We Are Made To Persist

there’s sixteen Colorado counties that their most searched was “wolf furry”, plus thirty-odd counties (not counting either Arapahoe or any of the ones marked here as “Insufficient Data”) which may well have had plenty of searches for “wolf furry”, just fewer than for whatever they’re labeled here

and “skunk furry” searches in Arapahoe County outnumbered “wolf furry” searches in the entire state of Colorado

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

None of them were offended by me not being entirely comfortable with them, just going "oh lmao yeah sorry I tried to kill you the last time we met, I honestly forgot humans are so sensitive about that kind of thing." Like mortals beings terified of death was just a funny cultural quirk they forgot about.

I met some demon/spirit woman whom I had met this way before (if you've seen Spirited Away, just picture her looking exactly like Yubaba, she was very close to that), and she remembered me and was both amused but somewhat awkward about the whole thing, going "oh lol sorry you must hate me now" but I reassured her that nah, I get it. If I had ever tried to kill a bug because it was annoying me by being in my line of sight, and later met that same bug as a guest at the same party I was attending, I'd feel really awkward about it too.

Then I asked her about that dragon boy she had had as a servant (slave?) that she had turned into a human as a punishment for something. I remembered her having him walked out of the spirit city while wearing a sheer silk cube suspended on some rods and attached to him with ropes from each corner, tied around his head in a way that forced his mouth open. I had to draw what the apparatus looked like because I still remember exactly what it looked like.

The punishmen wasn't just that he had to support the entire weight of the structure on the ropes tied painfully around his head, nor even simply this being an extremely public shaming punishment. The square silk block was also wide enough to take up the whole street at the narrowest points, so the people on the street had to move out of its way, and got angry at him for blocking traffic.

So anyway, trying to make casual small talk, I asked the spirit lady what happened to him in the end, did she ever let him go and let him go back to being a dragon. And she was like oh goodness of course, that'd be so fucked up if I had just left him human. And she immediately corrected herself like oh no offense of course, I'm not saying that being a human is inherently a horrible punishment. You must hate me now.

And I was like nah no I get it, if I had been dragon my whole life, and then got turned into a human, I'd hate that too. I also reassured her that she's fine, she's actually very polite all things considered. Most of the guests here had shown up uninvited, and most of them ahd not even thought of bringing the newlywed couple anything as a gift.