Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@monsterblue done!

Dawned on me I haven't introduced myselves to a great many of the folks I've met through Masto. In case any of you are curious, here's a quick rundown.

HRATHA (female lynx): You are VERY privileged to hear her name. She hid it for years and would only let me refer to her as "LynxOps." She is my oldest intact persona. She showed up when I was 12-13 and tried to convince me this world was imaginary and hers was real. She did not entirely succeed in this thankfully, nor did she entirely fail, thankfully, and over the years she settled into a role as my prime guardian/organizer, then retired and took a role as "that crazy mystic lady in the woods who shows up to help when we need her most."

NOELLE (female unicorn): My second-oldest. Basically Fluttershy before Fluttershy, though lately she's almost more reminiscent of Molly Grue from Last Unicorn-- loving and sad and jaded and brutally honest. Used to have big, big Christian meaning for me, back when I was in my mid-teens and shifting from Naive Fundie Shithead to Compassionate Christian Mystic. That kicked off a tradition of Noelle serving as the container for whatever ideology I've most recently abandoned. She stayed Christian for years after I went agnostic. She suffered hugely during the Seattle fallout and was essentially in traction for a couple years. Now she's making a full recovery (of which y'all were a huge huge part), and her current role is "big perv" now that my libido has waned and I've gone borderline ace.

RUBIN/KIRSCHBAER (male/femme-neuter raccoon): Third-oldest, showed up during one of my very first self-hypnosis/meditation experiments, just... kinda hangin' out at the top of the mountain stream I was visualizing. Didn't make any effort to imagine them at all, they were just kinda there. Rubin was a screaming hippie and represented my flower-child radical side. Kirsch fulfills a totally different role, a mad scientist who provides my otherwise very weak capacity for emotional detachment. Kinda evil in a fun way. She's probably responsible for most of my trolling shenanigans. =(^).(^);=

SALAHUDDIN/REZEYA (male/female tiger): You already know that second motherfucker. She's my front-end, the big mean snuggly moody Martian kitty! Empress* of Mars! Sala is canonically her great-uncle, a heretical Marxist-Muslim mystic and adventurer, a proto-Martian culture hero. Sala came from a glorious moment when I was in the Cleveland Flats late at night, clubbing with some friends from college. There were some very macho and aggressive fratboy types out on the streets, and I dealt with the intimidation by imagining myself EIGHT FEET TALL, fuckin' untouchable, and towering with indifferent calm and poise. The tigers are my attempt to deal with the fact I can be a twitchy, loud, bitey mess with terrible impulse control no matter how kind my intentions are. They are a gentle warning: we are basically Hobbes. You might get cuddled but we can't absolutely guarantee you won't get mauled if you start hassling us. THE WARM FUZZY BELLY IS A TRAP.

Oh, and Martian Tigers came 100% out of an attempt to annoy @acetone_kitten's pseudo-Canadian anarchosocialist mooncat character. It succeeded. It was awesome. =^_~=

Those are my Main Four, the core. Others come and go, but all have voting rights on The Council.

ALBA (female cat): Transfeline, born as a rabbit. Was a Tapestries character I used to explore some of my trans leanings metaphorically. She was based on Eduardo Kac's "GFP bunny" art/genetics project. (Look it up, should still be out there. Crazy story.) Ended up one of the aforementioned mooncats. Still love her anyway. :) Very organized and focus-minded and helpful, exceptional administrator, basically my Barbara Gordon.

ENMERKAR (genderqueer dragon): Big pedantic jerk who lives in the Library of Babel (from Jorge Luis Borges's story). Loves the shit outta Peganthyrus, who is the ONLY creature they will allow to have a permanent portal into their library basement lair. Spends a lot of time flipping through grimoires muttering real curses at people he doesn't like. Don't believe a word he says-- not because he's a liar, but because he lives in a RANDOMIZED library with history books from all over the multiverse and gets more than a little confused about what's real here sometimes.

LAIKA (female dog-revenant): Feh, you nyet know Laika? She go to space, she die, she come back. Is fine, you get used to smell. Mind own business, capitalist imperial gangster human. Laika once wery evil, spend week in Glorious People's Revolutionary Stereolab Dungeon, come back, how you say, the chaos good. Laika still nyet say where she bury bodies.

POIUYT (gender-indeterminate jackalope): Little fae kid, one of the Great Jackalope Mother Oaraeu's infinite unreal children. Don't see much of 'em, but they're in here! Wish I knew 'em better. Cute, precocious, friendly trouble.

PNOIKELUR (as-yet-unknown lammergeier): I... don't really know who this dude is yet. I don't even know where their name came from. They show up now and then during psychedelic experiences. They seem friendly and benevolent enough but they have a dark aspect that I don't know what to make of. Might be a death god. That's fine, been ready since I was 12. *shrug* But if you're my psychopomp, could you get me another 20-30 years? I really need to keep an eye on this dragon.

ASTON (neuter marten): Yes, it's an Aston-Martin. I do not apologize. This is my Head Lawyer. Good critter, short and pudgy green Jovian weaselthing from the 12Fold universe. (Jovians are basically "how I would fix libertarians into decent people if I had infinite worldbuilding credits." Stupidly ethical and cooperative laissez-faire society.) Thick Brooklyn accent. Utterly fair and impartial. Tact of a runaway Peterbilt truck.

LAUDANUM (genderless cosmic yuck): Dead. I'm glad. They were an echthros. (See the Wrinkle In Time series.) Infested with the damn things for years. Nasty thing, slimy grey-green and covered in eternally hungry, sad mouths. Unable to feel anything but numb despair or cruel ironic pleasure and the need to spread them. Don't even know when we finally killed it. I only just realized today, "Wait... Laudanum's gone." I think dragons are innately toxic to echthroi. Noelle probably gave it a good hoofing when I wasn't looking too. <3

BRILL (female human/canine amalgam): The new girl. Evil-thing-hunter from a Hellmouth-like horror town. (I refuse to say "monster-hunter," like being a monster somehow makes you fair game.) Merged with her childhood Aussie Shepherd buddy. Ruthless caregiver, heart of iron. Punky and butch, probably has at least one side of her head shaved. Got me through raising two rambunctious kittens in a very small apartment. A drooly-tongued saint.

There have been others, but they are rare sightings and elude me at the moment. Sorry, guys! Present yourselves and I'll make sure you're counted!

(Rez, H'ratha, and Alba are off sulking in their respective boxes. Don't worry, gals, my attention will get back to Team Cat soon enough. I've just... I've had a lotta cat today. D: )

I try to hide my inner canid, I've denied it for ages, but... Brill and I could really use to be petted and told we've been a good girl.

(Brill is tentatively fully anthropomorphic, this is just a reference doggie-- but I have been VERY tempted to have her be magical amalgam of a teen human evil-thing-hunter and her childhood dog buddy...)

@monsterblue And it dawned on me I haven't done a headfriend inventory for people in a loooong time. Would you be interested in hearing about-- brace yourself-- all 12-15 of them?

@monsterblue I should get art. She's really earned a portrait. Psychologically she's kind of a cross between Buffy Summers and Mike Ehrmantraut from Breaking Bad. :p Just an absolute rock and so dedicated to being THE GOOD GUY (and making me be good) even if she has to stare a couple motherfuckers down with a baseball bat to achieve it. :)

So how many other ADHD-spectrum folks here are smarter, more energetic, more focused, and calmer at night?

I have been finding myself thinking I was gonna waste an entire day, only to hit my peak around 11p-12a and being super productive for hours.

NOTHING HAPPENS in the middle of the night. Peggy is usually sound asleep. The cats know the Human Office is closed at 4am. No spammers or crazy cat ladies call me. I don't have to fret over all the things on my to-do list because everything's closed and most of them CAN'T be done.

That's such a comforting feeling. It's like the whole world's gone into stasis for a while and becomes a delightful place with NO RANDOM OR UNWANTED SENSORY STIMULI. It can be just me, my day job or Parallax, and whatever's on my media player.

I can not fucking wait, to be honest, until a time when my days can be like that too, except with a dragon running around occasionally rawring at me, which is fine really. And maybe a kitty or two at a time. <3

@001zlnv i mean, do you just need a gold surface to refer to?

edible gold leaf. ten bucks on bezosworld, maybe 25 tops elsewhere.

I do have to say... I'm not only less stressed out than I was this morning after the first round of conversations with her, I'm less stressed out than I was *before* it.

I feel good. Peg and I got a little heated at each other during the whole mess and... I am so different from who I was at Transliminal. I stayed calm. I kept my sense of humor. I felt my temper starting up and I smushed it within seconds.

And I was SO DIPLOMATIC AND CHARMING with this old lady. I think I really did a good job of turning myself from an Untrustworthy Young Person who might endanger her cats by slacking off, to a stressed-out potential friend who really just wants to help but is in over his head. What can I say-- I know crazy old Catholic ladies, grew up among 'em, they always freakin' love me. :D

I should talk more about Brill, my punky anthro Australian Shepherd demonslayer headfriend. I summoned her up to get me through last winter's kitten crisis and she stuck around. She was so much help. It's good to have a self who is calm and mature yet a little fierce. Fearless. I love all my previous attempts at a Counselor Headfriend and we still have visits, but NOBODY has been able to wrangle me like her. Best puppy.

(Mне жаль, Laika, you know I love you too! <3 )

OK, I think my last couple conversations with her-- and Peg's admirably firm and adamant texts to her-- have made her see the light. She's promised to limit herself to texts except in true emergencies and she gave us some moderately clearer feeding instructions, plus some (detail-free, sigh) promises that the neighbor issue is a Resolved Matter.

She also apparently knows and really likes Peebles. So goddamn it, she's found my biggest vulnerability. We will continue trying to help her however we can. She really does seem like a very sweet lady who is passionately kind towards cats.

I have still written a very, very polite and diplomatic draft letter to the cat charity that shanghaied us into this mess, waiting on my desktop in case we end up needing to bail. She has also been warned that we will do this at the FIRST sign of neighbor drama.

@Austin_Dern Same here.

i signed for leaving some food scattered for some fucking cats, not an 18-step process and DEFINITELY not being a crazy old woman's main social support structure >_________<

AAAAAAND another 25 minute phone call with MORE instructions for the feeding the fucking cats, and when I tried to complain that it was getting really complicated she blew me off with "it's not really complicated at all" and... gave me another instruction.

Then she launched into some old lady nonsense about her family which is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT to feeding her fucking cats and when I told her we REALLY DO NOT HAVE TIME for 3-4 rambling phone calls per day, she apologized profusely, told me she really needed my help, told me she completely understood... and then proceeded to launch into ANOTHER ramble about her family.

(otoh peg just got another rambling barely comprehensible voicemail from Crazy Cat Lady, and it sounds like she may have found someone to take over at least half the feeding days from us...)

(captioned for the Utena impaired: this is a snippped from "Virtual Star Hasseigaku," one of the Utena themes. The song is deeply philosophical, very Buddhist and Western-esoteric, and a bit nihilistic.

The lyrics in the previous toot translate as "A single organic engine, a single perpetual motion device: Ah, it is empty motion
Yes, it is empty motion, motion."

This is how I'm CONSOLING myself today. 100 years from now nobody's going to know or care any of this happened, if there's even anyone left to know or care.

Hitotsu no yuuki teki na kikan
Hitotsu no eikyuu undou souchi

Aa kudou nari
Sora, kudou nari

So I don't really have much energy left, but this is so crazy and I need to vent about it a little.

We got roped into feeding a houseful of feral cats down the street. The woman we're taking over for is an ancient Catholic lady and she is CERTIFIABLE, just the stereotypical nutty rambling old lady in every way.

And every fucking day we hear from her with another bit of the full story, 13 years worth of drama with the neighbors over feeding these cats, all of which was conveniently omitted when she first called asking for help.

And every time she calls, she has a more specific instruction for How Her Babies Must Be Fed.

And I have been conditioned over a lifetime to have no resistance at all to sweet but insane old Catholic ladies.

And this is getting to be a lot. A lot, lot, lot. We have the sense to bail the moment it does start to lead to any actual conflict, but... the guy on the corner has apparently been a vindictive bastard about these cats in the past and some paranoid part of me is TERRIFIED he'll take it out on OUR cats if we get too wrapped up in this.

Which would mean swift death for him in the middle of the night, of course.

I really, really, really wish this whole burden had been dropped on somebody else. But dammit, it's a good opportunity to learn some adulting, crisis-management, and boundary-setting skills, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna let a bunch of cats starve.

Bast give me strength, and if this really does come to some kind of massive neighborhood cat drama, please also raise me some bail money and a good lawyer.

Theoretically this is only for a month. And nothing bad has really happened so far. But man, this has all been a colossal anxiety trigger I did not need.

There was an Amish restaurant in my hometown that was owned and operated by Romanians and I miss the shit out of it.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Thank you. I have had a lot of free-floating anxiety lately and basically can't figure out how to turn any of my inner alarms off, even long after the problem's been resolved.

I just really needed to do that. I need to find a good place in realspace NOLA (to whatever extent such a thing exists in this fucked-up fae freaktown ;) ) to have an ACTUAL good scream.

Maybe I'll take my large wood stick buddy Stick down to the park tomorrow and hit sturdy things with him and yell a lot while Peg assures passers by "don't worry, they're harmless."