Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

I'm finding a pleasant level of continuity between Tiger and Raccoon. The transition ain't quite happening in what I laughingly call "RL," because it's just such a cozy habit to RAWR at @anthracite and lovingly maul her head (and get mauled right back <3), but here online, it's been pretty easy.

Basically, Tiger and Raccoon are on the same sliding scale of It's Fun To Hurt People And Break Stuff That Deserve It. It's just more about "breaking stuff" and less about "hurting people."

Kirsch is more appropriate to the chill environment of Masto, the same way Reddit's snarky arrogance makes for such a target-rich Happy Hunting Ground for Rezy.

Why go through all the trouble of devouring the unjust—an honor they don't deserve—when you can just tear up their society and curl up in a cozy hole inside its rafters? If they give you any trouble, one little nip will do the trick, 'cause they can't live with the infectious things that you take for granted...

Raccoons are cute little bastards too. We're just more subtle about it. Majesty is an unnecessary burden, and who needs all that attention? It's more fun to pick at your enemies' symbolic worlds quietly, in the dark. =(^).(^)=

@Phorm Also, that's a good solution/warning! I think the wish-bearer giving something nice and then cruelly taking it away _themselves_ would violate the "cynical asshole" proviso (and I'd have to retain a wish lawyer!).

BUT... all they'd have to do is calculatedly give us something nice that humans have a long history of enjoying and then corrupting and then ruining, (Skekses-style, if you're watching DC:AOR). And the genie could give it to us with all good wishes that we wouldn't fuck it up this time, even genuinely hope that we won't... and just leave it up to us, thus totally abiding by the wording of the wish.

So... they could give us just about anything really. Look at what they did to that nice Jewish carpenter kid with the long hair. >__<

@Phorm See, this is why I'd only accept wishes from you or your protegés...<3

@xinjinmeng Oh, actually... what you really want to do is find all of Weird Al's old "ALTV" specials from MTV. They degrade in quality quickly from the 4th or 5th one on, but... Al turns out, unsurprisingly, to be one of the best VJs who ever lived. It's not all novelty music, but he unearths some truly wonderful VHS-era obscurities right on the border between comedic and dead serious. Lots of weird experimental videos by almost-famous artists.

@xinjinmeng See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y-p2l0mDJY

@xinjinmeng You and I should talk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zizh9PL7otc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2FnMk44sAg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLJNSD3H5sg

@Phorm This reminds me, I was pondering Genie Metaphysics the other day after another horror-fantasy binge, and I was wondering what would happen if someone just grasped the nettle and wished: "I wish we could just all have something nice for once without some cynical asshole screwing it up," leaving the granter to deal with the implicit callout.

Doesn't really apply to you, because it's more for the Cruel Twisted Genies, not the Fun Peril Genies like you, but I still wanted your feedback...

@Phorm Now I kinda wanna go.

*checks Yelp for "milkshakes" near the hotel*

Yeah. I can't do Steven anymore. I've been hurt too much to believe a word of it.

Some days are "scrabble at the roof panels until you make a good hole for yourself" days.

Some days are "lie around in someone else's hole, and wait for the distemper to settle down" days.

I think this is one of the second type. Maybe also an "order out for trash because you can't be bothered to look for berries" days.

#WisdomOfMyAncestors

@Phorm That's just EERIE.

Oh well, if I wanted any comic to be able to read my mind, that's pretty much the one. ^____^

Species change! 🐯​​​

Headfriend change! ​🌀​

Moral alignment change! ​😇​

Too much yang becomes yin.
Too much yin becomes yang.
Overindulgence creates allergy.
Avoidance destroys immunity.

Purity leads to impurity.
You will not recognize the disease until it is indistinguishable from you.

Impurity leads to purity.
You will speak the language of your enemy and blend right in when it arrives.

Your lucky number is "no."

@kelseyhusky Thinking of ya, hun. I'm honored and delighted every day we've got you around. Huskybots are very good. Believe nothing to the contrary. *HUG*

@Thaminga Or better yet: Nūmūnūme. It's the name of my new werewolf self-help cult!

@Thaminga Noomoonoomee!

@Phorm

Meanwhile, Invest 95L is forming in the Gulf and poised to pop us here in NOLA right on the nose.

Fortunately, the models are currently calling for nothing worse than a tropical storm, maybe 40-60 MPH. Let's hope it stays that way.

Either way, hoping to hit the supermarket this morning and hoping they won't have already ransacked it.

So I've been reading selections from Thomas Ligotti's Conspiracy Against The Human Race, since it was cited as a possible influence for S1 of True Detective (which I really liked).

So far, I'm not impressed. I feel like it pulls the same semantic trickery all the other radical pessimists do: when its argument falls short, it just clenches its fist and screams, "Well, you're just too WEAK and NEEDY to understand the AWESOME TRUTH about how awful everything is!"

More to the point, Ligotti privileges dread over every other human emotion, but he never really explains WHY. Everything else is just a meaningless contingent, and yet somehow dread—even where it does not seem to exist—is inherent, inevitable, and objective.

He gives no such consideration to hope, and in the end, it feels like one more arbitrary shell-game of words and values, where terms are stealthily substituted for each other when you're not looking.

So far, he never really shows you his math. He never really proves why one biologically grounded urge, the one to utter resignation and self-negation, is to be taken any more seriously than the others. He seems to just *assume* you're as horrified by the emptiness of the universe as he is—and never acknowledges how that, too, is one of those "values" he keeps denigrating.

Ultimately, it feels less like a cogent philosophical treatise and more like some kind of perverse inverted whodunit. A man has *failed* to kill himself—despite having just made every insistence that we all should—and you, the reader, must puzzle out exactly why.

The solution does not seem to appear in this book. I suppose I'll have to wait for the sequel. In the meantime, I'm not finding anything in this book that I can't find in the first 15 seconds of a Wonder Showzen episode.