Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@eredien @anthracite Thanks for the advice! <3 I would really love to see Peg put this one together!

(apologies for the redraft, but it really really really bothered me that I misspelled Stormare :D )

ok listen. i've been reading up on the khmer rouge (it's a long story).

the khmer rouge killed 25% of Cambodia's population, over 1.5 million people, deliberately and in cold blood

and while trump does have plenty of COVID deaths on his useless appendix-like conscience, one, many of those would have still happened under ideal circumstances because IT'S A PLAGUE and two, that's really not the same as explicitly constructing a social machine for mass genocide

so what i'm saying here is, yeah, there is kind of a scale for these things, and while trump is a complete piece of shit, human cruelty gets a LOT WORSE THAN THIS and honestly, yeah, we gotta discuss the fact our "fascism" doesn't even include punishing people for speaking against the state means we are as usual BEING PRIVILEGED AS FUCK by treating this like it's equivalent to the Holocaust or Holodomor or Cultural Revolution

you've heard how i feel about trump: he is a terrible human being and should go die. and if it pleased his ego, you know, i'm not sure he wouldn''t order the deaths of millions. but the social support isn't there. the power isn't there. the complete and utter breakage of checks and balances isn't there

maybe it will be. if we don't turn the tide this year, yeah, i could in fact imagine a second trump administration turning that bad, if the right psychopath turns that sociopath's ear, and the conspiracy crowd's bloodlust grows severe enough. and it's not at all comforting to be able to say "oh gosh no, our government isn't fascist, it's just protofascist."

it's just... please please please be careful when you go tossing around terms like "dictator" and "totalitarian," because it really trivializes people's suffering under societies where the leadership was outright and actively murderous, instead of merely abusive, petty, bigoted, callous, and inept. it's the difference between Steve Buscemi in Fargo and... uh... Peter Stormare in Fargo, but it's an important difference if you've ever been brutalized by a regime that was, like, Idi Amin levels of crazy...

(this is admittedly probably part of why there are so damn many humans and so few tigers...)

So I found this clip from Lost Highway, which I've never seen, while discussing other David Lynch works here today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZowK0NAvig

And once you've seen it, I just wanna point out one thing: A human will just stand there after an encounter like that, looking shocked and stupid.

But a Martian Tiger?

We would have kept the fucker's phone, said a cheerful "OK, then, goodbye!" and walked off with it before he could formulate a reply.

Because if you are facing down a force that you do not understand, that probably has the power to arbitrarily kill you and probably will, there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON not to attempt to harass and annoy it, if out of no other reason than scientific curiosity.

Death is eternal, but just one moment of seeing the look on that pale bastard's face will outweigh every moment of it.

@Phorm @001zlnv *wink wink nudge nudge*

@Phorm @001zlnv nah i got a proverbial guy XD

@Phorm @001zlnv I mean, I enjoyed What Did Jack Do? ffs, so I will probably be able to deal with The Return!

Also now I wonder if the White Horse knows the Red Rabbit...

@Phorm @001zlnv Also, huh, I guess now I know what voice mail I'm leaving all the GOP senators on Monday. =^________^=

@Phorm @001zlnv Found one of the clips! I really need to break down and watch the rest of S3, don't I...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir8s6IGq2Hs

#FixYourHeartsOrDie

@Phorm "Fire is coming... fire is coming... fire is coming..."

i let peebles and arthur back in because i am a SUCKER and now they are having the cutest damn swashbuckling fight, leaping from box to box and swatting at each other

Found this today while researching urban legends about phone numbers. This is delightfully creepy and I'll be very disappointed if none of my writer friends ever sneak some of these into a horror novel or something..

https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/audio/harvard.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_sentences

https://gizmodo.com/the-harvard-sentences-secretly-shaped-the-development-1689793568

(tl;dr: it's a carefully formulated series of phonetically balanced phrases for use in testing phones; out of context, most of them are rather creepy in a way that I find... pretty awesome, honestly, this is my kind of horror)

you gotta be a royal asshole, i mean the sort that when you open your mouth people can see the OTHER end of the stick, to think a phrase like "it's regressive'" is a valid reason to hate a song, and by valid, i mean, why should i not hold the tender cartilage of your nose between my clawtips until you howl with pain

fuck fuck fuck FUCK i hate robert christgau

(we would have invited the others but shadow is off doing mysterious cat-empress things, shemp is a little bit too much of a big male butthead to trust around the newbs just yet, and CJ... CJ is the shy one and doesn't like to come in)

mama finally hopped back in the Mother Box and resumed nursing her babies after her little family-and-human-friend-only cat party

peebles is grooming herself on top of my computer bag

arthur is waging brutal but completely ineffectual war against a little chewy toy

and there's still fake birdsong

these cats are still profoundly likely to break our hearts someday but this moment is absolutely blessed

aunt tigress has definitely lost her marbles

@JulieSqveakaroo at the time the photo was taken ALL THREE WERE REALLY BORED

i hope the problems is now clear D: although they're currently snuggling peacefully on the bed together, so i think i may have actually succeeded in alleviating some of sugarfoot's stress and boredom...

@Oneironott i mean i am a tiger so this is _kinda_ up my alley? i just usually go for bigger game, and they don't have a "10 hours of slow wildebeests" or "10 hours of oblivious peacocks looking the other direction" or "10 hours of Terran oil executives" channel afaik 🐯​

the really aggravating thing about keeping sugarfoot happy while she's stuck indoors is that she was so damn jaded to start with -- i couldn't tell before if she was irritated or just, you know, a cat, and this sure ain't helping. but it breaks my heart every time she mews at the door.

she does seem to genuinely be enjoying the birdsong though? i don't know? maybe?