Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@Leucrotta I'm glad I'm not the only one who was really irked by people's approach to these stories. Thanks, hun, that was a SUPER vindicating and reassuring post. <3

Asking someone to stop using a convenient, universally understood term because it's "appropriation" and incorrectly applied -- and replace it with a term appropriated from ANOTHER culture and incorrectly applied AND nobody has ever heard of it -- is just about the most White Leftist goddamn thing I've ever heard.

I'm not saying "patronus," fuck you. I'm also definitely not saying "fylgja," because NOBODY BUT YOU knows what the fuck that is.

But I'm not saying "spirit animal" either, even though it seems absolutely daft to complain about the ENGLISH (mis)translation of a concept that's ALREADY totally removed from the First Nations languages that coined it, because my friends will mess themselves over it.

But it seems goddamn silly, since both "spirit" and "animal" are pre-existing western concepts, concepts that perfectly describe that concept without requiring ANY genetic fallacies about when, where, and how the phrase was coined. And it was OUR own cultural shoehorning that applied that incredibly non-specific phrase to Native American traditions in the first place. (If you used these peoples' actual, original terms for "spirit animal" to describe your fursona or whatever, then yeah, I would accuse you of appropriation...)

Instead, I'm gonna SHOW you my inner animal nature by chewing directly on your skull if I ever hear you nitpicking this kind of shit. You'll know whether I like you or not by whether you walk away with a missing head and/or a fatal disease. <3

@Leucrotta for some reason i can absolutely not seem to dissuade my brain that this is a homestarrunner.com line, and needs to be read in a suitable internal voice -- possibly King of Town

@LexYeen@snouts.online I've been referring to today as March 32nd all day. :)

@Leucrotta Weirdly, seeing a bottle of Bonache is making me all weepy-nostalgic for Seattle. There _were_ some real good times there.

Oh, shit, I hope the guy who runs Morsel is doing okay.

@hystericempress you are a goddess and my hero, sis <3

@Austin_Dern This behavior was so common among the engineers in my college fraternity (yeah, long story) that I had just assumed it was "how techies were." It took me another decade to find any counter-examples. >_<

Since I brought him up on an apparently popular thread...

""When, in our civilized Europe, we would find a trace of the native beauty of man, we must go seek it in the nations where economic prejudices have not yet uprooted the hatred of work ... The Greeks in their era of greatness had only contempt for work: their slaves alone were permitted to labor: the free man knew only exercises for the body and mind ... The philosophers of antiquity taught contempt for work, that degradation of the free man, the poets sang of idleness, that gift from the Gods.... Proletarians, brutalized by the dogma of work, listen to the voice of these philosophers, which has been concealed from you with jealous care: A citizen who gives his labor for money degrades himself to the rank of slaves." -- Paul Lafargue, The Right To Be Lazy

@typhlosion Also, while i have a possibly sympathetic ear...

ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ˡᵉⁿᶦⁿ

@typhlosion OH THANK FUCKING GOD I'm not the only one. Marx's earlier work had a joyful humanistic vibe, but as he aged he got more and more obsessed with work and productivity. There are MUCH better leftist philosophers to look at, if you want something humane and genuinely concerns about quality of life. (I recommend Erich Fromm, if you can get past some period-normal homophobia and Theodore Roszak, if you can get over some touchingly naive hippie-era sentiments about science and technology... Also, you might like Paul Lafargue's The Right To Be Lazy.)

@Phorm I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but I've talked you through these before: this has all been a perfect storm of your fears. Honestly, even if it feels like you're falling apart... you're maintaining and you're still here, and I'm very proud of you. This is certainly one of the most difficult periods of my life, and I can only imagine what it's been like for you. *hug*

@001zlnv also, that's a bummer about the class immunity, 'cause if i'm anything these days it's a monk...

@001zlnv Heh, I've been using almost the exact same metaphor. We're such nerds. :D For me it's been a way to explain to people, "Umm, ok, listen... for the typical person, you basically have to not roll a 1 on a d20... but EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the USA is gonna have to roll, and some people have pretty nasty modifiers."

So I ran some numbers.

Even if you only consider New Orleans, where it's pretty bad right now compared to most of the country...

And even if you assume the real number of cases are ten times what's being reported...

And even if you ignore the fact most of us are under 70 here AFAIK... ;p

If you factor in the current death rate and multiply it out, current odds of having COVID-19 here and dying from it are around 0.07%

On a sociological and humanitarian scale, that's still terrifying. That's like 270 people dead right there, and given over 200 are already gone, that figure must be low. And things are only going to get worse from here.

But still. In the grand scheme of things, any individual person's odds of getting through this, even in this particularly rough-hit part of the country, are still pretty high.

I know that doesn't make everything OK, especially since containment isn't working so great and those numbers are going to get somewhat worse. But I really needed to hear the rest of it right now--to hear that death probably *isn't* right outside our door.

@spacewastrel@yiff.life GOOD. *hug*

@Leucrotta *desperately suppresses urge to make a lame kosher joke about 'Ham-ish'*

plus, i've been keeping a folder of screenshots of everybody's covid predictions, and it's only going to pay off if i live through this goddamn thing--in which case it might be the most satisfying thing i ever read, because SOMEONE'S sure as fuck gonna be wrong :p

It's weird. For years, I was kinda using my depression, anxiety, and hypochondria to kinda pole-vault into a paradoxical fearlessness of death.

If anything, at my worst, I'd be kind of passively suicidal and convince myself I didn't care. At least not in terms of my own survival -- the only reason I avoided death was because I didn't want to hurt Peg or my parents. (FWIW, I haven't been like that for years, except fleetingly.)

But with the very real possibility of a health threat, right outside my door -- not the same random doom I'd worry about every day, but something that could really happen -- that's all been stripped away.

And I'm just left with this weird, alien feeling that I'm REALLY NOT DONE living yet, I am actually quite attached to my situation, and no, in fact, I would NOT be OK with just having to discorporate on a moment's notice like the guy from Stranger In A Strange Land.

Like, for my own sake. For me. For the sheer force of my own will, ego, and sacred existence. It's neither good or bad, it's just weird and vulnerable and painful and exhilarating.

If I *don't* make it somehow -- which does still at least seem statistically unlikely, though for a big wheezy fatass like me, who knows -- at least know that I cherished you, this, and myself at the end. Hopefully not a bit too late.

Also FUCK would I like to see Parallax go five full chapters, even *if* the comic industry is about to collapse again, and even if nobody but like a dozen of my friends and Peg's fans give a shit about it. I WANT it. That feels weird, too.

"enormous Roman honker edition" *blush*

=(n).(n);=