Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

oh god

sugarfoot started mewling DESPERATELY to get outside to the point where she was leaping futilely at the door

i thought she was just going stir-crazy which would have also been very stressful...

but it turns out she really had to poop, and apparently the new litter we picked up for her (little kitten-safe sticks instead of clumpy sand) does not read as litter to her

yyyyyup right on Anthracite's yoga mat, mere seconds before she got home with our delivery food for the evening

peg is now super stressed out and snarfing down dinner before she rushes out to the grocery store for litter sand, and now we have to figure out a way to make it kitten-safe when the kidlets finally leave the box

my only real idea is that we mix the sticks and sand 20/80 for a while to get her used to it and gradually vary the mix until it's clear that "yes, this is poopie place"

blllllllaaaaaaarrrrrgggghhh i knew this is the sort of stuff we were signing on for as cat parents, but these are the worst parts -- where the cat is clearly distressed and you have NO IDEA what they want or what will help them...

oh god i had a horrible thought

what if blaseball goes full Electronic Arts or Livejournal and ends up getting bought up and assimilated

it seems unlikely given how much the whole thing's success relies on the genuine love between the devs and players, but... tell me we haven't seen it many many many times before

(sigh, yeah, i read a blaseball pamphlet and got converted daaaaaaamn you @mawr :p <3 i don't think i'll get invested, but it just reminds me so much of other metagaming experiments i've loved, like the Legend of 5 Rings tourney stories and the inter-campaign stuff they attempted in the Torg RPG, after watching the People Make Games "What is "Blaseball" and why is it taking over the Internet?" i'm definitely convinced blaseball is of the Nice Things the internet was supposed to give us.)

@001zlnv @zx3 oops that was supposed to be a DM anyhow! we are in GREAT shape now, at least until it's time to get the adolescent cats snipped in a couple months, so i'm a little embarrassed to ask for more -- there are a LOT of other worthy causes out there and I should be able to cover the rest with income and savings!

@Phorm What if I can't find metal stucco lath?

posting this on behalf of kirschbaer before somebody inevitably tags me with it ​❤️​

@xinjinmeng Are you perchance familiar with Alice Trillin's Law of Compensatory Cashflow?

Blergh.

It's really getting to me. The cats are a HUGE source of stress right now.

Sugarfoot is still having trouble adjusting to being an indoor cat, and I feel terrible every time she mewls at the door.

The kittens are good. They're doing what they need to be doing.

Shadow is not only being super-bitchy and aggressive by her standards, she's got what we are PRAYING is not a babybump under her belly. And our last vet trip with her lead to mutual misery and frustration, so we are ABSOLUTELY DREADING having her snipped, especially since we've realized we have to get it done REAL SOON and might already be too late.

And Shemp tried to follow us four blocks away from home today, way outside his usual range. And kept refusing to let us pick him up and guide him home. So we eventually just shrugged and said, "Listen, Shemp, if this is it and it's time for you to wander off..." And then I kinda broke down in tears and never finished the sentence.

We ended up carrying him home. He didn't fuss too badly. He's a good boy. I'm not ready to lose him, too.

And Artie and Peebs are just a big handful, though they were SUPER good girls yesterday when Sugarfoot needed some company and distraction.

Thank you again for your donations, advice, and support. I think I am all in with these cats, because my heart just won't give me any choice, and I really don't know what to fucking do. I was already at the end of my wits from COVID.

I guess it's healthy, though. I'm trying to look at this like a good Daoist Farmer and remind myself that the risk of suffering is huge but so is the risk of joy. I've already broken down blubbering twice singing to those freakin' newborns.

I think maybe here at what is hopefully the END of the Trump era and the near-end of the COVID-19 era, I needed something that was worth upping my game for. I am really really running on fumes right now but last month I didn't even think I had fumes.

@JulieSqveakaroo Yup, that's the one that inspired it! Did you see me in the replies? :)

@Leucrotta i recall just enough of the bubbleland and purple panda sagas from mr r's to know i was severely creeped out by them o.o

@JulieSqveakaroo One way or the other, they all just turn into Another Damn Job you're not getting paid for, don't they.

After consecutive unrelated conversations about Twin Peaks and 1408, I am now SEVERELY back into cosmic horror... and even more into the idea of entities that literally hurt to think about but are not actually _unkind_.

I still really, really, really wanna see a remake of/reply to Stephen King's 1408 where Mike just throws up his hands and asks the evil hotel room, "Listen, what is your problem?!? You're obviously sapient. Did someone hurt you? Can I HELP, maybe? Why are you so mad at ME?"

Nobody* ever asks that when faced with a cosmic "horror." Nobody even entertains the possibility that something can break reality can also be reasoned with, or have positive emotions. I wanna play with that trope so bad right now. Basically just... what if you had the "biology" and "nutritional needs" of a damn Tindalos hound but were otherwise... not so bad?

I miss Serenissima. She was somewhere between a highly contagious neuroleptic fractal and "MIKE"/"the arm" from Twin Peaks as a floating blue bunnygirl. And, I mean, she wasn't NOT nice. Things just got weird around her. Appliance hums just started sounding a little more like strings of digits. People just started doing weird ritualistic gestures with their hands. Your glass of water just kinda retroactively always had those Vantablack tadpoles in it. The face on the $5 bill was ALWAYS a blue rabbit lady with op-art tattoos all over her face. The sun always screamed.

But not, you know, in a mean way.

*At least, hardly anybody in the mainstream. Furries do it all the damn time. Lapiniousmalice over on FA actually has a pretty good, almost Fellini-esque ongoing comic about it. And I've seen so many other "cosmic horror who just wants to have a good time and indulge their weird kink" characters, from chatty demon clowns to friendly gaping voidmaws**. I love this fandom sometimes.

**you know, like shadow, umbra, penumbra, and sugarfoot, the four finest little monsters i have ever had the privilege of knowing <3 granted their kinks seem to be "getting free food" "scritchies" and "making more cats"

@Phorm Incidentally, I snagged S3 and immediately skipped straight to E8. This is EXACTLY the kind of nightmare I wanted, thank you. <3 God, this is perfect surrealist horror and I need to get into an Over The Edge campaign with a competent GM as soon as humanly possible, because that's the single closest thing to a Twin Peaks RPG.

@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...