Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@chandra *looks down around her feet and sees a circle drawn around them*

*humps and ponders for several minutes how to cross this mysterious and surely sacred barrier, gives up, and takes a nap*

(This is why tigers would run the world much better than humans.)

gizmodo.com/an-astounding-amount-of-water-has-been-discovered-benea-1834978180

*scowls darkly at you and your miserable depressing gutless planet full of psychotic whiny apes*

*orders 15,000,000 balloons, 100,000 funnels, and a stonking huge slingshot from ACME Interplanetary*

*retreats to the foothills of Mons Olympus, hides in h̵e̵r̵ ̵c̵a̵r̵d̵b̵o̵a̵r̵d̵ ̵r̵e̵f̵r̵i̵g̵e̵r̵a̵t̵o̵r̵ ̵b̵o̵x̵ Fort Awesome and waits 4-6 weeks for delivery*

😾😾😾😾😾😾😾😾😾😾😾😾😾😾😾😾​

@Balinares haha and then of course i notice i accidentally retweeted this morning's clarification, and delete the original by mistake... case in point i guess, hope people enjoyed it while it lasted :)

@Balinares MY NAME IS REZEYA OF MARS, CAT OF CATS. LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE HUMANS, AND DESPAIR!

Nothing beside remains. *approving nod*

@Phorm I've seen too much Black Mirror to believe there's still such a thing as "unnoticed." I suspect our only way out of this is through.

@Phorm Honestly, I think "getting bombarded with partisan agitprop" is far too common of an occurrence in 2019 to be a reliable omen.

If the sun goes black, it could be an omen. If there was an eclipse scheduled, it probably wasn't an omen. If there's a GRU agent taping a piece of round black cardboard to your window, it's DEFINITELY NOT AN OMEN, it's just a psyop. :p <3

@Xinjinmeng@mastodon.social Oh, I see the point of difference there now! That's reasonable and it's now obvious I actually should've ranted for MUCH longer. O:)

Yeah, that's another point worth clarifying. I like Otherkin. I'd like to caucus with Otherkin, if they'll have me. I will take up rhetorical arms for Otherkin. I have no problem at all with getting mistaken for Otherkin.

I think I could fairly be described as "plural" and "Otherkin adjacent," though for me personally, I prefer just "fantasy-prone" because it acknowledges my "mystical rationalist" flavoring base better than most terms. :)

If someone else' definition of Otherkin scoops me up in it, I'm fine with that; I'm just saying my personal one doesn't, so I don't want to *presume* to speak for Otherkin, and I do feel like a bit of an outsider.

Plus, my own self-image is basically "human who's decided to make a 24/7 pretense of being a homicidal jungle cat because WHY THE FUCK NOT play a character for your entire life and make it a form of art?" So I feel like maybe the Otherkin *should* disown me?

And that'd be my loss, not theirs, because even if I don't think the typical Otherkins' belief system aligns well with mine on some fundamental levels, I still like the kind of questions they raise. I think they're good questions.

And I think the very fact Otherkin are engaging in these identity questions, even if I don't personally think they are "literally" (whatever that means) elves and wolves and such, means they're doing better than the mainstream— and are perhaps just braver than me.

Mostly I just wanted to remind people there are a few of us Otherkin-adjacent fence-sitters, and there are *many* valid ways to play this identity game.

In summary, I have no fucking clue what reality is, so please feel free to ignore me and roll your own. I know where my chips are on the roulette table, and I've thought very carefully about the odds, but if you have a hunch, you might as well play it—because I guarantee both I and the collective human consciousness have gambled on far far longer shots. :O

@Xinjinmeng@mastodon.social It's a fair cop, and thank you, I've been waiting literally decades for someone to churn out some GOOD satire of my bullshit. :>

@JulieSqveakaroo You are on FIRE, sweetie, I think you went up a level or two in Artin' when I wasn't looking. <3

@Thaminga I think we're vehemently agreeing here! :D I have a LOT of sympathy with the "as real as money" concept, especially.

Also:

>avoid going full Pepe Silvia on y'all

<3 <3 <3

For the record, I do NOT identify as an otherkin. I feel the label implies a certain amount of material-realism and an approach to identity that assumes some element of the "kin" identity is objective and somehow "real."

But... I don't think ANY part of identity is real. I'm a pretty radical skeptic there, influenced by drinking too much Mahayana Buddhism and post-structuralist philosophy in college, not to mention the scraps of cogsci I've picked up. From where I'm sitting, this stuff is ALL "added in post," so to speak. Identity, like will, is an illusion brains slap on us to keep us tied together.

That was actually a big reason I started the postfurry thing. Once upon a time, there was a huge war on USENET between the furry "fans" and the furry "lifestylers." (What was that I was sayin' a few toots ago, about the Red Queen's Race?)

And honesty... I didn't like either side's approach. Most people on *both* sides were nice people, but the people who were normative about "Furry Is Just A Goddamn Hobby" were narrow-minded pseudo-rationalist jerks. They were the sort of people who (literally, this was a real conversation) thought that skydivers and people who got visible tattoos were almost as "crazy" as lifestylers, because anything that risked your career, health, or finances was literally insane.

And I tried to flee to the "lifestyler" side, but it seemed like they were far more interested in creating emotional support cliques than actually *discussing* the wild philosophical implications of what they believe. They took an approach of "Yes! Yes, of COURSE you're a fox!" and supported each other totally uncritically, and their quiet hostility and indifference when I tried to raise serious, respectful questions about that— and about what "real" actually MEANS— drove me off.

Honestly? Really honestly? I feel the same way about my friends' statements like "I'm really, really truly a $SPECIES" or "I know deep down my soul is really from $WORLD" that I do about Anthracite doing sigil magic and stuff. My own personal belief is that it has ~0% *direct* impact on the actual physical, noumenal world... and 100% potential impact on the ACTUAL thing humans call the "real" world, because that's mostly a fake symbolic overly over an imperceptible cloud of atoms and superstrings and neurons and shit that WE WILL NEVER SEE ANYHOW, and constantly forget even our tiny glimpses of.

So, yeah. Um... you're probably not "really" a fox. You're probably not "really" from the Magical Realm of Zikkizots. But that's okay, because that person you thought you were before you were those things was ALSO totally fake. You have no idea what you "actually" are, because your brain just... doesn't work that way. You would go mad.

Isn't that reassuring? *big old friendly and totally not reassuring tiger grin*

@Oneironott Meanwhile, I guess I'm just riding the cynicism and despair I picked up from Transliminal exploding and T***p getting elected, and quietly rooting for the raccoons, crows, and/or coyotes to swoop in and gently take the reins from us, 'cause there is something NOT right with primate brains... >_<

@Oneironott This is another thing that really annoys me about modern human society: MOST of the ideological work necessary to make these advances was done, like, 1800 years ago by Nāgārjuna, and then all over again by cognitive scientists.

We already have *all* the philosophical tools humanity need to start recognizing all this cultural baggage as infinitely empty, and thus infinitely flexible. We just... all kinda said no to it.

FFS, we live in a nation that was founded before the social sciences even existed, and... man, does it show. We know all this stuff about how human brains are BUILT to delude us, we could have used it to make a fairer and saner society AGES ago... and nope, we're just gonna let money, power, and ego drive everything instead, because humanity-as-a-whole still LOVES that shit.

Philosophically, I have some real complicated ideas about what it means to "not be human" (some of which you'd probably HATE :) ) and at the end of the day, we're all still lugging 46 chromosomes worth of Primate Crazy around. >_< But man, take one look at what it means to participate in "human society," and just tell me it doesn't make sense to try to define yourself right the fuck out of that iron prison, by any means necessary...

You know what all this talk about elements of the trans community turning on otherkin reminds me of?

Once upon a time I read a really good, really gross book by Carl Zimmer named "Parasite Rex," and it made an extended biological metaphor of the Red Queen's Race from Alice Through The Looking Glass, where one must essentially run just to stay still.

He used it to describe the never-ending arms race between parasites and their hosts. A fluke, say, will become hyperspecialized for living in a host species's liver. So that host becomes five degrees colder. So the parasite adapts to live three inches further up. So the host develops a toxin. So the parasite adapts to get along without the receptors that trigger it. So the host just evolves so it has a squeedlyspooge instead of a liver. So the parasite learns to live in a squeedlyspooge.

Yup. That's us. And this process is natural, though when a quasi-Gnostic like me says that, that is emphatically not the same as saying it's good. Barring some truly massive change to human social psychology-- or, bless us, a nice restful extinction-- we're going to be stuck in this dance forever and ever and ever.

I swear to god, someday like 30% of the otherkin talking about this are gonna be saying "OK, but not THOSE otherkin." I'll bet if you look in the right corners, you'll already see it. Someday it'll be people who have had brain mods, or cyber implants. We'll be arguing over whether splicing in real animal DNA is "appropriation of non-human experience" or something. Or whether it's "OK" to slap on the AR goggles and just act like that's the real world. (HINT: IT DOESN'T ACTUALLY MATTER AT ALL WHETHER IT IS OR NOT, AS LONG AS YOU CAN STILL SURVIVE AND BE HEALTHY. And that's only because that's the evolutionary cost of living with material reality as your substrate. Making a moral thing out of it is, IMHO, utterly inane.)

I'm not sure you CAN have a massive social innovation without attracting a bunch of people who see you as a colossal symbolic threat to their world-- and THEY'RE NOT ALWAYS WRONG, relative to their own real and imagined needs... but that's *not* a reason to stop. Not that most of us could if we wanted to. Do YOU think I really wanted all the awkward attention and outright mockery that came with postfurry? Looking back, I did a shit job, but I can't imagine a world in which I could have said no to it.

So at the risk of sounding dismissive, I guess my only advice is relax, enjoy the ride on the nightmare train as well as you can, fight like hell for whatever you think is right, be aware this Red Queen's Race is a thing and be merciful to the losers, and join me in grieving for everything good that gets ground to dust in the process.

@Balina You're the hero we didn't know we needed. <3

@LeDiva Some people, lacking any more interesting cultural options, are basically just determined to become memetic kudzu.

@Leucrotta Yeah, TBH, my 4★ standard for a Waffle House is "ate food; liked it; lived." I still owe them a huge debt of gratitude for basically keeping us alive through @LeDiva's madcap journey through the South years ago...

"Dorable the Explorable"