Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

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.

@chimerror

(*my 🦄​sona swoons at the very thought and goes to look for her girlfriend/mistress*)

Why can't my ear fungus be like THIS?

https://hypnohub.net/pool/show/4337

@CorvusRobotica That sounds like a great vacation!

@balinares sadly this is paradoxical because this city's most outrageous cake is Brennan's Black and Gold King Cake, which is only available from... what, @anthracite, Epiphany to Mardi Gras? So it will never be available for my birthday! And the second most outrageous cake is its glittery pink sister on the right, here: https://www.brennansneworleans.com/press-releases/we-three-king-cakes/

But I will find you the third most outrageous cake. My mobility is still a bit limited, but my cake-hunting skills are as sharp as ever, and I've figured out it lives either here or here:

https://www.bittersweetconfections.com/

http://bakery.bar/

🐯​🐯​🐯​🐯​🐯​

@Phorm Don't you dare question my ability to pick the finest most worthwhile messes. <3

it's my birthday, tomorrow's a major patriot holiday, i've discovered there are at 40 different versions of the Ieva Polkka (aka "leekspin"), and I'm going to leave every single one of them on Marjorie Taylor Greene's answering machine by the end of the weekend.

@KinkyTurtle Oh charmed I'm sure!

I love sincerely complimenting my opponents in the middle of a Twitter brawl. Confuses the shit out of them.

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” -- probably not Oscar Wilde