Waiting for The Wicked Powers

You ever think about how he went into battle against Nimonas dragon and everything he thought he had, his beauty that had been held over his head his entire life was ripped away from him and he thought he had nothing left.

Half his face was scarred from top to bottom, his eye was useless on that side, the damage to the side of his head forced him to shave his long, golden hair on one side, he couldn’t walk properly anymore bc of his crushed leg.

He had everything taken away from him all at once. He didn’t have Ballister anymore, the director had put him down and ripped him apart his whole life, all he had was his position as the golden boy of the world, and suddenly he’s bleeding out in a underground lab, he’s found out the director was corrupt, he believes he will never get the love of his life back, and half his face is and body is ripped apart and useless.

However, with this came a realization that he was more than a pretty face. It humbled him and taught him the value of being soft. He was able to reunite with Ballister, he was able to feel that he was worthy of love with or without his looks. Ballister showed him that no matter if his face was ruined forever, no matter if Ballister had to help him walk wherever he went, no matter if there were days when ambrosius simply needed someone to hold him in bed all day and tell him how much he was worth, Ballister would always be there.

The Bad Kids

you ever think about how there was definitely a period of time where adaine owned nothing but a single set of clothes and all the bad kids were like Not If I Have Anything To Say About It

(additional rambling abt the clothes under the cut)

anon wouldn’t you know it, i actually had detailed instructions for a bad kids full party clothing swap in my to-do list from like. october. so thank you for finally giving me the excuse to draw it out >:)

text-less versions + more context abt the clothes under the cut!

(also yes fabian’s (borrowed-from-fig) shirt says “microwavable thot pockets.” it’s a fake band name my dear friend zeez threw out into the groupchat ages ago that i stole. he doesn’t go here but this is for him)

bad kids, nice clothes! fabian’s plain grey hoodie cost more than all his friends’ clothes combined

-"give me a (insert type of check or saving throw), if you'd be so kind"

-use of the word "asunder"

-"you see that-"

-NPCs wordlessly exchanging quick nods to PCs and one another after the party makes a plan

-NPCs having undercuts/the sides of their heads shaved

-"jeeEEzus chrISt" when a fuckton of damage is dealt to an enemy

-"this dude is looking Fucked Up"

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

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.

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.

The basic concept makes sense, I guess. Dirt has minerals in it, and when you have a dangerous deficiency and can’t get supplements in little pills, you’ve gotta do something, and sometimes the “something” your body comes up with is “crave dirt.”

The big problem with buying “edible clay” on Etsy is that this stuff is totally unregulated. (Most ‘alternative medicine’ is.) At the very least, you may or may not adequately address the dangerous nutritional deficiency you could likely have by eating random clay from Etsy. In a world where we do have supplements in little pills, there is no reason to just eat clay and hope it works. There’s no way of verifying what mineral content the clay has.

There’s also the fact that you could poison yourself with contaminants, since, again, this stuff is unregulated. I googled byproducts of kaolinite mining and quickly found results suggesting that it can absorb hazardous metals during the mining process and also that kaolinite deposits in Nigeria are also rich in radioactive thorium. In general, though, mining stuff out of the ground results in a lot of hazardous waste material.

Of course, the kaolinite pictured in the screenshot may indeed not be industrially mined kaolinite and may in fact instead be dried-up clay purchased at Hobby Lobby.

https://astolat.tumblr.com/post/144069870158/polished-malachite-stalactite-copper-crescent

If you need an incentive to click on the link:

Summary: OMG PLZ NO, even if you figure out how to use this safely... which nobody is really sure is possible... plz do not. No. Bad idea.