Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

It's been such a comforting feeling, in the otherwise nightmarish environs of social media, to know that any given furry "novelty" account has a non-zero chance of being someone I knew and liked Way Back When.

This is emphatically NOT a request for anyone to out themselves. I like it much better this way, same way I miss all the anonymity of Taps. Don't break the illusion. This is WONDERFUL. <3

@PennyPennyPenny Go forth and conquer gender on our behalf! It's comforting to know that any changes you make will be mirrored 2↑↑↑↑↑x (where x = "meow") times throughout the multiverse. 💜​

You know what I'd be 100% in the perfect mood for this week?

A giallo* TTRPG. Something really garish and bloody and decadent that doesn't take itself too seriously. Something that gives my Inner Nutcase an excuse to get stabby and melodramatic in a harmless padded environment.

Ooh. Even better, base it in the Over The Edge RPG. Al Amarja is already canonically set just south of Sicily. It's probably the closest thing to a giallo RPG ever made.

Shit. If I had any faith I'd have the energy for this in the coming months, I'd be tempted to RUN something like this. I know there aren't a lot of horror fans here... and I'd need months to give myself a good enough refresher on giallo to write a good adventure, but...

Would anyone actually join me for this madness, maybe even help co-GM? I know I sure have a lot of Stabby saved up from the last four years, and I would love to offer some valid targets for it.

(I promise you a LOATHESOME antagonist. I already have ideas.)

*a genre of vivid, stylish Italian shock-thrillers from the 70s

@LexYeen Sadly we JUST got done recycling our impressively large collection of Miniature Cat Hotels this weekend.

Haha, you're so right though. The kitten room was SO FULL of shredded little cardboard strips when we mucked it out. XD

Bizarrely, the two biggest non-Peggy, non-you-folks things that had the most immediate and obvious positive impact on my depression today:

(1) Finding out our neighbor across the street is also really fond of our cats. OK, that one's not really that surprising. ^__^

(2) Watching a video of cuneiform being written on a clay tablet with a stylus, and finally realizing, "Oh! Those letterforms actually make a LOT of sense if these are your writing tools!"

My brain keeps screaming out an anxiety alert, but no matter how hard I look for a real issue, all that seems to be there is "I'm desperately hungry for something that I don't strictly require to stay alive, no I can't tell you what, and yes I'm going to keep screaming until I get it."

Christ.

I really do have an Inner Cat.

@spacewastrel@yiff.life Nah, honestly, a lot of this is expected bad brain weather due to medical-related stuff that is a known issue I just am not ready to talk about. (I'm intact and should remain so, promise! :) )

The suicidal ideations bubbling up are concerned but not at all surprising, and I know them well enough to know their chance of escaping into action are 0%. I just have too many Nice Things in my life right now to listen.

But venting it all out here in the meantime is EXTREMELY therapeutic as a way of organizing all this in front of friendly witnesses. Hope I'm not worrying y'all too much. Really, you're all doing exactly what I need, already, just by listening. <3

This is one of those days where taking Buddhist classes in college comes in real, real fucking handy. I'm sitting here just picking parts off of today's anxiety attack, Ship of Theseus style, in the hopes of proving once and for all that the causes behind it are completely Empty of any reality outside my own mental constructs.

I... I think I should be petting a cat for this, though. That wasn't in the original instructions. It's just a self-evidently good idea. Gotta go straight to the experts.

@duske And yet you reminded me that my own tormented nervous system LOVES too much spicy food. Thank you, you may have found me a relatively fast way out of today's bad brain weather. <3

ME: "Thanks, everybody! I'm nearly recovere--"

TWITTER: "Oh, we forgot, today is going to be full of before and after pictures of happy people who transitioned over the last four years! You're comfortable with that, right?"

ME: *aims fork at own eyeball, taking great comfort in the fact the brain, and thus the source of all my problems, awaits just behind it*

ME: "Sure. Sure, why the fuck not."

It's really difficult to convince yourself "the only thing that is actually broken is the alarm system itself" when it's wailing and flashing imminent doom at you, and it's always been the only system you have for detecting such, utterly misconfigured or not.

going back to bed until i can actually like things, anything at all, again

it's not that bad, should only take an hour or two

and yeah, there are major neurochemical factors going on that explain ALL of this, i just don't feel like talking about them rt now

i'll be fine, just need a venty/weepy box <3 might need it more often than usual in the coming weeks, though, so your patience is humbly requested <3

@Leucrotta This just sounds so fucking broken to me. We have a lot of similar issues with vague guidelines and stuff... but our management is EXTREMELY responsive to issues, even if it's just friendly commiseration and "yeah, we are getting around to fixing that, it's not you, we promise." The damage sounds less and less like it's starting on your end.

yeah

@Leucrotta And managerial culture is so ACTIVELY AND ENTHUSIASTICALLY dumb at ignoring those distinctions, and using its own power to just bulldoze through any of the problems that ignorance causes -- and blaming anybody but itself -- instead of FUCKING FIXING them.

@anthracite It's... it's so much better in here. *sweatdrops* I love you so much and love your company but i had not realized until this morning just how much having to work in the immediate promixity of ANY other living being larger than a mosquito messes up my focus and sanity...

I LOATHE Discord but I'm getting real desperate. Does anyone know ANY good RP channels there that they could recommend, ideally strict IC-only.

If not, um, could somebody maybe start one? O:) I have the exact opposite of the energies needed to play Mike Callahan* these days. I have something more like MIKE** from Twin Peaks energy. >_<

*https://callahans.fandom.com/wiki/Callahan%27s_Place

**https://twinpeaks.fandom.com/wiki/Mike -- and i'm half-ready to (metaphorically) cut off my arm, for any Lynch fans who know what i'm talking about here -- though, heh, the kittens were bad enough, last i need is a tiny denizen of the Black Lodge running around the apartment raving backwards at me >_<

It would be so fucking therapeutic right now to go somewhere that I don't have to be "me" nor pretend to have any interest in being "me."

And as mixed of an experience as Tapestries -- hell, as Puzzlebox and 12Fold -- were, I never seriously thought that option would just be *gone* from my life like this.

Back in gear. FINALLY got to sit down and work uninterrupted and now that I've poked at some checkpoints (and corrected some really "interesting" mistakes) I feel fairly intelligent and grown-up again, a comfort that was sorely lacking an hour ago. :)

@kistaro haha, yes, that does help considerably <3