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Aroace disaster

@aroaceofthesea / aroaceofthesea.tumblr.com

♠ podem ser l'hòstia i que no ho sàpiga ningú♠ ♠️*boops you*♠️ ♠ here since 2020 ♠ ♠ she/her ♠

When I was 3 years old I went to a preschool that had this little green crocheted crocodile finger puppet that was my absolute favorite toy to play with of all time. I named her Chelsea, because Chelsea starts with C and crocodile starts with C and more often than not wild animals in fiction aimed at kids have names that start with the same first letter as their species. I played with Chelsea every day, because she was my favorite toy, and because the other kids weren't really interested in her, and also because I eventually started to hide her in a special secret spot in the room so no one else would find her before I did. She was so beloved by me that when I graduated from preschool, my teachers gave Chelsea to me permanently, because it was clear no one else would ever love that little crochet crocodile as much as me anyway (in part because I hid her). They waited a few weeks after I graduated before doing it, too, and sent Chelsea with some post cards as if the crocodile had been on a whirlwind "travel the world" vacation before deciding to come live with me.

And Chelsea remained my favorite toy all through my childhood. There were others I loved nearly as much, like my Imperial Godzilla and the big red T.rex from the first Jurassic Park toy line and my tiny knockoff plush Charmander, but Chelsea always held the place of honor in my heart. She was my absolute favorite toy.

I kept a lot of my favorite toys through adolescence, even if social pressure eventually got me to give away a lot of them (and some, y'know, broke). That's obviously not surprising to you if you've followed my blog, since I still collect toys into my adulthood. But it's important to note because while I know I made a conscious effort to never throw out Chelsea every time I pared down my collection... at some point, she went missing.

I became aware of it when I graduated from high school. I was feeling really emotional about leaving that stage of my life and, y'know, becoming an adult and shit, and in that state I decided to find Chelsea to reassure myself that I hadn't entirely left childhood behind. But Chelsea wasn't there. No matter how hard I looked, I could not find Chelsea anyway.

And that was, like, devastating, because the only explanation was that somehow, at some point, I had accidentally tossed her out with some other "childhood junk" while trying to grow up and be responsible in my teen years. I had literally thrown away my childhood in a careless attempt to be more grown up.

Of course I knew she was just a toy - nothing more than some yarn twisted together in the loose shape of a crocodile, lifeless and soul-less and more or less worthless in the objective light of day. But she was also Chelsea, my best friend since i was three, my stalwart little pal, a source of comfort for most of my life at that point, and I had just... tossed her out! Like garbage! What kind of person was I becoming if I could do that to my best friend?

I was very visibly distraught, and my mom noticed. Being very crafty, she tried to find the pattern for Chelsea so she could knit me a new one. The problem is, she had no idea where to find said pattern. She checked all her books of crochet patterns, and when that failed she tried the internet, but no matter how hard she looked, she found nothing.

So my mom found the next best thing.

The original Chelsea was a tiny finger puppet, and I had "met" her when I was three. Well, I was eighteen now - shouldn't Chelsea have grown too? And as has been established, this crocodile was fond of whirlwind vacations. My mom found a pattern that looked as much like Chelsea as possible while also being a much bigger crocodile, and gifted her to me before I left for college - to show that while we can't stop the flow of time or how it changes us, that doesn't mean we have to leave it behind.

And yeah, I decided to believe it. That's Chelsea now. Yeah, I know that in reality it's a completely different set of yarn made by my mom rather than... whoever it was that crocheted the original Chelsea, but then, Chelsea was never really the yarn. She was the feelings I put into the yarn, you know? So that's Chelsea, all grown up, and still my most prized toy.

...

Flash forward... Jesus, eighteen years, holy shit. A few weeks ago I saw a post trying to identify a different crochet crocodile pattern, and thinking it was cute, I decided to try and look for it on ebay and etsy, just to see if maybe I could find it. I didn't, but do you know what I found instead?

A very familiar crochet crocodile finger puppet. An intensely familiar one, you might say. Of course I bought it. And of course I asked the seller if, perhaps, they might have the pattern for it or know where it came from (they did not, alas). And after a few days, she showed up at my house.

She's not Chelsea, obviously. For one thing, she's far too clean and fresh looking - Chelsea was very well loved, and looked the part, while this crocodile finger puppet has definitely not endured years upon years of a child's affection. And, more importantly, she's not Chelsea because we've already established that Chelsea grew up into a bigger crochet crocodile. This has to be Chelsea's younger sister, Cici.

And if I could find another of Chelsea's kind after all these years, then maybe, with a bit of luck, I might find the pattern for her, and be able to make more of them. Fill the world with Chelseas.

straight people shut up challenge

Frank stop. Go read a book or yell at a cloud it would be just as useful as this statement you left on Twitter.

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daphnetrodon

He did add this later, which is… something?

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daphnetrodon

[x] good ending

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zoblogs

This is what people mean when they say that privilege is invisible to the people who have it. It never occurred to him that knowing someone’s orientation would be important to anyone, because to him, a straight man, representation is everywhere. It’s overabundant. It’s so common as to be taken for granted. To him, representation of his sexuality isn’t important because it’s there

I love that he learned. I love watching people understand their own blind spots when it comes to privilege. 

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107bees

Can also be filed under: why cancel culture is dumb, people need to make mistakes to grow

Ignorance can be cured. Malice is a problem.

Don’t punish people for where they are coming from. Reward them according to where they’re going.

41.7k notes and as of 7th April, the signatures are only 14,817.

The deadline is 9 July 2025.

Trans rights are always wavering in safety and are not stable and well protected in the UK. Please sign.

Trans rights in the UK is my rights.

An incomplete list of reasons why crafting helps my mental health (and might help yours, too):

  • It stops me from doom scrolling: can't go on social media if my hands are full of yarn.
  • It gives me a sense of agency: a lot of things are messed up in a way that's beyond my control, but I can make something that didn't used to exist. It's evidence that I'm alive and I can impact the world, even if the impact is small.
  • It builds my tolerance for mistakes: I grew up a perfectionist , which is really bad for my wellness and my ability to complete tasks. But crafts are a great source of low-stakes mistakes to help me learn how to handle imperfection. And while there are certainly mistakes I'll always fix, I also have many opportunities to decide a mistake is acceptable and leave it in favor of getting to the finish line.
  • It interrupts rumination: even if I'm still chewing on some troubling news, it's not front of mind if I need to focus on getting this seam straight or whatever
  • It helps me meet good people: although there are obvious exceptions, I've found most craft-centered spaces (IRL and online) to be full or supportive, kind, helpful people in all walks of life
  • It encourages a growth mindset: I'm always learning new things in crafting, and that builds my identity as someone who can grow and improve.
  • And finally, making your own clothes is empowering: I know this is specific to fiber crafts, but it's important. When you make your own clothes, you flip the notion that you're supposed to "fit into" a certain size and instead remember that clothes are supposed to fit you. You get to learn how to dress the body you have with love and care, instead of allowing manufacturers decide how clothes should look.

glad google ai is on top of this

This assumes a single fly weighs 8g, which is the weight of a 1-2 week old mouse (!). If you are unfamiliar with metrics: 100g is a bit less a quarter of a pound.

Btw, Wikipedia says a single house fly weighs in the range of 0.2 grams, so Google has discovered a world where flies are about 40x bigger

I was going to tell you that horseflies still absolutely do not weigh 8 grams

but I found a funnier answer

I’ve been tinkering with the idea of an urban fantasy “All Fairy Tales Are True” setting where some fairy tale characters are mortals who reincarnate and live through their story again and again with no memory of their past lives, but other characters are immortal, carrying over biases and grudges and regrets from the last time they went through this.

Snow White’s dwarves keep her room exactly as she left it, and keep a wary eye on the horizon for the day she returns. When she does they treat her like a beloved daughter come home, cook her favourite meals, warn her to stay away from apples this time, and keep calling her the wrong name.

Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother found her a touch ungrateful last time, and has decided not to appear to her this time around to teach her a lesson in gratitude. This Cinderella, without the memory of the last time, is still a terrified, miserable woman desperate to escape her awful situation.

The Witch in the gingerbread house has developed a thousand traps to eat those goddamned kids. She’s failed every time. She lives a life of Sisyphean torment previously known only to cartoon coyotes.

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