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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 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.

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this website’s easy watch. *dangles a bunch of greek gods like keys*

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Those two Pagliacci tweets always fucking send me

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Huh, that little story I told about my crochet crocodile is kinda blowing up.

I guess I should apologize in advance to the people who followed me for it. This is not normally a wholesome content blog, so you're gonna see some weird shit.

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It’s not even funny how relatable this is.

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This is exactly how I looked when I first played the Xena game

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Yeah, my three-year-old self was good enough at pattern recognition to notice that animal characters in fiction tended to have names that began with the same letter as their species, but not good enough to recognize that the reason for this was alliteration. To be fair, I didn't know what alliteration was as a kid, or that the word "alliteration" even existed.

36-year-old me does know what alliteration is, but I find the idea of a crocodile with a C name that DOESN'T have the hard K sound charming, so Chelsea and Cici it is.

If I find a third I'm going to name her Charlene.

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.

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HAPPY WIDE WITCH WEDNESDAY

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Alright, why do we think tumblr is dying this time?

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Finding out today JK Rowling seems to hate ace people too is oddly funny to me because like ace people were the last thing I expected for her to talk shit about but you know what, we can add that to her ever growing list of people she hates for no real reason. Ace people rejoice!!!!!!!

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well now we gotta see the sexy villain Wondersprites, such as Jester Wonder and Carmilla Wonder :/

There are in fact a LOT of sprite designs I've started on for this project and have not shared yet. Some of them are spoilers those, including the sexy monster lady ones.

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My Childhood Wonder Grew Up

Yesterday I wrote a short post about how I had a smutty story idea that none of the friends I showed it to discouraged me from developing, and as a result it's, uh, developed into something I might actually make. And because the past two months have been ABSOLUTE HELL, especially for any other more fruitful/less smutty creative endeavors of mine, I feel the need to share something I've created to validate my existence in some way. But because this idea is, again, shamelessly smutty and self indulgent, I'm going to give you a proper warning of what you're getting into so you can back out from looking at it.

Ok... so... I'm a big Digimon fan, or at least a big fan of the first three seasons/series of Digimon anime - I feel they kind of dropped off in both story and monster design after Digimon Tamers, though they've been returning to form lately. Have you seen Dinomon? Dinomon kicks ass, even managed to supplant Plesiomon as my favorite mega.

But anyway! Digimon designs vary a lot more in aesthetics than pokemon do, but the best ones all have this cool grungy punk rock feel to them. And because Digimon was the punk rock to Pokemon's pop music, it had more edge to it. Yeah, your dinosaur buddy could evolve into a bigger dinosaur if you want, but it could also evolve into THE FUCKING DEVIL if you played your cards right/wrong. And while the Digimon animes have more or less focused on the most logical evolutions - little dinosaur becomes bigger dinosaur becomes cyborg dinosaur becomes, like, humanoid dinosaur knight - there's a part of my brain that's always thought about how you could take the "person partnered with an evolving monster" setup in a weird direction. Like, what happens if your fun monster pal digivolves into one of those nightmarish Final Boss digimons like Diaboromon or Apocalymon? What if you had a partner who digivolved into one of the "garbage" monsters, i.e. the pathetic, gross, mostly useless digimon that were a result of you sucking at playing the virtual pet game these were originally made for?

Or... I mean, I warned you this was a smutty idea... what if your digimon partner evolved into one of the hot digimons? Like any of the MANY digimons that are basically monster girl dominatrixes? What if your partner turns into LadyDevimon?

And that silly, smutty idea just rattled in my head for a while. 'Cause there's sort of a fun twist you can do on the stock "I've grown up and my childhood friend is now hot and I don't know how to process that" plotline in romance stories with it, you know? Because how does that cliche storyline change if the childhood friend in question was originally a three foot tall lizard, but now she's a nine foot tall dragon-woman?

It's a smutty idea! A terrible, shameful, smutty idea!

...

but no one's stopped me, so...

My Childhood Wonder Grew Up! is the story of five ten year olds who accidentally wandered into another world filled with monsters called wondersprites. Partnering up with five of these wondersprites, the kids went on a grand and harrowing adventure to defeat the Dread Kings, five uniquely strong and wicked wondersprites who were deadset on ruling both the World of Wonder and the human world with a tyrannical iron fist. They defeated the evil, parted with their wondersprite friends, and sealed off the World of Wonder forever, becoming celebrities in the human world in the process.

And then eight years passed.

The "Wonderkids" have graduated high school, and are all struggling with the burden of childhood fame, the gnawing fear that their lives may have peaked when they were preteens, a complete loss as to what they should do with their adult lives, and most of all, a deep sense of grief at being parted with the weird creatures they had befriended during that bizarre and wondrous childhood adventure. As they step out of childhood into adulthood, something remarkable happens.

Wondersprites reappear in the human world, chief among them are their old partners. Except their partners have grown up too, transitioning past what was thought to be the final level of their life cycle. And their new forms are... unexpected.

The leader of the "Wonderkids" was/is Ren Akari. Once a bold, confident (perhaps even overconfident) kid with a flashy and bizarre sense of fashion, Ren's lost all that brash attitude over eight years of people mocking their childhood exuberance and role as the face of the Wonderkids. Now they just want to be invisible, covering themselves in dark and muted clothing, hiding their face (and their goggles - try as they might, Ren can't give up all their childhood habits) beneath a hood, and generally trying to shrink from the public eye as best as they are able.

Their sprite, Scaly Wonder, was a sweet dragon that could match and exceed Ren's enthusiasm pound for pound. She's kept that exuberance, but in her new form it reads a bit differently than it did when she was a pudgy (if badass) dragon.

(Ren and Scaly both identified as male when they were kids, but as young adults they identify as nonbinary and female respectively).

The "bad boy" of the Wonderkids, Colt Ford was stoic, aloof, and generally had an air of being too cool for all this fantasy isekai bullshit. He was always the first to criticize Ren's leadership, but also the first to jump into the fray to help out his friends. Though he often insisted to the contrary, it was clear he cared a great deal for his friends, especially his bird-like partner, Feathery Wonder.

Colt has, unfortunately, remains distant, aloof, and closed off through his adolescence, growing into a young man who's even more shut off from his feelings than he was as a kid. That's ok, though, it's what a man's supposed to be according to his parents.

Colt's partner, Feathery Wonder, has struggled to live up to those same expectations. Though he's definitely tried to keep getting stronger like colt wanted, somewhere along the way he crashed, and his new form is... well, it's anything but strong, though it does has surprising utility in helping out the other wondersprites with mid-battle upgrades.

A tomboy whose confidence almost matched Ren's, Jaime Shannon was the heart of the group in many ways, mending disagreements between the other Wonderkids and always making sure they remembered they were in this together. Jaime was never afraid to speak her mind, and also enjoyed playfully ribbing her friends when they got too wrapped up in themselves.

Unfortunately, that confidence was relentlessly criticized when Jaime and the other Wonderkids were put in the public eye after saving the world, with many tabloids and pundits singling her out as a "bad role model." Jaime purposely tried to distance herself from her childhood personality as much as possible, becoming prim, soft-spoken, and very traditionally feminine in a hope to prove she's not the grubby tomboy everyone thought she was.

Her wondersprite partner is Shaggy Wonder, a fuzzy furball of a creature who was perhaps the most self-serious of the lot, constantly making heroic proclamations and speeches, much to Jaime's amusement. He's still like that, of course, but with his much more heroic build, he's beginning to look like he might actually live up to his own hype now.

Seymore Sullivan was a scrawny, bookish kid who tried to live up to the idea of brains beating brawn, often with very limited success. Though shy and full of insecurities, he proved an important asset to the Wonderkids, as his wealth of knowledge and analytical mind allowed him to devise strategies his fellow ten-year-olds could not think of on their own.

Seymore had a very eventful journey of self discovery after the whole Wondersprite Adventure. She goes by Siobhan now, and with that change in identity she seems to have gained all the self confidence that many of her fellow Wonderkids lost.

Siobhan's partner was Crawly Wonder, a goofy and mischievous wondersprite who took a playful and irreverent attitude to their adventure in the World of Wonder, even when things got VERY perilous. Though Crawly loves putting people off kilter, they're a little worried their newest transition might be too much - it looks a little terrifying, doesn't it?

(Siobhan/Seymore identified as male when she was young but now identifies as female, while Crawly Wonder was and is nonbinary)

A girly girl through and through, Cassie (yes, Cassie, ignore the name I wrote on the paper, this is all a work in progress and shit will change) Vasquez may have been a bit whiny in the eyes of her peers, but she also had the strongest moral core out of all of them, and was the most successful at winning other sprites over to their side and away from the rule of the Dread Kings. She proved again and again that her femininity was an asset, aided by the help of her surprisingly versatile aquatic wondersprite.

Cassie has grown up to be a bit less traditionally feminine, though she would say her love of all things lady has only grown with age. She picks and chooses aspects of various alternative lifestyles that suit her - a little hippie here, a little punk there, etc. - and of all the Wonderkids, she's the one who most openly pines for the World of Wonder, even sporting several tattoos in explicit honor of her wondersprite partner.

Said sprite, Slippy Wonder, was invaluable in the water as would be expected, but also surprisingly capable of holding her own on land, battering enemies with her venomous tentacles. Slippy also openly pines for a reunion with Cassie, and is even more overjoyed than the others that the World of Wonder is connected to the human world again.

While the return of wondersprites to the human world is, ostensibly, the conflict that the Wondernot-quite-kids and their partners need to solve, the meat of My Childhood Wonder Grew Up lies in how their relationships to each other have changed now that they've grown up. Sure, there's a new Wondersprite Adventure for them to solve, with threats both old and new alike to deal with and a big mystery to solve, but all of that is hard to focus on for our no-longer-kid protagonists. As much as it seems like their childhood is back again, can it really be when they themselves have changed so much?

And also... are they gonna smooch those monsters? 'Cause some of them are... oddly smoochable.

...so yeah, that's the smutty little idea I've come up with and no one has stopped me yet. None of this is set in stone, naturally - I might age up the kids a bit, for example. Like, 18 feels thematically appropriate, it's the official transition point between childhood and adulthood, and graduating high school feels like a potent time to explore the feelings of leaving childhood behind and entering adulthood... but also I'm thirty-six and 18 doesn't really feel like an adult age to me now, even if legally it is, you feel me? Twenty would feel more appropriate, even if it's a less thematically interesting age.

And either way this probably won't come to fruition for, like, MANY years yet - when I get back my writing mojo I will be going right back to Maude and Mordi, and Wizard School Mysteries still has five books to go yet, and Dark Chivalry needs to fit in there somewhere too, not to mention a polished version of At Sea Without a Map and the 10th anniversary special editions of No Sympathies and ATOM Volumes 1 and 2...

But someday, maybe, we'll see this become a thing. A smutty, smutty thing.