other people being horribly judgemental assholes. And as long as he’s not an actual dickhead and she’s not actually a bitch, I hope chicken-and-waffles guy and mcelroy fan girl have fun too.
[*there is a profound hilarity that much of what she was wearing is actually totally fine fashion wise for a woman of her age today, but Fashion Changes and at the time it absolutely indicated she was frumpy as shit]
I KNOW RIGHT. I literally started typing up the description and was like “ … .okay hold up I know how this sounds but IT WASN’T COOL AT THE TIME, OKAY, I NEED YOU TO UNDERSTAND -”
God and our band of what was Okay to wear was so fucking narrow then too. Anyway.
Which is why I am one of Those Horrible Cringey People who wears whatever the hell she wants and doesn’t care what’s in fashion today or tomorrow or whenever. Is it comfy? Do I think I look okay in it? Does my wife think I’m gorgeous in it? Then why the hell do I care what anyone else thinks?
The thing about debate is that it’s supposed to be a fair and reasoned and good-faith discussion about The Thing. It’s supposed to be two people of differing opinions attempting, through discussion, to find the truth.
But debating with cult members and trolls only mimics this. It’s a nice shiny flower that also happens to be a praying mantis with bodyparts that look like petals.
You’re not arguing with them about The Thing. You’re arguing with them about their opinion of The Thing. Which is 1) entirely in their control, and 2) really isn’t particularly important to you.
Unless you make it important to you.
Like, by conflating it with the thing it purports to be.
The instant you get invested, the instant you feel the need to convince THEM, the instant convincing them becomes synonymous with successfully defending your own beliefs, they have a hold on you.
And they will use that hold to do what predators do.
They’re not interested in being convinced. They’re not interested in finding the truth. They’re interested in arguing you out of everything you believe using the debate process you’ve foolishly placed your faith in and staked your positions on, and using your own convictions that being right makes you a superior debater and/or that being a superior debater makes you right, to convince you that you owe it to them to change YOUR mind, because you chose to avail yourself of their supposed willingness to change THEIRS.
You can, actually, lose a debate while still being right. Debate is a skill contest, not a magical truth-detector. You don’t owe anyone to change your beliefs to their tune just because they’re more skilled at debating, more sophisticated at finding arguments, or just more unwilling to concede points.
But they’ll try to convince you otherwise. In fact, they run on your entrenched beliefs otherwise.
To say “I still don’t accept this” and walk away, to keep your own autonomy at the cost of mockery on a level you probably believe, takes strength and savviness few people possess, and they absolutely prey on that too.
It’s very helpful to be able to be honest with yourself about whether you’re actually willing to believe/accept their position, and fair to your prospective opponent to avoid debates (or at least avoid calling it a debate) over something when you absolutely are not willing to accept the opposing position. Because being fair in a real debate means you risk accepting the opposing position.
And if you’re the only one being fair in a debate only you believe is real, you’re taking a huge-ass risk with only purely illusory payoff.
The trap is that they’re offering you the illusion of an opportunity to defend your beliefs by convincing them, at the cost of you risking your beliefs on the strength of your ability to convince them. And then they use their refusal to be convinced as the “impartial” judge of victory.
The fight is not what you think the fight is, and it’s time to walk away.
I used to watch this in playgroups, too, and what I really hated was the way that it’s not just families, it’s everything. The preschool line was one of the worst.
You’d have a kid coming for months to the community centre playgroup and he was just a sweet kid - sometimes he got angry, just like all the rest of the kids, sometimes he wanted to be a dinosaur or a scary lion, just like the rest of the kids, but he also loved the baby dolls and played house and wanted a pretty hat just like the rest of the kids. Some of them would even really explicitly like Dora the Explorer or they’d love Doc McStuffins or whatever, wouldn’t care. Would also love Bob the Builder, my point is that this shit’s gender appropriateness wasn’t even on their radar, and their parents were clearly fine with that, including the somewhat bro-y dads.
Then they’d start attending actual pre-school. And suddenly whether or not things were for Boys or Girls was Important. Suddenly Dora wasn’t acceptable; she was for Girls. Suddenly, Boys don’t play with baby-dolls. A lot of it is peer pressure - not kidding, in all innocence peer pressure, at four years old, because some of the OTHER kids HAVE been taught the world has Boy Things and Girl Things and it’s absolutely bad for Boys to like Girl Things.
One mom I talked to noted that on the one hand her kid loved pre-school and also she needed the care hours, and (as a valid concern) she did want her kid to know how to socialize with the rest of the world, but she was also pretty pissed that he’d spontaneously given up what used to be his favourite things because they weren’t “for boys” and was sad about it, and also four, so she couldn’t actually explain to him why he didn’t need to. (She’d tried.)
These were just people who hung out in the same nice liberal neighbourhood I nannied in and attended that playgroup at the community centre; I don’t know how things turned out for them, as we lost touch.
But this shit is toxic and it starts so early, and we have got to figure out how to stop it. We have got to figure out how to just let boys be fucking children, let them enjoy the things they enjoy without making them constantly check themselves to make sure it meets with Masculinity Approval. Do not do this to your kids. Dads, especially, do not do this to your kids but Moms too*.
And as a de jure woman stg when I see other women reinforcing this shit and I possibly can I will fight you. Do not fucking do this. Do not push your boy at “boy” stuff and demand they avoid girl stuff. Do not tease them for being scared, or bug them about doing “girly” things, or whatever. Do not. I will fight you. Don’t do it to them, and don’t do it to their dads/your male partners either. Your sons are listening. Don’t help this toxic bullshit.
[*if you are a parent who does not fall under dad or mom and you’re still enforcing gender roles I don’t know what to do with you but I will probably challenge you to a duel in a public place should we ever meet.]
So Arizona launched an “education hotline” that allows “concerned parents” to report “””critical race theory””” and other things like ~gender identity~ being taught in the classroom
It would be a shame if the number and email were spread to bad actors looking to prank call the AZ Department of Education
and for the love of god, don’t just spam it with memes or le funny shrek jokes or whatever, they’ll just hang up
make plausible-sounding reports for things that don’t actually exist, so that they actually have to waste time/resources investigating false leads - the goal is to waste time they would otherwise be using to do their jobs, not to get tumblr clout for being an epic troll
So apparently the internet article said the superintendent wouldn’t be deterred by the prank calls because they would ‘taper off eventually’. It’d be a real shame if this post stayed in circulation via queues so they get a consistent list of prank calls to filter through. 😇
I was asked why there’s a zionist claim that the Palestininian identity is not legitimate. And I think it’s important to understand why Palestinians as a whole are seen as a threat by Israel. To understand why it’s not about Hamas.
The claim is that the Palestininian identity was made up in order to push us out. Palestinian existence is a threat to the legitimacy of Israel as a country.
I was taught in school that Palestine was empty when we got here. They used a Mark Twain quote. It was a barren land full of swamps and some nomadic people (Beduins) but as soon as we wanted to come here, the awful antisemitic Arabs sent people to settle here before we could to take up the space. I was in school in the settlements though. I was taught the most extreme version of this.
Another version of this is that Palestine was never its own thing, they’re just Arabs the same as all Arabs from the surrounding countries. So they could just… scooch over and give us the space, please and thank you. In Israel no one uses the term Palestinian. If I do, people roll their eyes and dismissively go “Arab.” An Arab is an Arab. It’s a way to strip away their unique identity and blend them in with the rest to say they could always move to Jordan, or Syria, or Lebanon, and it’s all the same to them.
It’s a way to make Palestinian existence by itself into a malicious plot to deny us a homeland.
Because if Palestinians exist as a distinct group of people, we aren’t the only ones with a connection to this land. And you don’t create an ethnostate by sharing.
You still hear echoes of this mentality. Why won’t all these Muslim countries take the people of Gaza as refugees? That’s asking why they won’t let Israel make its ethnic cleansing more neat and convenient. Yes, refugees should be taken in and given shelter. But this question shifts responsibility away from Israel. Palestinians shouldn’t be forced suffer either ethnic cleansing that leaves them as refugees, or a genocide.
I think there’s something that needs to be said about encouraging readers to leave feedback.
For me it’s not about “tell me my writing is amazing and stroke my ego”
It’s more about “please engage with me so that I can experience your joy secondhand and foster a connection with you”
I understand that not everyone wants this in their reading experience, some people are shy and a million other reasons why maybe someone wouldn’t want to engage and that’s perfectly fine!
But what I’m trying to steer away from is being a passive content creator with passive consumers. What I want to steer toward is fostering a community that is essential to fandom. I want to see your reactions because it makes me feel like I’m a part of something.
On encouraging reblogs —
I understand that not everyone is comfortable reblogging, especially explicit content. This is ok!
But just consider that the only reason you were able to enjoy a fic or fanart is because someone else shared it, and by not sharing it yourself you are potentially robbing someone else of the opportunity to enjoy it as much as you did.
As OPs our reach only goes so far and this website relies on reblogs in order for anything to truly get seen by a wider audience.
So that’s really it! That’s why I encourage these two things at the end of every story I post. Not because I’m trying to be demanding and “make people feel bad” if they don’t do it.
I know most other social media sites encourage mindless content consumption and that’s just the way of the world nowadays, but I am from a time when community was at the heart of fandom and I just don’t want to lose that.
But what I’m trying to steer away from is being a passive content creator with passive consumers. What I want to steer toward is fostering a community that is essential to fandom. I want to see your reactions because it makes me feel like I’m a part of something.
