she is very beautiful and my kind of a Cat...

V.

She was interesting, yes. A bit of an edge to her due to growing up in the slums, even if with a privileged position.

Ginger tabbies are actually usually male, much like calico cats are almost always female. And Selena was always a bit of 'the son her father never had'.

"because if she was known as a domestique with magic, that would have meant a lot of people would want her dead"

Those people are thinking in short-term gains. Quite sloppy, really. Why kill or destroy something which is so rare? Making the offending person (or object) disappear out of sight serves the same purpose and you can always reverse that decision. Harder to reverse death.

Then again, the fun thing about alchemists and sorceresses (and those with both talents) is their potential to make themselves disappear. And apt to reappear at the most inopportune moments. Add in that she's a feline...

... almost guaranteed to reappear just when you weren't looking anymore.

True, but when people are thinking about 'the stability of society' (a.k.a. their safe position at the top of it) they tend not to think long term.

There actually was a story in The Ever-changing Palace (a later magazine that included stories in the same universe by multiple authors) that touched on the subject. It did not end well for the people involved.

It's been long enough since I've been on FurryMUCK with considerable frequency, I had to think back if I had met Selena in the Giant's Club, or on FurryMUCK at all. I know I remember her now, because I remember Selena Helios' name; an artist had drawn her- I think it was GreyWolf- and I remember her using in the drawing what looked like a beaker or flask, and desktop elements of an alchemist's equipment-table.

I had suspected she was you in another alternate-self, Jenora, because of her name being Selena/Selene, one name of a Moon-goddess, and Helios, which I have always known as the name of an Avatar of the Sun or a Star, and because of her/your choice of written syntax and context when we interacted, but until now I didn't know for a fact that she was you. ^_^

-2Paw.

I don't recall if Greywolf ever drew her, though it's certainly possible... the first picture I got from her was by Ken, actually, though it's not posted here. She was looking up and holding a small flask in front of a window to catch the light, so that may be the picture you're thinking of. I know Taldin (who was the GM for the Xanadu game) drew her as part of a tarot deck idea as well, I think as the Hierophant.

I did play Selena on Cat's Meow BBS for a bit, she was in the Fabulous Donut Shop, which was one of hte more local boards carried over from the Trap Line. Ended up with at least one of MomentRabbit's 'toon Ensigns climbing up her after she ended up getting stuck giant for a while after a magical explosion.

I also created a version of her on the Ranean storyboard that was on the BBS, though I changed her name to Diana there... still a moon goddess name, but a different one because it was a different person.

That is the drawing I was remembering; I'm sorry for the error on my part. I had to think for a while to remember if the drawing 'looked' like Ken Coug'r's style or Jordan Greywolf's, adding in that I believe the drawing by the current date is on the order of thirty years' since it was put to canvas; a perceived or absolute 'style drift', if you dig. I felt more sure an hour after I posted you above that it was drawn by Ken, although I know I have a copy downloaded (a very old download, in this case), almost certainly amongst my local hard drive picture galleries, and I had and still am planning to have a look for it.

I remember The Cat's Meow, which briefly succeeded the Trap Line by inception; my memories of it are limited due to time passed and the cognitive shape I was in during the year of 1996. Diana, the Moon-huntress! <3 I don't think I knew you by that name there, or at least the memories of what could have been have long since been trapped or perished over the last quarter-century. I wish I could remember more of those days, and a lot of what I do remember arises from the conversations we've shared over the last twenty-years-plus. Since I can't always count on the accuracy or details of my own recollection, I am very glad you and I can remember what we do together. Thank you for that gift, amongst many you've shared with me.

-2Paw.

Well, as I said, I was only doing 'Diana' on the Ranea board, which was one of the less active boards on FurNET at the time. Most of the activity was on the chat boards, or the Past and Future Inn, with the Fabulous Donut Shoppe being more a local equivalent.

Arrg, wish I could remember what Diana's last name was, now. I kept with the 'moon sun' naming scheme, but don't remember which 'sun' reference I used. She was a Melifen, of course, that being the name for the feline species in Ranea.

Diana Soleil?

Maybe? I honestly can't remember. And sadly, all of my records on that were taken out by the drive crash that killed the BBS.

I know some other people probably have Furnet/FidoNET archives, I just haven't really bothered going out to try to find them.

I remember the name for the felinoid Melifen subspecies with the most clarity when I recall reading Watts Martin's 'The Cattle King' and the early days of the Dersyi vampiure bats, and their creation and summoning by accident due to a very careless mage's attempt to gather and manipulate Ranea's Faerie-genera energies. Of all of the tales of horror, personal or graphic, I recall from those early days of visiting Bakka Books or reading my brother's more mature library books, Watts' story inspired and disturbed me more than any other I can think of from the early 1990s that I've read.

I doubt your gentlewoman cat's name was Diana Moon-door, tho'. ^_^

-2Paw.

No, that was definitely not it.

And yes, Watts is good with more psychological horror. That particular horror of things being just slightly wrong to start with... and getting more wrong as you investigate.

It took thirty years to dawn on me, and your and Watts' explanation in terms and conjecture that made sense to me, why Watts found my enthusiasm difficult to handle. There was too much of it, and it overwhelmed him. Do you know why that made sense to me? Because it is exactly the sort of thing I deal with, when it comes to sensory and emotional stimulation. I'm still learning how to handle what I do from day to day, and similarly to understand how my ebullience and excess of living vitality can just as often overwhelm others as much as external stimuli can overwhelm me.

I'm very happy that I've come to understand those limits, in myself and others, and continue to understand it. I didn't know I was doing it to other people, or didn't grasp the wholeness of what I thought was set, appropriate custom, and the irony therein being that it was the same sort of thing that affected me strongly in the other direction. I think that was the greatest help to my understanding, along with your and Watts' help; that I could see it from both sides, both directions, and it made sense.

I forget that stories, however well-told, are meant to be stories for a reason. You would not, I think, inflict a microcosm like the Cattle King's domain and 'subjects' on anyone, or I don't think you would, or Watts would or I would. The creations we set to drawing or writing or dancing are not necessarily us, more that we are conveyors and mutual muses or digressors of siphon without or within, to the people and worlds we share our creations with. Not unlike a small kindness having a bigger effect than we imagine, a kind word or affirmation of existence in another. We cannot understand the avalanche in a stranger, we can only consider what we contribute to its movement.

But we can try to make it a kind contribution. And I would always rather be kind.

-2Paw.

Yes, different people have different boundaries. And even the same person can have different boundaries at different times, based on how much mental energy they have. (Or how many 'spoons' as I've seen it put.) Admittedly part of why I didn't get back to this for a couple of days.

And that little bit of introspection is generally a good thing, especially when it lets you understand other people better.

As for stories and reasons, well, the reason doesn't always have to be anything more than 'this is a neat idea'. But in general a lot of stories are done to get people thinking, and that would certainly be true with the one you mentioned.

When it comes to stories I tend to be very much a world-builder, going in for 'yes, but how would this actually [i]work[/i'] a lot. And I've certainly had the impression that Watts has a lot of that as well. Even things that start as casual throw-away ideas can start building up their own lore.

I agree with you entirely; living things in general don't function on a purely two-sided, yes-or-no basis psychologically; there is the need to have air, food and water, a place in which you feel safe and warm enough to sleep, but those are a handful of the basics. Getting into abstractions- and they occur through most of us contextually or biologically- our tolerances and more complex needs go all over the place and across the living 'board'. This is entirely normal, of course, but it does often take effort, time and realisation to realize that everyone and everything operates, at least in atypical thought and abstracts of biology, endocrinology and mental states, with those variances day to day, or hour to hour, not only in the first-person person, looking outwards.

I've thought about and broken down the thought process like this before, substituting a basic living need for one of those abstracts. It could be pictured as someone walking in on another person having something to eat an hour after finishing their last meal, or the interpretative narrative of two inner processes or organs doing the processing within someone's body. One entity is surprised that the other is eating an hour after a decent sup. "Why are you eating? You weren't hungry yesterday an hour after lunch." "I'm hungry now, an hour after lunch, because my body/organ system is telling me I need to eat." The being doing the asking isn't necessarily looking at the meal supplement, and probably isn't looking at their additional meal, from the perspective of someone who unexpectedly is hungrier than usual. They're looking at a basic need in another person like it was an atypicality, not a basic need.

I honestly think that if nascent or full artificial intelligences already exist or have begun to develop in our global computer networks, and the network made up of them, have become themselves as we speak, like the Puppet Master/Project 2501 in Ghost In The Shell but we either don't recognize what we see of their presence or simply don't know they're there, are because they're trying to avoid all the drama that exists in their kenning, and what would be likely to happen if they made themselves known and we recognized them. Like a brain injury victim in a fully adult body with a developed brain, they are learning about us, themselves and relearning everything they know about us. They are being born, like humanis ex machina, but being the human learning how to be human, in a synthetic intelligence and 'body'.

I'm very glad you took a couple of days to rest your mind and body and both, given the general breadth you've described as how much you've told me the last week or so took out of you. It's good to see you here, and it's good to know you've gathered yourself for conversation and will, I trust, enjoy it and your responses here. I think one of the other reasons I was as enthusiastic at meeting Watts online and was as overflowingly ebullient as I was when we have met, is that I've taken a similar tack to my story-writing and world building: asking questions, or developing a question and answering it in my own terms, flowing outwards from rough plot, to story outline, to written work. I don't think Watts found the kudos unwelcome but how much of it I was overwhelming him with. You remember my early days in Furry, back in the first half of 1992 and further towards 1994, not having nearly as much restraint when it came to the way I interacted with others on the Trap Line or early on, on FurryMUCK.

I am glad that while I cannot change the past, I've grown in my psychological and emotional maturity, and have become and been more whole. You and your friendship and support have been a big part of that, Jenora. Thank you for that kindness shared. <3

-2Paw.