Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

sometimes you just see a piece that you know you will never own, and it hurts a little bit, but it just feels good knowing this object exists out there *somewhere*

@Aradia Karl Popper Was Right. *approving nod*

My next character will be a gryphon, half tortoise-shell housecat and half cockatiel. I will be THE MOST DEMANDING CREATURE IN ALL CREATION.

#mrap #mrap #mrap #mrap #SHRIEK #mrap #mrap #SHRIEK

Sugarfoot is napping in the exact same cat carrier we took her to the vet in this morning.

If that's not a heartwarming gesture of trust, I don't know what is.

@Leucrotta I'm just gonna assume that Dave Grohl wanted a lot of Asian food on a budget.

LET THE TRUMPETS SOUND! Queen Sugarfoot has not yet returned with the Royal Food Lady, but the news from the Imperial Vet is good!

Her snoot issue is just a sensitivity to mosquito bites. Ideally, we should keep her indoors as much as possible for a little while, we wipe some Neosporin on the Royal Snoot now and then, and we take her back in a couple weeks for some steroids and antibiotics.

May Empress Shadow and her family reign forever. Or at least another good 8-12 years. <3

@spacewastrel@yiff.life I think if I have a "catch phrase" at work, it's "your rating is not necessarily wrong but..." :)

I think the single best and rarest thing I bring to my job is an instinctive intolerance for people presenting personal preferences as if they were official rules.

The single thing I'm proudest of there is cracking down on "oral folklore" about our rating guidelines. Some people just can't help conflating "the way that seems natural to me" with "the way it must be done." I just don't get how people can be so oblivious to the difference.

Now just get me into politics. And give me a baseball bat.

TODAY ON MARS

--- Her Majesty's* Royal* Ear is still overgrown by filthy Terran life yet She shows daily improvement and is expected to return to regular pouncing and mauling hours soon.

--- Her Majesty* is deeply annoyed with S1E10 of Evil, for presenting a potentially interesting story about memetic hazards and the "motif of harmful sensation" and screwing it up with an inconsistent transmission mechanism. In the future, the ignorant Terran media is encouraged to consult Her Majesty* in matters of SAN hazards; she knows people. She knows not-people.

-- One of Her Stripey Effulgency's* underlings has slipped in their performance at Her Royal* Earth Day Money Job and she is most displeased. Stay tuned to this newsfeed for stew, churrascaria, and charcuterie announcements should this behavior continue.

-- Progress has finally begun on the degunkification of our beloved ally, Queen** Sugarfoot of Clan Shadow, and her much-beleaguered nosie. Pray that Bast guide her into our loving paws that she may be safely conveyed to the vet.

--Her Majesty* would commit murder for some tuna tataki. Beings of lesser grace*, be warned,

*disputed
**confirmed

A lovely walk adjacent to Bayou St. John... on the way home from my ENT telling me I STILL have fungal gunk in my ears... reminded me of the inescapable truth:

New Orleans is a magical shithole.

And in this day and age, not every shithole by far is magical, but any magic that still remains is gonna pretty much have to hide in a shithole.

So I'm glad I'm here.

(As for the ear, the prognosis is good and I sure feel a lot better. Gonna be pricey, but ain't that America. *shrug* )

Random bayou pic follows.

@hystericempress Slay the Spire finally drilled *that* one into my head for good.

@LexYeen Noelle traces her ancestry directly to the IPU. Dualism is no problem.

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

My 🦄​sona Noelle would like to remind her unicorn comrades that the horn is, and always has been, for stabbing evil things. Let's get back into it.

Friendship is magic, but a 16-inch spike through the heart is *final*.

(also, sorry folks, i should have added "bear crime" to the cw list, apologies for any hurt feelings or lost keychains =(^)_(^)= )

(And no, this isn't a block puzzle. The tiger isn't going to eat the pony in N moves if you don't solve it, I promise.)

🐯​❤️​🐉​
🦄​❤️🐍​
​❤️​

@monsterblue Never mind that, I've never tried this "fuckening" you speak of...

(Of course, Mike's is a character voice, not an authorial voice. So it's entirely fair to interpret that denialism as "1408 was blatantly reflecting my own emotions back at me, and as a Hard-Drinking Masculine Stephen King Protagonist, my own feelings are the most alien and incomprehensible thing in the universe..."

(Er, that should be "sapient and responsible" up there. 1408 was pretty irresponsible. :) )

So, one of my favorite horror critics on Youtube revisted 1408: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9LWCTtqxZ0

And he reminded me of an obsession I have with this story, specifically "Why the fuck didn't anyone ever try to TALK to this obviously sapient, responsible, and above all, EMOTIONAL entity?!?"

So I wound up on the Wiki page for the original King story, and found this summary that I think is both very telling and utterly gobsmacking:

Mike Enslin concludes, "There are no ghosts in 1408, because ghosts were once merely humans, while the entity he encountered was horrifically inhuman."

WHAT.

The story supports that, too. The direct quote is, "It was never human... Ghost... at least ghosts were once human. The thing in the wall, though... that thing..."

This makes zero sense to me. The entity in 1408 spoke to Mike. It understood his emotions well enough to exploit them. It understood cause and effect. It understood irony. Hell, one could argue it was _therapeutic_ for him, at least in the adaptations where he survives!

There is nothing at all "inhuman" about 1408 except for its power. It's so obvious, at least to me, that there was a MIND there. And yet everybody from critics to KIng himself insists it was fundamentally inhuman.

Because it was cruel and vindictive?! That sure sounds human to me.