Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 44!

Choose one of the following upgrades:

[ ] Full-Time Job
[ ] Traditional Family
[ ] Social Life
[X] Manticore Chassis

(artwork to come...)

@mawr Interestingly, while I was likely to vote "no, but" anyhow... the really visceral moment of NOPE came when you said "including modems."

For me, no BBS culture means no Steve Jackson Games, no left-libertarian phase, no Principia Discordia, and no early contact with left-leaning rationalist nerds. No polite, well-deserved smackdowns for my adolescent social habits. And no opportunity to learn how to roleplay—and all the social give-and-take that requires—early on.

Plus, I would've never seen that post about the Stormgate Aerie BBS, which means no furries. Er, OK, these days I can take or leave that one really. ;) But it was an early glimpse of "Wow, adults are still allowed to play Let's Pretend? With OTHER people?"

I would have not only likely still been a fundamentalist Christian, I would have been about five times the sullen P.I.T.A. that I am now. :>

I think the problem isn't that the Internet came to exist, but that the people we were trying to flee figured out how to use it, too. And they did the same thing to this world that they did to the "real" one that we came here to get away from. ;p

or even better:

https://i.imgur.com/LJw41Sk.gifv

+

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAcOtsvH5js

https://i.imgur.com/LJw41Sk.gifv

+

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

@hummingrain Right there with ya. Martian's honor, this entry from my commonplace book has not been edited for months...

(The above joke has been closed-captioned for the weeaboo-impaired)

⑨ is an in-joke about the Touhou character Cirla, who is infamously captioned in a manual screenshot as (9):バカ ["idiot"].

And work is making me feel a bit thick today. Less thick than the humans of course but still thick. O;)

⑨ 火星虎(脳たりん)

I could sure go for some Soylent Green right about now.

It's like Canadian chocolate, or Mexican coke. The Martian formula is SO MUCH BETTER.

You see, we braise the... um... "soy and lentils" in a media bath of documentary clips from Terran history for three days before it's, er, processed. You can really taste the fear, denial, and regret. 🐯​

#TheTasteVindictiveEndangeredsLove
#ThePureeThatMadeMarsFamous
#TigersAskForItByRawr

@anthracite Booboo wants to kiss you on the mouth right now. 🐻​

@hummingrain I mean, it's a PRETTY monster, but it's still a monster, and I'm still stuck in its fucking lair for at least a month. :)

@Austin_Dern I had exactly that problem with my characters until I wrote Five Glasses of Absinthe. It really helps to have characters that indisputably kinda DESERVE to suffer for a few volumes. :>

@mawr Listen, mawr, there's an old saying that I don't remember where I picked up, but it goes something like "If the Hero of the People wants a cheeseburger, give him a fucking cheeseburger." The point, of course, is that sometimes personal need just has to come before political perfection, or even worse things will result in both realms.

And the corollary, of course, is that if the People's Glorious Revolutionary Mawr needs a long nap, we start fluffing pillows (and mawrs) and set an alarm for next December. Let those of us who kinda ENJOY being bitter and cynical handle this next round. You've done a lot for us. We got this one, fuzzball. 😼​💖💖💖​

@Austin_Dern I don't think I could deal with the world of webcomics being more real than ours since Parallax started. Dammit, I ALREADY feel guilty about what I'm gonna do to Kirt and Olivia...

BWAAA HAAAA HAAA

You know that scene from In The Mountains of Madness where you see the protagonist's cell and it's all covered in crosses, and so is his face?

Yeah, imagine that except with kanji and map icons all over it, and me. Today I started my new project, helping the Japanese and Chinese team investigate their queries.

For those of you who haven't seen my recent <s>nervous breakdowns</s> posts on the matter, Japanese addresses, in particular, are very... special. A bit on medieval side, to be honest. And then there's the fact that some kanji—particularly those used in proper names—can have a dozen or more different readings.

I think I did okay on my first one—despite Google Translate's generous and incorrect "help"—and I'm kinda proud of myself. But yikes, this is my life now, at least until I do ~160 of these or a more urgent project rolls in.

I'm... I'm just gonna back to scrawling 馬鹿 all over myself and my environs with a Sharpie, if you don't mind. Let me know if the cackling and weeping get to you.

@Austin_Dern Rarebit rarebit.

(Dammit, now I'm gonna be Welsh all month... Cachu hwch!)

OK, I stopped following the Vile Equestrian Hegemony quite a while ago, at Schadenfreude's request. (She made such a passionate case that Chrysalis did nothing wrong!)

But I'd be perfectly happy to watch G5 if it looked something like this, honestly.

https://www.deviantart.com/shonuff44/art/KNIGHTS-OF-EQUESTRIA-VS-NIGHTMARES-OF-EQUESTRIA-802888232?ga_submit_new=10%3A1561990050&ga_type=edit&ga_changes=1

Aaand that raccoon comment got automodded and deleted from Reddit... because it used the word "smartass."

I fucking hate the Internet, and I fucking hate 2019.

(I know what some of you may be thinking about that "abstract reasoning" line. But Kirsch still hasn't completed their PhD thesis at New Miskatonic, and they have VERY high standards for "mastery.")

Somebody posted this article to Reddit, proposing that D*n*ld Tr*mp is secretly one or more raccoons in "human cosplay":

https://thefifthyear.com/2019/06/30/is-donald-trump-secretly-a-raccoon-in-human-cosplay/

Needless to say, Kirschbär could not let this insult to their species's moral character stand, so I posted this reply on their behalf:

@Leucrotta As much as I LOATHE having to quote Woody Allen, he did get something right now and then:

"You know, a satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really get right to the point of it."