Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@Leucrotta No clue but the clear benefit for the rest of us is in you drawing more because-- I don't tell you this nearly often enough-- you've really gotten quite good.

I also finally connected with our dealer and got a batch of something nice and dreamy. Between this and a few days of tolerance break, I ended up having a really nice introspective session on the trolley ride to the parades.

Mostly, it finally occurred to me that some of the stuff we were doing at Transliminal and its predecessors was the emotional equivalent of cave diving: exhiliarating, rare, stressful, dangerous as shit, and not really a hobby for people interested in getting old-- something I am intensely interested in most days, despite the world's best efforts.

It's amazing I ever went that deep with ANYONE. It was a precious and truly unique time. If there's one thing I learned from Ghost Dog, it's that you should never dwell in the Spirit of an Age longer than you have to. We were fools. We were right to try doing it, but what we were doing was not sustainable at the levels of merely human emotional savvy we were working with. Leave it to less wretched beings, like the gods and plushies.

It's amazing that it ever happened, but it's probably a great and protective mercy that it ended, and the alternate universe where it didn't is probably even sadder. I got a lot of comfort out of this realization. *zen tigress*

Parades were fun but physically and mentally exhausting. My inner changeling gets massive snack value off the crowds and their sense of anticipation, but the parades themselves are actually kinda low technical event count for an ADHD child of the Internet like me. Might let Peg do tomorrow solo and bide my energy for the bigguns Saturday -> Tuesday.

Gave Artie, who is back up in the fucking attic of course, some water. This was shaping up to be only modestly stressful... until Shadow got into the abandoned apartment and hid behind the (rather nice actually) massive old-school porcelain bathtub. She's out, things are fine, whatever. Peebs is around somewhere but I am very uncharacteristically not looking to pet her, because I am so low on energy, especially cat energy.

@mawr "THERE'S YOUR ANSWER, FISHBULB."

@hystericempress WIN

in a cafe uptown, hanging out waiting for parades to get rolling, and i'm overhearing two guys who are bonding over real estate and finance

but they're both very new orleans kinda guys so it's super informal and chummy

it's both creepy and heartwarming, like the Donald Sutherland scream from Invasion of the Body Snatchers ending up in a big chummy wailing podmonster pub crawl

@woozle @dredmorbius Google Trends might not quite be what you meant, but it does show some interesting peaks and valleys for "border"... https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=border

Attic. *sigh*

I'm not too uptight about it. I knew this was gonna happen; one or two good nights wasn't proof we'd broken the cycle.

I got a look up in the attic myself for the first time. It's small and cozy. I see why she likes it. Doesn't look hazardous, either.

I've convinced myself she's mostly safe except for food and water risks. I HATE that we've got no other good plan right now, but I guess we leave her up there for a week with enough food and water to keep her going, and see how she feels about the attic afterwards.

It's gonna be a weird week.

@Phorm I read the date stamped on the bottom of the bottle and it says you're still good for at least another 40 years. <3

ladies. gentlemen. enbies.

I will not be truly happy until a troupe of queer furry bandits has set up an impenetrable camp outside a major US city, shut down an entire interstate, taken at least one Republican legislator hostage, slit the throat of said hostage when they inevitably try to cut a fake deal with them, and mailed their body back to Washington, postage due.

@mawr Yeah. This is psychic warfare, Wrinkle In Time shit.

At least the giant evil brain was a good administrator. Camazotz probably had single-payer health and good public transit. D:

Aunt Beast, if you're out there, we need you more than ever.

@mawr I never believe that about myself but it's comforting to hear it. *hug*

Helluva a year, eh? 😓​

Fuck it. Missing actual group conversation so much it's painful. Gonna start investigating how to start a Discord server. Will probably regret. :)

@mawr Yeah.

*hug*

Missed ya, mawr.

hav kiti

this is of course ZERO guarantee she won't go straight up into the goddamn attic the moment we let her outside, but artie's spent a whole day on the ground and that's pretty good

everything else is meh but can't complain, mostly "starland is full of very harsh tasks" and remind me to explain that expression some other day :)

"We made a healthy, informed and democratic decision to get back on churrascaria as soon as possible."

i am otoh PROFOUNDLY tempted to blow $50-100 on Brazilian BBQ delivery in one sitting just as a colossal middle finger to life, the universe, and some poor cow who probably didn't actually do anything wrong

this would be a really easy for to try to get me interested in heroin >_<

i know, i know, i never would-- i've seen trainspotting ffs

but it's one of those weeks where "fuck it, total numbness, and everything else you love just sloughs off of you" almost, almost, for a moment or two at a time, sounds like a good deal

dragon and cats and good food and queer comics sounds like a better deal if i can get it though

@Leucrotta That sounds so much like every experience I had while temping, it's like Lord of the Flies except you have quotas. -___-