#but i just. keep. seeing. these posts. ugh. and it's not what i want to see.

[meracyn]

kwon as your boyfriend <3

a/n: whoops i broke my rule of only posting once a day lmao but idc this man is too fine to even regret this. if im gna write for ck it’ll probs be for only kwon i never really paid attention to the others ngl 😭🙏 maybe miguel (UPDATE I MEANT AXEL) too but idk ive seen fics n i think id make him ooc so bear w me lmao

we’re continuing with the overprotective partners squad™, starring bitches and bros and nonbinary hoes (ifykwim ILY) who just. are so down bad for their partners they’d do anything to keep them safe

this guy is one of the top ranked members 💯

although it is true, kwon is definitely protective over you– it depends however, as in, depending on how capable you are to defend yourself. this doesn’t only mean physically, verbally too.

if you are into karate and have the skills to pay the bills (another reference lmao), kwon won’t be as protective, as he himself acknowledges your strength and is very proud to let others know you are his partner.

if it’s the other way and you don’t do karate, it just increases his protectiveness– he won’t judge you for it or anything, but will offer to teach you some tricks in case of an “emergency” (basically him going to a match and won’t be there with you) so you can defend yourself, though you’d probably have a ‘guard’ with you lmao (yoon 💀)

very touchy, but more in private, and just an arm around your shoulders, back or waist in public. kwon would most likely give you his jacket too, as a sign for anyone not to mess with you

is so gentle with you behind closed doors; like full on holding your hand and pressing a soft kiss, holding your cheek and staring lovingly into your eyes, having you in his arms every time you kiss, he’s a whole different person when it comes to his partner, and obviously has a soft spot for you

teases a lot lmao. say, for example, you get jealous over someone walking over to him and ask for his number, kwon would quickly notice and be so smug with it– attempts to rile you up and see how long you can remain calm before before doing anything

won’t stop mentioning it too 💀 “aw, remember when you got jealous~? how cute.” will make it up to you though, by making out ‘til you aren’t mad anymore doing anything you want

lots of cuddling, kwon feels reassured and relaxed if you’re laying beside him– either having your head on his chest or on top of him (IN A NON DIRTY WAY STOP 💀), anything that includes you being close together = happy kwon

will defend your honor as many times necessary, this guy does not play when it comes to anyone badmouthing you in front of him, he won’t hesitate to kick their ass (literally)

always strives to cause a good impression to you. if you’re present during any of the tournaments he’s attending and such, kwon will be showing off lmao, that smirk on his face when he wins and sends a look your way

the longer you date, the more he’s sure you two will marry, in fact he’ll even bet his own life about it– kwon’s just that sure, he knows you won’t leave him, you’re stuck to him like glue and can’t run away 😭

“you can run but can’t hide from me” – kwon

“wanna bet about it” – you

uhhh what did you do lmao RUN

this man is too fine ugh how does he do it

[darlingdaisyfarm]

im so sorry, i don’t even know how to explain myself at this point, consider this my apology for all the filthy nonsense i post here

so, this is a lil bonus to this post

nsfw (not really, but mentions of sex)

Ford is dead. Not literally (you check his pulse just to be sure), but emotionally and physically, this man has perished. Such a beautiful ruined mess underneath you, he’s sprawled out like a crime scene chalk outline, drenched in sweat, staring blankly at the ceiling as if questioning all his life choices.

But you’re not doing much better. Your legs shaking so much you can barely sit up, whole body feels like jelly and your brain isn’t working either. Somehow, you manage to flop next to Ford, throwing a limp arm over his scarred chest.

“Bravo, folks!” Bill exclaims. “what a show! Truly the pinnacle of human endurance and stamina! Sixer, gotta say, i missed seeing you like this, ah, the good old days!”

Ford groans faintly. “I hate you. . .”

“You’re so mean,” you mutter at Bill, glaring up at him with half-lidded eyes. “why’d you even join in? That’s not what we agreed on.”

The moment these words leave your mouth, you know you’ve fucked up. Ford’s body stiffens under your arm as his exhausted brain cells rapidly recalculating everything.

“What— what did you just say?” although his voice is hoarse from all sounds he made earlier, you still catch a note of seriousness in it. His head turns toward you in slow motion, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “What do you mean. . . agreed on?”

You panic. “Wait, I mean, uh—”

“Oh, let me tell him!” Bill interrupts. “she’s talking about the little deal we made! you know, where I said, ‘hey, doll, wanna fuck your dusty old man to death?’ and she said, ‘of course, Bill, but no creepy tendrils, okay?’”

Ford looks like he’s been hit by a bus. “WHAT?”

You swear you feel yourself sweat from panic and embarrassment as you look at Bill in pure fear. “I thought you’d just watch! Not—”

Demon cuts you off with a laugh. “Oh, sure, you thought! And by the way, Sixer? these pathetic, desperate little whimpers, ugh, they’ll echo in my mind for eternity! I’ve waited so long to see you like that. A helpless, sloppy mess, both of you, my little huma—”

Ford's face flushes with either shame or anger, and you think he’s going to explode. But no. He pushes himself up, pushes himself up, the madman, and throws the sheet off in anger.

But Bill keeps. “I mean, you came so hard I’m surprised you didn’t pass out after the first round, old ma—”

Ford looks at that demonic creature. “That’s it. That’s it, Cipher, you’ve gone too far this time.”

You barely manage a “Ford, wait—” as he pulls on his boxers with surprising speed for a man who five seconds ago looked like he was on the brink of death.

“I’ll make you pay for this,” Ford declares dramatically. “Mark my words, Cipher, I’ll find a way to make you regret ever stepping into my house again.”

Both you and Bill fall silent, watching Ford’s boxers riding low on his hips as he marches out of the bedroom.

You watch your Ford walk away, eyes wide with panic, realising what just happened, but then your gaze goes lower. At that tattoo.

Flirty Gal.

Bill floats beside you, narrowing his single eye slyly. “I know what you’re looking at, doll.”

You glare at him, exhausted and annoyed. “I hate you.”

Cipher’s gaze flicks to the doorway Ford just walked through. “hate me all you want, but you've got good taste. Sixer's got a hell of an ass for an old man.”

“STOP TALKING.”

[emilyartstudio-s]

Style (Stan x Kyle) please?

Here's a doodle I will finish for patreon :,)

[dracrownian]

I have been thinking about this singular panel literally since I posted this earlier. Just. Ugh.

This is Viz's translation. Let me repeat: this is the official English translation. And that's how they chose to convey that line. Viz literally out here furthering the bisexual Akai agenda, even unintentionally. (Didn't think it was possible to make Gosho's characters even gayer.)

UGH. I guess I'm a ScotchRye shipper now. Because that's what's been on my mind all day. But to be clear, I'm probably more of a Whiskey Trio shipper because I'm not about to leave Rei out.

Listen I'm just saying. Hiro and Rei loved each other so much. SO MUCH. Hiro literally killed himself at least in part to protect Rei. UGH.

Rye and Scotch as sniper duo pls (yes I see you Iris and I agree). I can see them easily bonding. I can see Rye falling in love with him because he's Hiro (even if it's like. not quite Full Hiro.) and Hiro is so lovable. I can see Hiro seeing Rye's charms even if nobody else (Bourbon) does (or will admit to it).

RyeBourbon is also a yes for me. There's so much potential there. They constantly bicker, and I will not be convinced otherwise, even when it's inconvenient or there's an obvious Right Way Of Doing Things. Because that's how they communicate. Hiro just sort of sighs and shakes his head and humors it because he knows Rei and Rei's stubborn temper. And if this is also foreplay for them? Sure, that's fine, too.

Rei being absolutely devastated by Hiro's death and Rye apparent betrayal of both of them, but especially of Hiro. Because if Hiro has something going on with Rye, Rei knows about it. And that Rye would kill Scotch even despite that? Unforgivable. And then finding out that Rye was a NOC all along and supposedly killed Scotch to further his standing?? All hell breaks loose. Hell hath no fury, and all that.

Akai can't even bring himself to drink scotch anymore after Scotch's death. He "loves scotch as much as bourbon" but it's too painful. The ghost still lingers. His devastation is quieter, of course. And all he can do now to make up for his mistake, for his part in Hiro's death, is do his best to keep Bourbon safe. Even when Bourbon wants him dead.

Could he try to clear the air and tell Bourbon the truth of what happened that night? Yes, yes he could. Is he going to? Absolutely not. Because that might actually kill Rei.

They'll reconcile eventually. It'll be hard, maybe the hardest thing either of them have done, laying Hiro's ghost to rest. Leaning on each other, maybe never quite fully moving on. They both love him, after all. They always will. But they can love each other, too, and hang onto what they still have. Rei can tell Akai stories of when they were kids, have him know more about the man Hiro truly was. Akai can tell Rei about how, even when it was just him and Scotch, Rei was never far from Scotch's mind. Even if he didn't know it at the time, he knows now, how sometimes Scotch would just have the sweetest little smile, and he must have been thinking of Rei.

And if they both silently make promises to Hiro to keep each other safe? Well, that's between them and Hiro.

I'm fine, I promise. I'm not fine, how did I end up here?

Anyway. ScotchRye is fine I guess and I have no feelings on the matter.

Neither of them are handling the divorce well tbh.

[statementlou]

.

[sydney-carton-of-sour-milk]

The Many Illustrators of A Tale of Two Cities 7: A. A. Dixon

"'Collins' Clear-Type Press, let me ask you a question.'"

This is a very long post.

This week's edition has, in my research, become quite the edition.

Sadly, this image is the best source for the cover wrapper illustration that I could find.

You are likely familiar with Arthur Augustus Dixon's illustrations for the 1905 Collins Pocket Edition of A Tale of Two Cities. Several of them are very common to find in Internet searches and articles about the book, if not other editions of the book itself.

But the question raised by my research for this week's edition is: Are you familiar with all of them?

Thing is, as the source above states (read the whole article if you have the time, it's very interesting!), Dixon created twelve illustrations for this novel.

And sure enough, this source from the Internet Archive and this source from @oldillustrations (hello!) both have eleven of the same illustrations - with the twelfth presumably being for the wrapper, as seen in this source (previously cited) from the Victorian Web.

Alright, so that's three separate sources, all with (effectively) the same set of elaborate illustrations from 1905. Neat!

...

...but if you start counting...

...you'll notice that this seems...

...like a lot more than twelve!

Basically, there are five illustrations by A. A. Dixon that are completely unaccounted for in any of the three sources previously cited.

For the purposes of this post, the cover wrapper is considered #0 and is not pictured in these banners.

In full-size set of illustrations in this post, this source from Google Books is the source of four of those mystery illustrations:

#3: "'He stared at her with a fearful look.'" #6: "'Drive him fast to his tomb.'" #7: "He said, 'Farewell!'" #12: "'She appeared with folded arms.'" #9 ("'Patriots and friends, we are ready!'") and #11 ("'You are consigned to La Force.'") are sourced from Google Books in the full-size versions in this post simply because the Internet Archive versions of those two illustrations had cropping issues.

To me, this is mystery enough on its own. Why would another version of the book suddenly have more than the originally-stated number of illustrations by this artist? Especially considering that the Google Books source does not have #13 ("''I know you, Evremonde!''") - why would it be missing one of the "main" set?

It gets even more interesting.

As you'll notice in the banner, we're still one off: Keen-eyed observers of the full-size set of illustrations might have already noticed that #14 ("'Carton and the spy returned.'") looks a bit different than the rest of them - a bit like what happened in the previous edition of this series!

That's because that Dixon illustration comes from this completely random source - a post from a blog called the Paperback Palette dating back to 2018 - that I happened across on Google Images of all places while sitting on an airplane trying to set up this post last week!

And to top it all off, that source is missing #6!

At this point, if your first instinct is, reasonably, that perhaps Dixon didn't actually illustrate these extra five and that it was someone imitating him for later editions, then know that that was my instinct too - until I (dare I say it again) checked those signatures!!!

(I edited the colors to prevent flashing.)

All five of those illustrations bear Dixon's signature, so it's safe to assume that they are A. A. Dixon originals - from 1905, even.

Interestingly, #s 1, 10, 13, 15, and 16 don't have signatures! Does this mean anything? Probably not - as an artist myself, I often forget to put my own signature - but still, I can't resist mentioning it!

So the most likely explanation here is simply that the publishing house originally commissioned A. A. Dixon for more than twelve illustrations and then held on to some of them, eventually choosing to publish them in other editions. Still, we can't say for sure.

And as to why some are missing from the more "complete" sets - human error, most likely!

If you scrub through the Google Books source, you'll notice that #s 11 and 12 actually repeat (one even changes color, which I have no explanation for) - it's most likely either that the book was accidentally printed with repeats of #s 11 and 12 where 13 and 14 were supposed to go or that the person scanning this edition made a similar error.

As an aside, it's so interesting that the illustrations are evenly spaced throughout the book - I had not noticed that until now!

And as for the Paperback Palette source, it's most likely that the blogger accidentally skipped over an image while combing through their edition or just glossed over it when posting the batch (I understand that from experience!) We can see this by adding up the letters in some of the illustrations' captions - doing so reveals that the letters are meant to go to P, the sixteenth letter of the alphabet.

Thus, one must be missing! Case closed!

Except... It's actually (going by both the chronology of the book and the order in which this set was found in Google Books) missing the wrong letter! Here, it seems that In the Google Books source, #7 in the full set is given the seventh letter in the alphabet, G - whereas in the Paperback Palette source, "#7" is labeled as the sixth, F:

This implies not only that #6 is absent from the Paperback Palette source but also that there is a missing mystery illustration located between this source's H and K - that is to say, before or after #9!

EXCEPT... For one, this isn't the only inconsistency I've noticed - there are several places where the letters seem shifted in a strange way. I've seen #2 listed as "C" and #9 listed both as "H" and "I2i" (???), just as two examples. (My theory is that the cover wrapper and the frontispiece may be at play here, but who knows?)

More importantly, though, it seems that, for some mysterious reason, all of the sources with relatively consistent use of these letters (i.e. all but the Victorian Web) - even the sources with only eleven interior illustrations - still give #15 in the full set the fifteenth letter, O. Which, of course, may make all of this pretty moot anyway.

Dare I say..."Oh."

Suffice it to say, just as much as major sources like the Internet Archive and Google Books are vital to this sort of research and preservation work, so are smaller websites and bloggers! After all, without the Victorian Web and the Paperback Palette, we as collective netizens likely wouldn't have ever known about the cover wrapper or illustration #14 (not to mention that the versions of the illustrations from the set posted by @oldillustrations have by far the best image quality and standardization that I've found! Please go check them out if you haven't yet!).

As for the reasons behind Collins' Clear-Type Press not publishing all of the illustrations from the beginning (if that's the explanation we're to go with here), I suppose the question I'd like to ask is:

why? why would you put us through this?

& the standard endnote for all posts in this series:

This post is intended to act as the start of a forum on the given illustrator, so if anyone has anything to add - requests to see certain drawings in higher definition (since Tumblr compresses images), corrections to factual errors, sources for better-quality versions of the illustrations, further reading, fun facts, any questions, or just general commentary - simply do so on this post, be it in a comment/tags or the replies!💫

[sainz100]

2024 Singapore GP | x

[tricksterlatte]

Anyone else think short form social media based on algorithms designed to promote topics that create more engagement instead of more joy, the idea of fast fashion but conveyed through social media, and the fact you can monetize suffering and outrage better than ever has largely resulted in the death spiral of media literacy and the mass emergence of bad faith readings?

[derpinette]

girls being nice to me gets me higher than ecstasy ever could

[sysig]

One better (Patreon)

[sayheykid]

i genuinely don't think a story's worldbuilding and lore has ever drawn me in the way that check please did. it's been years and i still think about it every day. the characters and plot were always superb but i think what has stuck with me the most is the depth of the settings and how everything feels so lived in and tangible. everyone wants to make a fake world and town and university but no one else has EVER done it that well

[risingsunresistance]

damn i kinda dont like it here anymore

[eclarinet]

same soup... different day

[starchild--27]

yk what. i'm gonna say it.

i hope pcy1 comes soon. we need new things to talk about besides how hot he looks like oooomg i am sooooo tired of that i want his MUSIC ok i want to LISTEN to him damnit

[carcarrot]

old man yells at cloud about constant sequels

[haven-gum-rockrose]

going through it lately. and by it? i mean absolutely nothing actually.