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Here's a riddle for you. It is something that polite people do not discuss. It is something that most television shows do not dare to mention. It is something that half the world can never know or experience. It is something that more than half of the writers in the world can never truly understand. In Speculative Fiction, it creates the Monster of the Week and brings about The End of the World as We Know It. What is it? Menstruation in Speculative Fiction also causes mundane misery and angst, which tend to lead to stupid mistakes that create all of the previous supernatural problems.

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  • Menstrual Menace
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  • Here's a riddle for you. It is something that polite people do not discuss. It is something that most television shows do not dare to mention. It is something that half the world can never know or experience. It is something that more than half of the writers in the world can never truly understand. In Speculative Fiction, it creates the Monster of the Week and brings about The End of the World as We Know It. What is it? Menstruation in Speculative Fiction also causes mundane misery and angst, which tend to lead to stupid mistakes that create all of the previous supernatural problems.
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  • Here's a riddle for you. It is something that polite people do not discuss. It is something that most television shows do not dare to mention. It is something that half the world can never know or experience. It is something that more than half of the writers in the world can never truly understand. In Speculative Fiction, it creates the Monster of the Week and brings about The End of the World as We Know It. What is it? If you guessed "an Eldritch Abomination from beyond the stars", correct wrong. The correct answer, as you know if you cheated and checked the potholed links or just read the title of this article, is...menstruation. In most fiction, periods are rarely mentioned. Speculative Fiction does likewise. But on the rare occasions that Speculative Fiction does mention menstrual periods, the characters should tremble. SF periods serve as the trigger for every supernatural menace you can think of. Gruesome Body Horror is the favorite, but a period can also serve as a source of great power (and great insanity), a magnet for The Fair Folk, a gateway to a hell dimension, or even a semi-sentient Reality Warper. Periods cause all sorts of supernatural evil, and never cause supernatural good (aside from the occasional Puberty Superpower, or attunement to magic). The Menstrual Menace is particularly popular as a Monster of the Aesop. Any monster evolving out of a girl's period will serve as an object lesson of how to deal with the pain of puberty. If the moral is that Growing Up Sucks, the whole cast will be dead or insane by the end. At the more idealistic end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, defeating the Menstrual Menace will be an Anvilicious moral about the importance of abandoning childish things. Menstruation in Speculative Fiction also causes mundane misery and angst, which tend to lead to stupid mistakes that create all of the previous supernatural problems. Incidentally, the overwhelming majority of the examples below are by male writers. This is probably because Most Writers Are Male, but some of these stories go so far with the horror of periods that Freud would have a field day. The belief systems of some cultures have often incorporated a strong positive or negative supernatural significance to the phenomenon of menstruation. This trope is for supernatural horrors only; for trouble caused by mundane periods, see No Periods, Period. Compare Women's Mysteries. See also Hysterical Woman and All Women Are Lustful, two beliefs brought on by this very trope. Examples of Menstrual Menace include:
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