Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@mmsword Also, I need to come up with a suitably snarky term for a (former?) conversation venue that's settled into the state you've described. Something-something-entropy-something.

Hmm, for that matter, have you ever happened across a kids' book called "How To Be A Perfect Person in Just Three Days?" (Spoiler: being a "perfect person" involves sitting a dark auditorium, sipping weak tea slowly, and doing absolutely NOTHING ELSE.)

@mmsword Eeee-yup. I ran away, as quietly and politely as possible, when I saw that one of the postfurry-like discord channels I'd been invited to had a page-long list of forbidden/CW-mandatory topics that included "mentions of broken glass." It was like they just went Second Roman Triumvirate on every single thought that made every single one of them unhappy.

No shit. This is a real, verbatim example. And people are welcome to it, but... can you even BEGIN to imagine me being able to behave myself, let alone enjoy myself, in an environ like that?!

Heh. Ever read Out On Blue Six?

@mmsword Not just critiquing it, but comparing it to, direct quote, "GETTING KNIFED IN THE FACE."

https://twitter.com/puck1008/status/1217216637830455302

I just fucking can't break bread with these people anymore.

semiotic immunity is like real-world immunity: if you put yourself in a sterile bubble and insist on wiping everything down three times with disinfectant, you're just going to give yourself allergies and be at least as sick as you would've gotten just eating the goddamn sandwich that touched the floor

i'm not saying slurs and such don't matter—i'm must saying maybe the value of a satire that subverts and recontextualizes them outweighs the tenth of a second of pain caused by something that makes you feel bad, and maybe just maybe looking past the bad surface association to the actual context is a skill that grownups, even those who have been hurt in the past, should have, because not everything that looks hostile really is. and while trauma should absolutely be accommodated, and anyone who has to GET THE FUCK AWAY from a bad stimulus should never ever be shamed for it, it is literally not possible to pad society so thoroughly that nobody will ever be exposed to anything that ever reminds them of something upsetting, unless you really truly want and need to give our entire culture the texture and flavor of weak lukewarm tea.

so yeah, if you didn't like the attack helicopter story, you should absolutely criticize the fuck out of it, because that's how culture improves itself, but if you scream for it to be removed from the cultural stream without even getting past the GODDAMN TITLE and the possibility that it is ironic, i just can't accommodate your needs anymore, because we have a lot of work left to do on this culture's semiotics, and nobody ever promised you it wouldn't get messy

@anthracite oh gosh 😻​

maybe basing our sociopolitical movement largely on our personal trauma, especially that reflexively felt merely by first glance at a particular word or phrase, is not the most sophisticated or reliable path to a just society because of, you know, the whole HUMAN SUBCONSCIOUS IS A BIG HOT REACTIVE MESS thing

@Leucrotta Darlin' scuzzpuppies.

Not that I have any room to talk. *scoops up half of someone else's, er, artisanally wet-aged cheeseburger from the bin they're's squatting*

=(n).(n)= <3

@Phorm That is the mathematically perfect obfuscation of TTE's name. Bravo, Doctor. They will mock you at the Academy of Mad Friendship no longer. <3 <3 <3

Current activity: queueing up six different Black Sabbath songs at once, playing them all at 4x speed on repeat, and leaving them on all night, in the hopes that this will somehow immanentize the impending eschaton.

You know what is magical, though, if not friendship?

Swiftwind's eyes. Pony eyes are magical. Sweet Etheria, they're pretty.

@hystericempress Yeah, this and Adventure Time are basically my antidote to—as much as I loved them in their own ways—Steven Universe and MLP, for exactly that reason.

@Soreth @Phorm Not a kitty.</janet>

=(^).(^)=

@Phorm Yup. Took me YEARS of battle experience—and a right pranging from one particular very talented troll-frenemy who really knew how to push my buttons—before I could develop an immunity to those tactics.

Thank you Ilthuain, wherever you are, for being the Yosemite Sam to my Bugs Bunny (and sometimes vice-versa).

Every time Catra makes a snide remark about the Princesses and their naive belief in the Power of Friendship, my love grows.

Fuck that noise. It just doesn't work.

@Phorm If it's any consolation, Reddit does not seem to deserve its reputation as a hotbed of MAGA. There's The_Donald and a bunch of incel communities and such, but many of them are quarantined, and I consistently get huge upvotes for slagging Trump—even on supposedly apolitical communities.

@Phorm I have to admit it's pretty damn shocking how many positives botsentinel gives me. Even with the criticisms of it I mentioned early today—there's still a remarkable number of accounts I interact with that have ZERO personal tweets and mostly do nothing but retweet other Trump supporters and insult dissenters.

@Phorm Don't forget that Russian bots are a very real thing, and their exact purpose is to make us feel exactly that way—like Trump has overwhelming and demoralizing support, when his base is actually in the minority.

@Soreth I think it started the first time I realized just how superior your Python/MST3K knowledge base was to mine. :D

See? Perfectly accurate. Rezy's exactly 25% inorganic. She is, after all, a quarter plush on her grandfather's side...