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not siobhan fully breaking brennan by solving this riddle over the course of mere minutes

bonus:

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on watching a parent age

i saw somebody say “what if you’re gone and i haven’t become anything yet” and basically that broke me on a random thursday evening

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happy pride month!! trans women are women and if u don't agree you're WEIRD!!!! this is a print :3

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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 anywhere.

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 crochet 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.

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lesbian gengar. get spooked

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What i need to happen in the next season of castlevania

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medieval pride parade!

(prints)

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Aliens abducting a Paleolithic horse 🐴✨🛸

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so Ruby Sunday was likely meant to be Desiderium before behind the scenes stuff made the show go to all hell.

This is an expansion of the theory I posted on Bluesky (kicked off by this Reddit thread), and maybe I am just copin' and seethin' but. like. even Charles Dickens would think this is all too much of a coincidence to not be Something.

Here's how I think it probably went down before Millie and Ncuti decided to leave early: The Rani kidnaps the God of Wishes and places her with a normal foster family, moving in next door to keep tabs on her, and when the time comes engineers things for the Doctor to take an interest in her (Church on Ruby Road). Ruby's DNA scans as human because she was born to human parents, but cannot be traced in the UK because she was born 180 years ago in Bavaria. And also her mum is flowers.

In Space Babies Fifteen wishes he and Ruby could be Poppy's parents within earshot of the God of Wishes, who unintentionally makes this true when Wish World opens with Ruby and John Smith having Poppy as their kid. Series 1 then plays out much as it had done before, with Ruby's ability to recognise something is wrong with the Doctorless universe in 73 Yards and Maestro's fear of her hidden song because she's a powerful member of the Pantheon. I think the rewrites only began with the ending of Empire of Death - in the original cut, it turns out even the fash DNA supercomputer doesn't know who she is and we're left on a cliffhanger with regards to this.

Ruby decides to take time out of the TARDIS after seeing the whole universe end and whilst Fifteen is off having adventures in Joy to the World she briefly dates Alan Budd before dumping him due to his controlling behaviour during a date where he gifts her a star certificate. She rejoins Fifteen after she is kidnapped by robots from Missrubysunday (with Ruby replacing Belinda this season the star certificate thing is centred on her) and he rescues her, with the time fracture in that episode reversing the events of the episode but leaving Alan's memory intact. He's dumped back on Earth where he becomes determined to ruin Ruby's life and so Lucky Day is about Alan, not Conrad, attacking UNIT/Ruby. At the end of the episode Alan is picked up by an ecstatic Rani who now has the God of Wishes and her ex boyfriend who has a serious grudge against her and wants to change the world for the worst.

Season two remains pretty much the same as well. We then hit the finale which also plays out the same initially - sorry guys I think Omega was always going to be a skeleton baby :( - but with Ruby ending the fake reality by breaking into where Alan is holding her as a baby and touching her baby self's hand, just like the resolution with the certificate in Robot Revolution. The universe resets but Ruby notices Poppy is missing, able to remember her because a) she was the one who cast the wish; b) her experience with parallel universes (73 Yards); and c) her characterisation as an "abandoned" baby who wants everyone to have a home. She uses her powers one final time to bring Poppy back and decides to leave the TARDIS for good and raise her new daughter.

The episode ends with Ruby donning the Rani's cloak and leaving her baby self outside the church on Ruby Road to ensure the timeloop is maintained, changing Fifteen's memory by pointing at the Doctor just as we saw in Empire in order to keep that mystery intact as well.

Fifteen, touched by Ruby's decision, flies off in the TARDIS determined to find Susan. and also rescue Rogue from Superb Hell I guess #justiceforrogue

The end.

(To be clear I adore Belinda, the above was not written to write her out of the show - I think she deserved better in her own story, when clearly she was simply recycled from story beats taken from Ruby).

Some supporting evidence -

• Desiderium is the seventh child of a seventh child. Ruby Sunday's name alludes to both: rubies are the birthstone of July, the seventh month, and Sunday is the seventh day of the week.

• the Goblins in Church on Ruby Road fed on coincidences. Desiderium was born to the Zufall family. Zufall in German means "coincidence".

• The Rani talks about having to keep track of the Doctor's companions to make her plan to summon Omega work, but only actually references Ruby by making a slight about blonde girls. Belinda also has absolutely no impact on The Rani's plan whatsoever, to the extent she was locked in a box for the whole finale, so The Rani's interest in her feels utterly pointless. (Because it was).

• Strong themes of motherhood, childhood abandonment, and adoption paralleling what happened with the Doctor as per Timeless Child revelations throughout the series that make absolutely no sense for Belinda, who came from a home with both parents present. Ruby was always meant to complement Fifteen's recent discovery of his adopted status and help him work through it as he helped her work through hers.

• Space Babies also literally opens the show on a spaceship misinterpreting stories and making them real.

• The odd duplication of fashy boys Conrad and Alan - it makes more narrative sense if they were both once the same character who got sawed in half during hasty rewrites.

• Ruby's name being tied to sevens is similar to River Song, Melody Pond, and Amy Pond being related to water, hinting at their connection.

maybe I am wrong, maybe the show was always meant to be written this way but like. theorising. is also fun!

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delcatty stretch

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absolutely obsessed with margaret encino as a character build. 0 fighting abilities but THE mvp of the party. she tries to shoot someone once and gets a nat one. she gets hit for 4 points of damage once and wails in pain for the whole rest of the fight. 19 hp but she can do things with her cell phone i couldn't pull off with a nuke. maybe your minmaxed oathbreaker paladin can deal 60 damage per turn, but can they secure healthcare for their whole party? can they offer a $2,000 signing bonus? can they stop a fight with a single click of a button? didn't fucking think so.

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shrimp cowboy 🦐

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hey guys check it out I can do a frontside 180 with my stomach haha

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Spoilers for ep1+2 of Walking With Dinos 2025 and the OG WWD

The joy and charm of the original was that it was a straight-up nature documentary -- with dinosaurs! The biological info was given to you by the narrator.

I'm totally on board for having a segment at the end or as the second half of the ep (a la modern documentaries like Planet Earth) which features behind the scenes stuff or palaeontologists digging up and discussing finds, talking about the current theory and scientific investigation into fossils and such. That'd be so cool! The original WWD eps were ~30mins and so it would make sense if you want a longer ep to have a half-half kind of structure. Or you could just give us 1hr of dinosaurs :)

BUT-- Having the awkwardly scripted conversations interrupt the dinosaur narrative is so jarring! I timed them and it's like literally every ~2 minutes. It ruins the flow and immersion. And also? Some of them flat out spoil the dino narrative plot!

Like, the first episode. You could have had it just follow the baby triceratops as-is and leave it on that cliffhanger with the T. rex... and then have all this information at the end on how this was based on this rare find of a baby dino fossil! And then you can show us the model of the T. rex brain cavity etc etc. Cool! Natural! Makes sense!

But telling us about the baby fossil at the start you go through the episode without any stakes. You know that baby is gonna die, but at the end of the episode so nothing else matters. Nothing is tense anymore. In episode two, the palaeo segment interrupting near the end of the ep spoils that Sobek dies before he is then shown to wander away and collapse. Compare this to the death of mother T. rex in the og series where she is badly wounded but you don't know what happens until bam: the little babies calling for their mother lying dead on the ground. Heck, even the death of the ornithocheirus, which was presented up-front at the start of the OG episode feels more satisfying because it's like a "the final day in the life of" episode, and it's so grandiose that you're invested in this guy despite knowing what will happen. I think that worked also because it was an adult. Having the ep start with a baby dino you wonder if it's going to show you the life of it while it ages up, like the OG WWD diplodocus ep, but by spoiling the fun you just get this kind of constantly interrupted semi-action sequence (which isn't very exciting) and it falls flat.

I think the problem here is a lack of direction. The director/producer hasn't really done a nature documentary before. The framing of the plots and the rapid interjection of the paleo segments are just disappointing. Also, it would be cooler and more natural if it was like the narrator asking questions and talking to the paleo nerds. Having them speak to each other with weird leading statements and repeating each other is very stilted.

As a separate criticism, compared to the og series, this one has an aversion to showing injuries and carnivores eating and tearing flesh. It's really obvious in the cuts and framing. And yeah, the framing. Why on EARTH would you decide to have a segment where a triceratops frill becomes all bright and colourful take place in a forest at night?? Why would you frame a bunch of spinosuarus shots so they're fuzzy silhouettes against the sun and thus you cannot see the dinosaurs? Really odd decisions.

And also the lack of puppets. Makes me sad.

I can’t fathom people complaining about the modern day/palaeontologist sections on the new Walking With Dinosaurs. I didn’t realise people liked dinosaurs but have no interest in how they’re discovered? That is BAFFLING to me.

Give me whole docuseries about paleo digs, I’ll watch them.

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Belinda's plotline is kind of a horror story, which would be very interesting if that's what they'd been going for.

She's kidnapped by a creepy guy who wants to marry her, and she's rescued by another guy who also comes off as kinda creepy to her, and she doesn't trust him or want to be with him, but conveniently he can't take her home so she has to stay with him for a while. And she's forced to start trusting him as they go on various adventures together, but then she sees him casually torture a guy and she has a moment where she doubts him again, but she's able to sort of brush it aside, and she even tells him how amazing he is.

And then she gets stuck in another creepy man's conservative utopia, where she's a housewife married to the man she's travelling with and they have a daughter together. And deep down she knows there's something wrong with this, and she even has a moment where she has to scream because this isn't her life, but she forces herself to keep on believing in the fake world and her daughter, and even when she gets her memories back her daughter is still there and she feels compelled to protect her. She shuts herself in a box, knowing she might be trapped there for eternity, because what else can she do? This is her daughter, right?

And then the girl fades out of existence and she forgets her, but the man she travelled with can't bear to let the girl go, so he rewrites the universe to save her... and rewrites Belinda's whole life in the process. Suddenly she's always been a mother. This has always been her daughter. Once again, she's had a new life imposed on her by some creepy guy, and she doesn't even know it's happened. He doesn't tell her, he just says goodbye and leaves her with the child she never used to have.

Will she ever feel the wrongness of her new reality? Will she ever have a nagging feeling that this isn't her life?

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the time i told the truth and two times i couldn't