Caesar Was Notably Not Corrupt, Actually. His Big Thing Was Purging Corruption From The Roman Republic.

this is adorable I love 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 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.

…yes?

This is what bug haters look like

The current geopolitical rivals of America are Russia and Red China. If America falls, one of them will take its place as global hegemon. I don’t know about you, but I would rather have a liberal-progressive republic as the world leader than a fascist dictatorship.

America is not perfect. No state currently in existence is (except Canada 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦 ofc) . But American hegemony is a damn sight better than hegemony of any of its rivals.

as trans activists we have GOT to get more comfortable with embracing the idea that we are a threat to the usamerican status quo. no more of this "we're the real america lovers, we make america great" shit. usamerica isn't and should not be made great, because it is a racist imperialist patriarchal state that has caused huge amounts of death and devastation worldwide. all our struggles are interconnected.

we should not be licking the ideological boots of a political system that gives zero shits about any of us, we should be dismantling it and replacing it with something that does. if trans existence is a threat to this country, then GOOD. I'm fucking proud of that. and you should be too.

squish him like a bug 🥰

What if you opened your sock drawer and there was a little Todd Howard in there looking up at you and smiling, what would you do

red china, as opposed to blue and purple china

generally the colour people use for anti-communism is white. but the KMT’s flag was blue so I’ll accept it.

I say “red China” to distinguish the illegitimate government in Beijing from the Republic on Taiwan. “Red” is quicker to type than “communist” or “mainland”.

I’m literally crying and weeping and screaming (complimentary). my two hyperfixations??? in one post??? can this day be any better

Oh sweet Nerevar. Should have bewared the Ides of March.

I realised only this morning that oh, hey, it's the Ides of March, maybe I should draw a lil' thing. It took me about two hours to paint this one in Photoshop - based on the Death of Caesar by Vincenzo Camuccini.

“We should celebrate objectively worse architecture because every person who likes good architecture is a Nazi”

insane take.

There are three imperatives to keeping fascists out of architecture.

1. Celebrate Buildings from Africa and South Asia over and above Europe, America, and East Asia

2. Celebrate Brutalism and “the ugly” over and above Classical Revival, Futurism and New Formalism. Reject tradition

3. And I cannot stress this enough: Fuck the buildings

Also, Caesar was a progressive! Obviously not in the sense of modern social progressivism, but in the Roman political system he was considered a progressives. The conspirators were all *Optimates*, old corrupt conservatives who wanted to maintain the status quo that made them rich. Caesar purged corruption, reformed the grain dole so that it actually benefited the poor, and actively went against the byzantine (an ironic word to use, I know) political structures of Rome and gave much more power to the populace during his terms as Consul.

okay istg if one of you does #america on my posts again im biting.

JULIUS CAESAR is NOT like trump! Julius caesar got stabbed by rich guys for supporting the people, regular people fucking loved julius. The guys that killed caesar were run out of Rome! because everyone was so mad about it! and trump just fucking sucks.

also im not american.

have you studied dialectical materialism

Have I seriously studied it in an academic environment? No.

Have I read enough to know that, like the rest of Marx’s work, it’s complete bullshit? Yes.

I saw a lesbian nsfw post today that said “cishet men dni” and I just. that feels wrong. not because men should be interacting with lesbian content, god no, but because i feel like it implies something by the exclusion of trans men. almost like it’s saying “oh trans men aren’t REAL men, they’re basically women”.

idk. gave me the ick.