Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

give all your best stuff to raccoons

we're gonna get it eventually anyhow

The real danger is from the white, white, white young businesspeople sitting next to me, who are doing me 1d4 of SAN and MP damage every time they use a word like "proactive" or "impactful," and 1d10 every time they talk shit about a coworker behind their backs.

(Or think about how much less money I make, for doing something that's based on facts and evidence, _not_ airy social manipulation bullshit.)

It's not a matter at this point of whether I bite them and give them a disease at this point. It's just selecting the perfect one.

=(>).(<)=

Today, Coffee Science is full of large, loud, short-haired men in uniforms, all speaking Russian. If you don't hear from me again... that's probably why.

However, so far they seem like pretty nice guys, so it'll probably be because I'm doing nastoiki shots with them in somebody's basement.

Also... um don't eat supermarket chicken raw, even if you're a raccoon. It's so gross. =(O)_(O)=

I miss the Seattle farmer's market. Real bad.

This is one of those days I really wish I weren't mostly a rationalist, so I could draw on my Raccoon Powers to keep from getting sick from that bit of raw turkey I accidentally at the other night.

On the other hand... *snaps goggles over eyes* I, Jennifer James Kirsch, am a raccoon second and a SCIENTIST first! *cackles and summons lightning SFX*

I did some research and found out that barely one in seven samples of supermarket turkey had camphylobacter, salmonella, or E. coli in the first place. So I'm probably fine.

SCIENCE, MOTHERFUCKERS! HAHAAHAAHAAA!

#TheyCalledMeSaneAtTheInstitute
#WhichIsWhyINeverGotMyPhD

@spacewastrel@snouts.online I know advice like this can feel like a presumptuous imposition or soft-pedaling, but...

Something that's really helped me immensely is keeping an anxiety journal in Evernote. It probably wouldn't work for everybody, but having pages and pages of unfulfilled or passed worries I can page through can be really reassuring.

Case in point: I'm still terrified that bit of undercooked turkey I eat earlier is gonna wreck my Xmas trip home next week. What happens will happen... but in the meantime, I can page through my journal and look at all the OTHER things I ate that were "gonna kill me for sure." It's really helped me steer back to baseline when it gets bad.

@spacewastrel@snouts.online I'm right there with you, hun. Peg makes fun of me for needing a media stream almost constantly—in the shower, when I shave, on walks alone—but that's what happens when I don't. Reality, or "reality," intrudes constantly.

Anything from "your good eye is gonna rot out too one of these days" or "your elderly mom's days are numbered" to "your health insurance subsidy probably won't exist in two years" and "what on earth are you gonna do if your job dries up someday?" Or maybe "huh, when's that heart palpitation gonna turn into something REALLY serious and leave Peggy alone and heartbroken?"

Every. Fucking. Day. since I was 12 years old. It's just how it is. So... yeah. You're not alone. *hug*

Hey, today went entirely too well! Let's accidentally eat some raw turkey a week before a big holiday trip, just to mix things up a little!

(It was mostly cooked, just a little "rare" in the middle, I'll probably be fine...)

Oh, hey, looks like our @parallax account is getting some attention already! I've thrown up some background and thoughts about the Vek-10—many thanks to @001zlnv for the inspiration!

@001zlnv Yeah, I'm kinda hoping that's the majority opinion here. n.n It really _doesn't_ lend itself well to webcomic daily-trickle format, and I guess I should be kinda proud of that... n.n;

@hystericempress I miss the hell out of you, sis. Maybe, mmmmaybe this February for a visit if I can get my spending habits under control...

@Thaminga

#SheDidTheMath

What's this? Oh... nothing. (>)__(>)

*looks embarrassed and crumples up a piece of paper with 74 tallymarks and some pawprints on it*

@001zlnv Hmm. Probably a lot of pareidolia, too—and cultural defenses against seeing false patterns in things, because that could WRECK a faith like that.

(Thank you for playing rubber-ducky consultant for me. This is actually quite helpful. <3 )

@001zlnv Oh, goodness, no. The Vek(0–10) are/were all very clean... More like the tidy but confusing Escheresque gardens of the gods. It's probably rather like going through the estate of a fussy deceased great-aunt. Everything is very neatly laid out for somebody who was not you.

🤷​

@001zlnv Well—and I do hope to bring some of this into Chapter Two—I do like the fact that they're a fundamentally rationalist religion. Their gods objectively existed. The archaeological record is pretty clear about this. And their religion's entire methodology is to get closer to them by recreating their science, in hopes of someday following them wherever they went.

The Vek-N faiths are still full of ritual trappings, arcane symbolism, theological disputes, and internal politics... but it's all (supposedly) in service of becoming better engineers—and accepting that the process also requires getting the irrational parts of your society in order instead of just suppressing them.

@Thaminga wuff good :)

(seriously, you have some fascinating stuff going on in your head and we should really talk linguistics someday...)

Meanwhile, Parallax is going slow and I'm in another low-hope phase for it. I think it's pretty good, in terms of individual panels and script beats, but I'm still worried people are going to read it and go "Um, what the hell just happened?!" Like, in a bad way—there is a _good_ way that could happen.

Got some neat stuff planned for Chapter 2, even if I can't figure out how to make the Vek-10 ("the science monks") half as weird and interesting as the Mixolyne ("the space dryads").

Last chapter, I _almost_ hit that magical point where all my characters were telling me what they wanted to do. (Heh, I also had access to weed at the time. :p ) But all Baron K wants to do this time is sulk in his quarters and practice passive-aggressive ikebana at everybody.

Meh. Fell into and out of a big self-hatey and snappish depression this past week. Ended up sulking at Peg pretty fiercely on Sunday, which she handled with consummate serpentine grace and patience.

Doing well enough to handle the daily routine, but still feeling like the magic's gone away for good. I've lost that one foot in an imaginative world, and lost my capacity for sudden joy.

I miss cannabis, which was always my Royal Road to that place, but I think there's more to it than that. It's just hard to find the stimuli these days. There's a certain level of creative chaos that's no longer present in my quiet little life.

Food's really good, though.

In the meantime, I've been... fighty again. Like, online and politically. I really hoped going back to Birdsite would put me back in touch with my kink life, but mostly it just puts me in touch with obnoxious right-wingers looking for a good sarcastic pranging.

I don't like that side of myself, it's not who I really *wanted* to be and I really don't know if it's doing any good—not even when my research and logic are _exquisite_—but I can't pretend I'm not enjoying it anyhow.

Meanwhile, I'm slowly learning how to play Europa Universalis 4. In the immortal words of Grandmother Sengir: "It helps to the pass the time until I die."