Welcome to My Twisted Strings

Lifelong puppetry fan. 30's. Follows and likes from @plebeiangoth. We talk nice about Digit in this house

[flowersfordigit]

Hi-ho there!

Welcome to my Muppets puppetry appreciation blog! I'm Pleb, and you can find my main @plebeiangoth. Gonna start spamming my Muppets puppetry reblogs to this zone as to keep things neat and tidy. I've been a lifelong puppet enthusiast since I was very little and got to see a parade which featured Heart of the Beast, which may have decided in that moment who I would become.

I swear this is not an April Fools bit, despite the timing. I thought I was making a solely Muppets blog but the fool is me, I love all puppetry too much.

Brief ground rules: I'm an adult and I cuss like a sailor. Otherwise this is not an 18+ zone. Jim Henson's works have been an important thing to me in every season of my life and I want to share that love with everyone of every age (at least so long as you're old enough to be on tumblr). No one's getting blocked unless you're overly rude or inappropriate, or if you're a biggot, a fascist, a cop, and/or a Cybertruck. Please, Cybertrucks DNI.

I like Digit a lot, though I wouldn't say that's definitely my favorite Muppet. He's up there, but I'm not certain who my favorite is. But boy oh boy did I lose my mind when I that was the result I got on this really good Muppet personality quiz! Please take the quiz, it asks some really unexpected questions and you really gotta think about some of your answers; it's very clever.

Top five favorite Muppets in no particular order, excluding Kermit:

Gaffer

Digit

Sweetums

Alphonso D'Abruzzo

Mokey

That's run long enough. Thanks for reading and have fun!

[jimhenson-themuppetmaster]

Share with your favorite Muppet

Muppets Collage by Society for Obscure Muppets on Facebook

[whos-mire]

So we are going to pretend this masterpiece doesn't exist?

[iplaycomputer]

nature is beautiful

[frogosaurus]

Happy Pride month to all the gay folks who should still be with us but were lost to AIDS. So many of them had (and continue to have) huge impacts on the world, despite their lives being tragically cut short.

Since this is primarily a Muppet blog, I wanted to take a moment to talk about Richard Hunt.

Richard Hunt was a gay man and a fantastic puppeteer who started working with Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, and company in 1970 at age eighteen and joined the cast of Sesame Street two years later. While working with the Muppets, he originated the characters of Scooter, Beaker, Statler, Sweetums, and Wayne, but also became the primary performer of Janice and is responsible for the flower child personality she is now known for. He was also known to be a fantastic singer.

But maybe most importantly, he made so many people happy. According the book "Of Muppets and Men" by Christopher Finch, Hunt "seems to get more unadulterated pleasure from performing than anyone else in the organization. When he is not working on camera, he is apt to have Scooter or Beaker or Janice -- anyone -- on his arm for the purpose of entertaining... He makes the crew laugh, jokes with the guest star, clowns for the shop personnel. He is one of the chief reasons for the loose atmosphere that exists around Studio D despite the pressure and the slow pace that are endemic to television production."

Hunt died at age 41 due to AIDS complications. The Muppet Workshop made a panel for the NAMES Project AIDS quilt in his honor. The Richard Hunt Spirit Award is presented every year at the Sesame Street wrap party to the cast member that best honors Hunt's generosity and dedication on set.

Rest in peace Richard. Thank you for the laughs and the smiles, and happy Pride 💛

[mechanomorphic]

queer muppet moments i would make happen if i was in charge of the muppets:

the electric mayhem (minus animal bcs hes their kid) arent a polycule, theyre monogamous. but specifically they break up and date each other one at a time. they have a chart.

animal is genderfluid. this is mentioned exactly once bcs kermit calls her he and she starts yelling "SHE/HER!" kermit corrects himself and the show goes on

rizzo made out with gonzo once but he still considers himself straight bcs gonzo is not a guy, he's a whatever. gonzo agrees with this

uncle deadly dated tim curry. it did not end well.

actual emotional scene of gonzo talking about how he feels abt gender. no jokes.

kermit: no matter what, gonzo is still gonzo, and we're always going to support gonzo no matter what gonzo decides- gonzo: kermit. i still use he/him

statler and waldorf wedding episode. theyre divorced by the next

beaker trying to ask bunsen out on a date. in the end it turns out bunsen thought they'd been dating for years.

miss piggy hanging out with drag queens

related, miss piggy starting to present butch and kermit being Really Into It. hes embarassed abt it

pepe begins a story with "when i was a little girl...."

janice decides to start using just she bcs "like, i could never be her"

rowlf mentions having a husband. even kermit is like "??? since when??!"

actually i change my mind. genderfluid animal is mentioned a second time when dr teeth is calling for instrument and mic checks, he turns to animal and yells "animal! pronoun check!" "HE/HIM" "alright!"

[irisbleufic]

Swedish Chef neopronouns: bork/bork/bork

[thisusernameisunique]

Dr. Teeth: mic check

Mike: here

Dr. Teeth: pronoun check

Animal holds up an auction paddle with their pronouns written on

Then everyone else raises their paddles

[the-haiku-bot]

Animal holds up

an auction paddle with their

pronouns written on

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[muppet-facts]

Muppet Fact #1806

The Solenostomus snuffleupagus, a newly confirmed species of ghost pipefish was recently observed and collected from Queensland, Australia by Graham Short and David Harasti. Like the name suggests, the ghost pipefish was named after Mr. Snuffleupagus dude to it's shaggy appearance. Also, much like Snuffy, originally many people did not believe Solenostomus snuffleupagus was real because so few people have seen it and it remained outside of official scientific records.

Marine biologist Harasti first observed the fish in 2003 off Papua New Guinea. The earliest documentation of the species was in 1993 by the Australian Museum and Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.

Ichthyologist and taxonomist Short said “It was so easy to say, ‘Yeah, this looks like Snuffleupagus.’ I mean, it’s almost identical. It’s scary,” in regards to the taxonomic name choice. Sesame Workshop was very supportive and pleased about the choice in name.

Sources:

Bartels, Meghan. “A Real Mr. Snuffleupagus? Meet the Ocean’s Strangest New Fish Species.” Scientific American, May 15, 2026. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-real-mr-snuffleupagus-meet-the-oceans-strangest-new-fish-species/

Scott, Anastasia. “This Shaggy New Fish Looked so Much Like Snuffleupagus That Scientists Named It After Him.” Discover Magazine, May 15, 2026. https://www.discovermagazine.com/this-shaggy-new-fish-looked-so-much-like-snuffleupagus-that-scientists-named-it-after-him-49110

Short, Graham, and David Harasti. “Solenostomus snuffleupagus sp. nov., a hairy ghost pipefish (Teleostei: Solenostomidae) from the Southwest Pacific, with an integrative comparison to S. paegnius.” Journal of Fish Biology, May 10, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfb.70497.

[jimhenson-themuppetmaster]

[flowersfordigit]

I forgot what the interview was, but I saw one of a puppeteer a long time ago where she was talking about needing to repaint the ceiling of her apartment and having her puppeteer coworkers come over to help because they're used to having their arms high over their heads for long periods. That's exactly what I was doing yesterday, when I realized it was 36 years ago that Jim Henson passed away.

We still miss you. I wish I could have been born in time to have met you. All the same, thank you for the endless joy and inspiration. The world would be a much darker place had you never shared your imagination with us

[tutuhenson]

Lil story

Was talking about the muppets with my mom. I mentioned Janice and she said “the trans one?” I was genuinely speechless 😭😭

[uracthearchivist]

10/17/1982 – ‘LA – D.C. Fashion Collection'

(Description from Jim Henson's Red Book)

"In 1977, Jim agreed to collaborate with British fantasy illustrator Brian Froud on a film featuring Brian’s design work – The Dark Crystal. Over the five years it took to make the film, dozens of artists spent countless hours drawing, sculpting, molding, sewing, painting, incising, inventing and creating the fantastic characters, costumes, flora and fauna that populate the extraordinary world envisioned by Brian and Jim. Beyond the images on the screen, Jim sought ways to showcase his team’s craftsmanship. One of the most ambitious of the side projects was The Dark Crystal Clothing Collection, meant to celebrate the distinctive costumes and graphic elements in the film. It was also a way to keep the costumers in-house and busy during the post-production process so that they would be available for future Henson projects.

According to the press kit, Jim’s motivations were two-fold: “A desire to see the beauty of the film transposed into another creative medium; and, to acknowledge the strong influence that film has always had on fashion.” He commissioned the London-based design team working in his Creature Shop to create a “dramatic haute-couture collection” that reflected the “style, richness and jewel toned color” of the film. Forty pieces, priced between $500 and $1,800, were created in limited editions and offered exclusively through Liberty’s in London, Henri Bendel in New York, I. Magnin in San Francisco, and Sakowitz in Houston. Hand-made with hand-screened prints on silk, suede, taffeta, and leather and hand-loomed knits, each garment or accessory showcased the specific talents of the designers and costumers that had come together to work on the film. The group included Shirley Denney, Ellis Flyte, Val Jones, Lesja Lieber, Diana Moseley, and Cas Willing. Using elements from the film, they designed outfits for both day and evening, along with hats, gloves, belts and jewelry – human-sized projects reflective of the items made for the film characters, but adapted to fashion-forward tastes.

The Dark Crystal Clothing Collection got a lot of attention in the press, garnering a full-page spread in Vogue magazine. The stores went all out to showcase the pieces – Bendel’s in New York gave over their Fifth Avenue windows to the collection. The manikins wearing the outfits there were placed in environments that looked like the Dark Crystal sets, and creatures from the film were posed alongside them, making for a traffic-stopping display for window-shoppers. In the end, the collection did not sell well, perhaps a little ahead of the fashions that would become popular in the mid-80s. But the designers remained together as a team, and all but Diana Moseley stayed on to work on Labyrinth."

[jimhenson-themuppetmaster]

A Greenish Cookie Monster with teeth in 1968, when he used to eat everything not just Cookie’s.

[sarahcosico]

the kissy kissy <3

www.sarahcosico.bigcartel.com

[flowersfordigit]

100 posts!

For my 100th post, I slow-blinked at you

[frightfullytreeish]

reblog to slowblink at your mutuals

[flowersfordigit]

Speaking of Muppet Sing Along videos, I was reminded of a weird thing about them. I recall as a little kid noticing that not all the segments had lyrics on the screen. Not sure if this was a production oversight or what. However the segments without hardcoded lyrics on the screen substituted closed captions, which worked fine in our household as we're all neurodivergent and often depend on captions to supplement hearing. Still weird though.

On that same token, it occurs to me that the target demographic of sing-along videos are probably people too young to know how to read yet. I definitely couldn't read yet when I used to watch those! The only times I ever gravitated to sing-along tapes after learning to read were for nostalgic reasons and less for singing along to the songs.

I'm very much on a long stroll down memory lane, bear with me. Hope no one is bothered by the rambling

[flowersfordigit]

This past weekend I was at the family cabin for spring cleaning and at some point in the past we left a couple of old bootleg tapes of Muppet stuff my mom made when I was little, which included a Muppet Sing Along rip which started with Kokomo

I actually never knew where this video originated, and had always assumed it was made for Muppets Tonight. However it was a standalone music video to promote the Muppet Beach Party album. I shared a rip from the sing-along tape because it seems the rips from that tape on YouTube are higher quality than those without the lyrics.

Did ayone else notice Alphonso D'Abruzzo? 😁

What was funny though was I had a friend with me and I made a joke to him about how the music video should have included Digit in his funky beach outfit.

Guess what's the last song at the end of the tape?

So I guess I found what was my first ever exposure to Digit!

Those old bootlegs really cheered me up. Last week was one of the worst I've had in a very long time and I needed this. Hope you all find an unexpected source of joy this week