#what do i tag this as to show its a screenshot of two posts

[semiotomatics]

[sunrizef1]

Heart Eyes

Pairing: Carlos Sainz x Reader

Authors note: today i discovered that I can fully just screenshot Instagram posts so that was really helpful 🤦‍♀️ | another quick one | opening my Carlos Sainz list then 🌶️

Warnings: one curse word

Face Claim: Joanna Pincerato

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yourusername

liked by carlossainz and 101,008 others

yourusername ❄️☀️

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user1 omg 🤩

user2 too hot to get cold

user3 my fav

user4 I love her so much

user5 Carlos Sainz in the likes again

user6 someone tell him to shoot his shot lmao

user7 it’s been months 😭

user8 ahhhhh she looks so pretty

user9 🫶

user10 lovely

user11 ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

user12 I need that swimsuit

user13 I could never 🥶

carlossainz 😍

liked by yourusername

user14 omg Carlos finally commented

user15 about time

user16 her hair is so nice

user17 ❄️❄️❄️

user18 y/n just liking Carlos’ comment is so funny to me

user19 prettyyyy

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yourusername added to their story

carlossainz

Beautiful querida 😍

yourusername

Thank you Carlos 🤭 🫶

carlossainz

Of course ángel ❤️

yourusername loved a message

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yourusername

liked by carlossainz and 105,001 others

yourusername museum day 🖼️

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user20 queen

user21 so pretty

user22 my fav

user23 🎨🎨🎨

user24 Carlos back in the likes

user25 lmao my man’s always lurking I can’t

user26 artsy vibes 👩‍🎨

carlossainz you’re the most beautiful art 😍

yourusername ahhh thank you carlito 🫶

user27 CARLOSSSSSS

user28 my man went from heart eye emojis to full sentences, they grow up so fast

user29 oh trust he still included the heart eyes

user28 can’t change him lmao

user30 and she replied!!! 🥹

user31 they’re already so cute I can’t

user32 ❤️❤️❤️

user33 the fit eats

user34 the prettiest painting is you 🫶

user35 Carlos already pulled that one

user35 good try though queen 🫶

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yourusername added to their story

user36

SMOOTH OPERATORRRRR

user37

Carlos????

user38

Is that my bbg Carlos Sainz

user39

HE DID IT

user40

That better be car boy or so help me god

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carlossainz

liked by yourusername charles_leclerc and 2,711,008 others

carlossainz mi sol ☀️😍

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user41 “my sun” 🥹

user42 Carlos don’t simp on main challenge: impossible

user43 IS THAT BBG Y/N!!!!???

user44 y/n? 🥹

user45 I hope that’s y/n

user46 wait yall know who that is???

user47 we think it’s this girl that Carlos has been interacting with for months now

user46 what’s her @

user47 @/yourusername

user46 omg I just checked and this man has been down bad for months hasn’t he?? 😭

user47 he has been 😭

user48 loml

user49 😍🤩

user50 heart eye emojis, my man is consistent fr

user51 stop with the woke soft launch madness

user52 show it to me Rachel

user53 just tag her bro 😩

user54 y/n liked!!! 😍😍😍😍

user55 ☀️☀️☀️

user56 my fav couple

user57 they’ve been together 3 seconds and he hasn’t even confirmed that that’s y/n

user56 idc I feel it in my nuggets

user58 BAE 🤭

user59 @/yourusername is this u queen???

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yourusername added to their story

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yourusername

liked by carlossainz landonorris and 420,690 others

yourusername my boy ❤️

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user60 Carlos crumbs

user61 I’m sure everyone will be completely normal and calm about this

user62 CARLOSSSSSSSSS 🏎️🏎️🏎️🏎️

user63 YEAHHH CARLITO

user64 that’s the smooth operator I know it is

user65 my down bad king Carlos Sainz

user66 LANDO LIKEDDDD

user67 that’s how we know it’s real, he’s involved his friends 🤭

user68 idc that buff ass arm is car number 55

user69 do we know that’s Carlos???

user70 it has to be

user71 if its not I might jump off a high building

user72 woah, bit dramatic

user71 🤷🏽‍♀️

user73 my two favs 🤩

user74 I think I’m in love with her not even kidding

user75 me too queen

user75 she’s genuinely so pretty 😭

user76 they’re such pretty people, I need couple photos NEOW

user77 hard-launch 🔜 pls

user78 why are they pretending like we don’t know who their launching 😭

carlossainz 😍

yourusername 🤭 ❤️

user79 alright so now we definitely know who that is 😭

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yourusername added to their story

carlossainz

mi amore

I sent you that in confidence 😩

yourusername

Sorry baby

You just look so cute 🤭

carlossainz

Ah I cant be mad at you querida

But that definitely feels like a “hard-launch”

yourusername

I guess it is 😅

carlossainz

at least I get to post you now 🫶

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carlossainz

liked by yourusername charles_leclerc and 5,001,009 others

carlossainz amor de me vida 😍

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user80 YAYYYYYY

user81 finally 😭

user82 love of my life 🥹

user83 my favorite couple

charles_leclerc ah congratulations!

carlossainz Gracias Charles!

user84 ❤️❤️❤️

user85 THEYVE LAUNCHED

user86 smooth operatorrrrr

user87 beautiful couple ❤️

user88 awwww 🥹

user89 HES DONE IT

user90 y/n posted that story and he was quick with the relationship post 😭😐

user91 he needed us to know lmao

user92 endgame fr

user93 they're so pretty together 🫶

user94 Carlos has been working for this for months, proud of him

user95 can't stop the grind

user96 smooth operator on and off the track

user97 🌶️🌶️🌶️

user98 wait they feel so real like they actually like eachother

user99 “like”? That man is in love with her idc

user100 lmao he definitely acts like it

landonorris smooth operatorrrr

liked by carlossainz

user101 lmao even Landos using the joke

user102 I can’t they’re so perfect 😭

yourusername love youuu 🥹🫶

carlossainz te amo mi sol ❤️

user103 THE HEART EYES IN THE CAPTION!!! 😭😭😭😭 I LOVE THEM!!!

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@casperlikej @evie-119

[coolshadowtwins]

SVSSS System Reveal Fic round up!

If you know one that hasn’t been recc’ed, then please put it in the comments/tags! I’ll add it to the post!

A Transmigrator and a Time Traveler Walk into the Bamboo House by VeryCharismaticDragon

Over a year after Shen Qingqiu's death, Luo Binghe consults his servant's servant, concurrently his disgraced martial uncle, for a way to bring the love of his life back. Shang Qinghua sends him in the direction of a certain time-traveling artifact, which supposedly brings one to the day they first met their soulmate.

Odd, though, that the artifact ends up missing the destination by just a few years…

A story in which post-Abyss Luo Binghe relives his disciple days, while juggling his secrets, traumas, and some unexpected revelations about the man he loves on top of that.

What is Seen by CaveteDracones

…is not [always] the real truth.

Truth-compelling artifacts in the hands of an enemy to one side, SYSTEM-mandated silence on the other, and Shen Qingqiu caught between the two. Is it too late to go back to the Water Prison? (NOTE: This one was recommended three times, and I have personally reread it multiple times. It’s one of my favorites and I really do want to read more fics in a similar vein lol)

open my lungs to let you in by ghostybreads

Shen Qingqiu had a secret. So, naturally, it was only a matter of time before he was hit by a truth serum wife plot.

//

“How are you?”

“Horny. Kind of want Binghe to rail me, I guess. But it’s manageable.”

Liu Qingge’s hand on his forehead froze, and he was close enough that Shen Qingqiu could hear his breathing stop. He stared back expressionlessly, the mortification distantly crawling up the back of his neck. Honest One-Horned–

The frustrated scream that he usually vented in his head, came out straight from mouth.

“aaAAAAAHHHH GODDAMNIT AIRPLANE–”

Futility in Practice by TGP

When Luo Binghe is fourteen years old, his shizun suffers a terrible qi deviation and fever that completely changes who he is.

and judgment is just like a cup that we share by Kieron_ODuibhir

The blob finished rotating into place in a way that wasn’t quite compatible with geometry as Shen Qingqiu understood it, and cleared a throat it didn’t seem to have.

“Greetings,” it said, somehow clearly addressing him in particular more than the room as a whole despite its total lack of features other than blueness and translucency. “I’m here on behalf of the Hyper-Celestial Peace and Order Enforcement Bureau. Crime scene secure, proceeding to interviews. Beginning with Subject One: You are Shen Qingqiu, formerly Shen Yuan, also known as Peerless Cucumber?”

First, do no harm by Terias

Shen Qingqiu has been acting especially erratic since awakening from his three day coma after a severe qi deviation.

Mu Qingfang investigates and discovers a great many things about his new shixiong. (NOTE: This one has Shen Yuan and Shen Jiu as the same soul, technically, but it still works I think!)

Show The Screenshots by A_Non_ymousWriter

When a rogue foreign System sends out a subtle virus, some outsiders are shown chat messages between a certain two transmigrators and their Systems.

AirplaneBro: nah dude shen jiu would never lay a hand on his female disciples like that, hes gay

Liu Qingge tripped on thin air while Mu Qingfang choked on his tea as Shang Qinghua (their god? creator??) casually shattered their view of their original Shen Qingiu. The fake Shen Qingqiu at least, was sharing their shock.

CucumberBro: EXCUSE ME WHAT??

CucumberBro: The fuck he is?!?! He literally GOES TO BROTHELS! LIU QINGGE FOUND HIM IN BED WITH A WOMAN THAT ONE TIME?

AirplaneBro: aight bro buckle the fuck up cuz imma take u on a joyride all about shen jiu >:)

—————-

Binghes#1Fan: I don't want to send Binghe into the Abyss...

System 2: User must comply, if User cannot do the task User will be punished and the account will be terminated.

Mobeis #1Fan: sorry bro unless ur okay w being ded af u gotta push binghe into the abyss

Ning Yingying's fists clenched. Okay, so trying to get Yuan-ge and A-Luo together would be harder than she thought.

[scourgeofmyownbrain]

The Man, the Myth, the Legend, it's Every Version of Soundwave Across the Multiverse! Fucking look at all of them, all 14 of them. It's a Soundwave Height Chart! Yay!

Edit: I didn't like the old scaling I had so I changed it. The old chart is at the end of this post.

Quick Disclaimer, if any of the images look weird, it's because I had to stitch a few separate images together to create a full body shot of the character.

Here are links to my Bumblebee Chart, my Optimus Chart, my Megatron Chart, and my Shockwave Chart. Please go gawk at how many Optimus designs there are, sweet fuck, there are so many. For future reference, all these charts will be filed under my "Transformers Height Charts" tag and my "aka the adventures of a..." tag.

Explanations and Sources below the cut, because I have always have words to say.

TFA V1 - 6 feet 5 inches (Animated has no actual numbers, but the lovely @phoenix-inanis has provided a frankly astounding resource with their own calculations for the heights of all the TFA characters. Go look at it, it's wonderful -> https://phoenix-inanis.notion.site/TFA-Height-Chart-f6ad2960ca8c4c5b859ee4958723aaa4?pvs=4.)

Unicron Trilogy Cybertron - ~13 feet (TFWiki, for the uneducated, the Unicron Trilogy has given each of its 3 seasons separate names and 3 separate art styles. This is the design used in Cybertron (S3) though he only shows up in Cybertron. This bitch was so hard to get a full body shot of, he was always standing off to the side or standing behind someone)

Earthspark - ~15 feet (No actual source for ES, but using a barn door to get Bumblebee's height, then Optimus's, then Megatron's height, I was able to make a guess at Soundwave's. Soundwave comes up to about Megatron's chin; the screenshot I found has the two fighting, so it might be a little off, but I'm confident this is pretty close. Also, this might be the shortest of universe to date; I am consistantly finding these iterations to be some of the shortest out of all of them. It may look like the UT has it beat but in S1 everyone is much taller than they are later. No, I don't know why.)

TFA V2 - 17 feet 7 inches (Once again, phoenix-inanis did a fuck ton of work, go look at it, it's wonderful -> https://phoenix-inanis.notion.site/TFA-Height-Chart-f6ad2960ca8c4c5b859ee4958723aaa4?pvs=4)

Gen 1 - ~18 feet (TFWiki. I do not have anything else to say)

Netflix Cybertron Trilogy - ~18 feet (I have no source for this, other than assuming that because this design is identical to Gen 1, they are the same height. It's all I got so it's what I'm using)

Knight/Capel-Verse - ~18 feet (No source, and he never stands next to anyone I can measure him against, but because the TFOne director has said that this movie is both canon to the LA movies and its own separate canon, I am assuming the height I figured out for TFOne applies to this universe as well. Capel directed the ROTB movie if you're wondering why his name is there)

One - ~18 feet (No source, I got this number by comparing him to Shockwave who I compared to Optimus. Now, I am aware of the TFO heights listed on the wiki, but I reject those numbers on principle. A: Those numbers are sourced from the Walmart Promotional AR Experience that came out before the movie. B: There are three decimal points, and that number does not convert into a whole number in meters (which is originally what I thought was weird about it). C: The director has said that this movie is both canon to the LA movies and its own separate canon, so I have elected to use the few given heights we have from KCV and worked from there. My Optimus post has slightly more context if you want it)

Cyberverse - 19 feet 3 inches (This comes from a screenshot of this video which has the Cyberverse height chart everyone uses, though the quality of the screenshot is iffy.)

Bayverse - ~22 feet (Okay, so this is from the wiki, but it comes from a concept design for the second movie that never got used, so I went to find my own number. And in the third movie, I was able to compare Soundwave to Megatron and I got a the same number as the first unused number... Kinda backwards but okay)

Aligned Cont. WF/FOC/TFP/RID15 V1&2 - 26 feet 2 inches (I originally got this number from Fandom, but I can't for the life of me find the page with the info. Fandom has like 6 different pages for the same character, it's so frustrating. Also- Freakishly tall universe there is no reason for them to be this tall)

Not Pictured: Bayverse Satellite Soundwave - I do not know how big he is and I can not compare him to anyone who I do know. I am sorry satellite Soundwave fans, he evades me with his stupid floating in space all alone bullshit.

Edit: Here are the different layers separated

vvv Old scale vvv

[chaethewriter]

Ghost of you

Jack Champion x reader

In which you have to keep your relationship a secret, not knowing the consequences.

Word count: 3,6k

Warning: hurt to comfort, angst, I'm so embarrassed to post this, english isn't my first language, not proofread.

tagged: @viivvriv @genesis4545 @norrisgf @darkcrusadestrawberry @drxwstxrkxy

A/N: this one for my poopsies! <3

"I'd settle for the ghost of you."

When Jack had asked you if he could be your boyfriend, you were over the moon. The two of you had met during one of his press tours, and while you thought he was the most handsome and funniest guy you have ever met, you knew you didn't have a chance. Or so you thought. The two of you got closer after he had asked for your number, and now you could proudly call him yours. Well, your relationship wasn't known publicly. His manager and mother recommended him to keep your relationship a secret. You were okay with it at first since you liked your privacy, but now you had wished that you could flaunt him all over your social media.

"Baby? Are you okay with it?" Jack took your hands in his as he stared into your eyes with the softest expression ever. Jack was an incredible boyfriend. He treated you like a queen. It was your first relationship, and you were glad that he was your first. You bit your lip as you considered all the points. You see, Jack recently got a job offered for a romance movie as the main character. Even though he had said he wanted to focus on action and thriller stuff, he saw this as a great opportunity to try something new. Acting was his passion, you couldn't take this away from him. And you trusted him, of course you did. He was so loyal and loving and didn't want to do anything that would make you uncomfortable. "Baby?", Jack had called you again as you zoned out, his lips against your skin as he looked down at you with concern. You wanted to be the supportive girlfriend, no matter what. Even if it meant overstepping your own boundaries. "No, I don't mind no. I'm so proud of you!" you put on your brightest smile as you took him in his arms, your arms wrapped around his chest. Jack sighed in relief, "I would never want to make you sad, you know? I love you so much, baby." His grip on you tightened as he praised you with loving words, but deep inside you knew now you truly felt.

Soon enough, to your dismay, the recordings started. His manager thought that it would be best that you wouldn't come along for the sake of not getting into rumors. So you had stayed back at your hometown without Jack. The two of you were facetiming right now as you watched him get ready, "you look handsome, big boy." You grinned as you buried your face into your blanket. Jack was wearing a half buttoned blouse and some brown pants, and you couldn't help but swoon over your handsome boyfriend. He grinned in return as he took his phone back in his hands, bringing it closer to his face, "I showed myself, so why won't you reveal your pretty face, pretty girl?"

You chuckled as you dropped the blanket to reveal yourself to him. The notification you got on your phone told you that he had taken a screenshot, "hey!" Jack's grin widened as he put his phone back on its stand, "can't help but have my camera roll filled with my pretty girlfriend, you know?" He was incredibly cheesy, but it's what you liked about him after all. "How's recording going?" You honestly dreaded to know the details, you didn't want to know. You didn't want to know how he treated someone else as his. It was acting, it was his job. It wasn't real, but why did you still feel upset about this? You didn't want to be a selfish girlfriend, you didn't want an argument to break out, so you kept quiet and bottled all these emotions up. "It's going great! Anne is so comfortable to act around, you know? It's like we have known each other for a long time! She's so kind and we get along so well?" Jack rambled on as he referred to his co-star. You pursed your lips as you forced yourself to smile, "That's great! I'm so glad it's going well f-"

Your sentence got cut off by girl's voice on the other side of the line, "Jackie!!" Your heart fell to your stomach as you saw the door of his trailer open, and there she stood. Ann, Jack's co-star. "Jackie, we should totally practice our lines for today. It's the car scene where you pick me up after the summer party!" You saw the way Anne was dressed: a pretty dress that stopped just above her knees. Her makeup was done as well as her hair. Jack looked behind him as he gave his co-star a smile, "hey A, yes I'll be there soon," he then turned back to you, "I got to go baby, but I will call you soon okay? I love you!"

"I lo-" before you could reply, Jack hung up on the call.

You watched the television as news got out of the new romance movie starring Jack and Ann. The two were posing for the photographers as Jack's arm was around her waist, with her hands on his chest. The two wore matching outfits for the interview that would come right after. You had sent him a message wishing him good luck with a heart, but he didn't read it yet. Jack had been incredibly busy these past few weeks. Starting promotions and all while still recording, he didn't have much time on his hands. Yet, he never forgot to send you a paragraph of telling about his day and asking you how your day had been and if you were taking care of yourself. Your heart always melted whenever he sent those messages.

"Jack, Ann, welcome!"

"Yes, thank you for having us!" Jack smiled as he exchanged a look with Ann, who gave him a loving glance. Your brows furrowed as you buried yourself in your blanket. You sat there in your bed as you watched the interview. At first, you were excited to watch it: he was your boyfriend and who wouldn't want to watch their boyfriend on tv? But now, now you wanted to click away.

Ann leaned closer to Jack as she shared some points of the movie, "So Jack plays a character called Justin. He's the best friend of my character, Aimee, and they go through a rollercoaster of emotions as they fall in love with each other."

"It's like a best friends to lovers movie." Jack added on as he nodded with a smile. Ann smiled as he added something to her explanation, their bond clear as they were in sync.

"So it's a romance movie. Do you have a special person in your life?"

Jack immediately shook his head at that question. He wanted to flaunt you so badly, but for the sake of your feelings he had to do this, "Not me, no. I am still looking for my person."

Ann didn't answer the question. Instead, she teased Jack as she bumped her elbow in his arm, "Could I be that person?" Jack answered by shaking his head with a laugh. They looked so comfortable around one another.

Your heart broke in pieces at the sight of Ann shamelessly flirting with your boyfriend, who you couldn't even announce was your boyfriend. You turned your television off as you took your phone. Not to communicate and tell him how you felt, instead you had sent

Jack. <3

Me: You were amazing, so proud of you

Your relationship had been rocky lately. You had been feeling so down and insecure in your relationship. Ever since the photoshoot and the interview, social media had been in an uproar. About how good they looked together, how Ann looked at him, the rumors that Jack and Anne were dating. 'Rising star Jack Champion and Ann spotted having dinner together?' You had scrolled through instagram, twitter and tiktok every moment of the day, watching how everyone supported the rumored relationship between Jack and Ann. You cried as you did so, angry and upset with yourself. They were a match and it was obvious everyone would support Jack with being with a beautiful girl like Ann. And while you were feeling like this, he didn't know anything about that. Instead, he was left confused while looking at your contact name, wondering why you weren't responding.

Hers. <3

Me: baby?

Me: did you receive my flowers?

Me: are you okay?

Me: babeeee

Me: :(((

Me: helloooo

Me: babe

Me: are

Me: you

Me: okay

Me: question

Me: mark

Me: ?

Me: if u don't answer I will come to u

Me: baby?

Me: answer my calls pls

Me: my love, are you mad at me?

Me: did I do something wrong?

Me: please.

Me: I'm sorry.

"Flowers? For me?" You had opened the door in your oversized hoodie with your bloodshot eyes, only to be met with a deliverer with a bouquet of flowers in his hands. They were your favorites. There was only one person who knew you this well. "Yes, you're (y/n) (l/n) right?" You nodded at his question and he pushed the flowers in your arms. You thanked him before closing the door. You looked terrible, honestly. Bloodshot red eyes, tear stains, wearing the same clothes from a week ago. You felt horrible, yet you didn't want to do anything about it. Jack was so happy with being a rising star, you didn't want to fuck that up for him. But did you know how much Jack actually depended on your feelings?

You stared at the flowers as you stood in the middle of the living room, ready the little card attached to the bouqet.

'I love you. Pls call me so that we can talk?'

You pursed your lips. It hurt feeling like this, it hurt so bad. You were so insecure and unsure of everything, meanwhile Jack already made a name of himself. Jack definitely deserved better, someone as passionate as him. After weeks of pondering what you should do, you finally knew.

Let him go.

You picked your phone up and stared at your wallpaper. A picture of the two of you from your prom. You would miss him so much. All the memories, how happy he made you feel. How secure he made you feel. You shook your head and looked for his archived contact. You knew you were running away from all the problems, but this was the best for him. You had to take this initiative in order for him to be able to rise. You would be content enough to watch him be happy from the sidelines. That would be enough for you, to settle for the ghost of him.

The first rang didn't even have to go for him to pick up, you pursed your lips as you tried to contain your sobbing, walking up to the walls of pictures in the living room that mostly contained the two of you. "Baby? Are you okay?" Jack had already spoken up before you could. He was calling you from his trailer in between scenes. A sob left your lips at the nickname. You took a deep breath as you tried to gather the words you wanted to say.

"Jack, I think we should end it."

A nervous laugh escaped his lips, "baby, end what?" The realization hadn't set in yet. He didn't want to believe it.

"Let's break up."

Jack collapsed on his chair as his eyes widened, "what? You're joking, aren't you? (y/n)?" He waited for your laugh, your voice as you tried to lie to him, anything. Anything that could give him a hint that you were fucking around. Instead, he was met with your sobs. "Let's break up, Jack."

"Did I do something? Did you fall out of love with me?" Without noticing, the tears had flowed down his cheeks as his he gripped his hair with his free hand, trying to pull his strands out as he expected to wake up from this nightmare. But he didn't. This was real. "Please answer me! I can fix this, I can fix us!" He was desperate now, his screams booming through his trailer. He couldn't accept this. He just couldn't. He saw his future in you. When he looked at you, he already imagined you as a pretty pride as you told your vows.

"Jack, please don't do this."

"No! No! Please don't leave me, please tell me! (y/n)!" His throat burned as he screamed, as well as the tears that burned his face— like lava was burning through his skin.

"I love you, Jack."

Call ended.

He stood up from his seat as he screamed your name, waiting for an answer on the other side of the line, but nothing. The chair had fallen with a loud smack, gaining the attention of certain people close to his trailer. He sat on the floor as he cried, phone in his hands as he tried to call you back. A ton of gibberish left his lips as he desperately wished for you. Clothes disheveled, hair all messed up, makeup gone as the tears washed it away— which all prepared him for the next scene. Yet he couldn't care less about acting, about his job, about the money. You were all he needed, and you were gone. The door to his trailer had slammed open as his mother stood in the opening, "Jack?"

"Mama, mama," he stumbled over his words as he hiccuped due to the amount of emotions he felt, "she left me." At the moment, the person before her wasn't Jack Champion the rising actor, or Jack the Champ. He was Jack, just Jack, Jack who got his heart broken. Jack, her teenage son who had broken down.

"Oh, Jack.." she had ran up to him as she took her son in her arms, "It's okay sweet boy."

Out of frustration, he had screamed at his mother. He didn't mean it, his breathing exaggerated as he shook in her arms. Anxiety. "Mama.." he felt dizzy as he spoke. His mother told him to stop speaking, as it would only make him feel worse. But Jack couldn't stop himself, he had to talk to someone. And who not to trust more than his mother? "Mama, what did I do wrong? Mama please." His grip in her arms tightened as he choked on his own tears. His hair was stroked as he tried to speak. She had decided to not speak further, he needed to get this out of his system. He needed a listener. "She told me she loved me, but she broke up with me. I don't know what happened mama?" He pursed his lips as he stopped talking, allowing the tears to flow as he awaited an answer from her.

Her tone was soft as she spoke, careful with her words to not cause him a further breakdown, "did you talk to her about the rumors?" He looked up at her in confusion. Rumors? What rumors? "What rumors?" His mom looked down at him with a sad expression, realizing she played huge part in their break up. She wanted to protect both you and Jack, but in the end it caused further heartbreak. "You and Ann?"

Him and Ann? What was she talking about? When her son looked at her with bloodshot big eyes, she continued speaking, "Everyone thinks the two of you are dating. The touches she gives you, the flirting." Jack widened his eyes as his breathing exaggerated again, "No! There is nothing with Ann! My heart is (y/n)'s! I'm hers!" His expression faltered yet again.

"But no one else knows about you and (y/n), I'm so sorry Jack. It's my fault."

Jack had begged his mom to leave set. He couldn't stay here, not when he was feeling like this and not while Ann was here to escalate the rumors. He should've known, he's so stupid. He wanted to stay respectful in front of Anne, not knowing that by doing so, everything would go downhill. He regretted not doing more to keep you secure, he regretted not finding out about it and talking to you. He regretted not figuring your feelings out sooner. Of course, you would feel upset after Anne did all those things. Why couldn't he be better? Why couldn't he do better? But he's not letting you go so easily. Not now, not when he still had time. 

jackchampion

I haven't been telling the truth. I should have been truthful. I have a special person. I had a special person. And I lost her. I'm sorry for not fighting harder for us, I'm sorry for not noticing how you felt. It has always been you. And it will always be. I hope for my future to be with you and only you. Let us fix this and communicate better. Let me fix this. Please, I love you (y/n).

jackchampion has followed you.

Your phone was blowing up like crazy, yet you couldn't bother to look. You had been watching tv in your bed as you munched on your chocolates with tear stained cheeks. You felt even more miserable now that you had broken up with him. You switched channels, looking for something to watch as the tv show you were watching only made you even sadder. "Now on to celebrity news. Rising star Jack Champion's instagram post surely stirred up the emotions under fans. He is known for his roles as Avatar's Spider and Scream's Ethan Landry." The screen switched to instagram as a post under Jack's name popped up. Your hand moved towards your mouth as he posted your go-to song with the caption. This had to be for you. "Rumored is that Jack Champion left the set as he was spotted on the airport. A picture was taken by paparazzi of who is rumored to be Jack Champion." A picture was shown on the screen and you knew that postured and the clothing like nobody else. Jack in his pink hoodie and sweatpants as the hood was on his head, with a pair of sunglasses on his face (to hide his expression).

Was he coming your way?

You got up from your bed, feeling all dizzy from standing after so long. You took your phone and ran downstairs to get to the nearest airport. With your phone in your hands, you tried to put your shoes on as you called for an Uber. If he was spotted all those hours ago, he should be there soon. You can't miss him. Not when he publicly announced how he felt about you.

On your way to the airport, you had scrolled through instagram. Notifications flooded your screen as you got DMs, mentions and followers. But one thing stuck out to you.

jackchampion has followed you.

You pursed your lips as you tried your best not to cry again. Was him following you telling you that he wanted to go public? He was told not to follow you back to stay discreet. You felt so many emotions flooding through your body that you didn't notice that you had already arrived. You thanked the Uber driver with his payment and ran inside. The airport was filled with teenage girls.

"Jack Champion is here!!!" You heard a girl scream as everyone pushed one another. You tried to make your way through, but to no avail. You couldn't get through, not with so many girls pushing all at once.

"Wait, are you (y/n)? The girl from Jack's post?" One of the girls closest to you stared at your features. Of course, she had caught on to the drama. Your instagram was figured out and she had followed you. She was a fan of Jack and if Jack loved you, she loved you too. You nodded your head slowly, unsure of what to do as many faces turned to you.

"You bitch, stay away from him!!"

"Fuck off, nobody. As if you had a chance with him. Everyone make way!!" A girl retorted back as she punched the girl that disrespected you.

Jack Champion caught onto the crowd of girls that slowly made a path. He cocked his head to the side. Was it you? Or was this wishful thinking? He shook his head. It couldn't be you. Why would it be you? Or so he thought. He continued walking towards the exit as he fixed his sunglasses, protected by security.

"Jack!" Out of all the girls that screamed his name, this one felt all too familiar. His heart was beating in his throat as he quickly turned around. His eyes widened as he layed his eyes on you. Sweet you. He pushed the security out of the way as he made his way towards you. "(y/n)? Let her through, don't hurt her!" He had raises his voice at the security that had tried to push you to the ground. As you were let through, you ran towards him to wrap your arms around him.

"I'm so sorry for not communicating."

He shook his head as his face was buried in your hair, inhaling your scent. "I love you so much." His arms were wrapped so tightly around you, it almost felt like you were about to break a few bones. But you didn't care. You were together now and from here on, you would figure everything out.

silly(y/n)_

the privilege to be the first one to post this picture of him, for he is my special person. <3

[stop-talking]

Breakdown of the @joshsbimbo controversy.

@mike-schmidtten already made a detailed list of every reason why people are upset with you, "lamb", but I'm going to quickly go over it all anyways because you obviously didn't get the memo.

Extreme trigger warning for this entire post, I'm going to be talking about rape, SA, assault, violence, abuse, incest, stepcest, pedophilia, substance abuse, and probably a lot more.

First of all, you tagged this fic where Mike literally rapes the reader as "cnc". That is not correct.

I mean, if we look at the definition of CNC, it says "this type of scene does not encourage ACTUAL rape. All proper scenes are done after much negotiation between of-age, consenting adults."

But I don't need to explain that to you, do I? You know what CNC is. You said yourself MONTHS ago that you tagged your fic incorrectly and NEVER went back and fixed it.

Mike's next point was that you make it impossible for people to "steer away" from their triggers when you don't tag your posts properly.

And as an example he used this post of straight up incest porn between Mike and his little sister. All completely out in the open, tagged under "#mike schmidt" and "#mike schmidt x reader" for all to see.

He followed it up this this. A plea for you to, at the bare minimum, tag the major triggers in your posts and hide it under a "read more" section.

Let's take a look at how you responded to that very reasonable request.

Oh. You DM'd him the word poop and blocked him.

Instead of reblogging to respond, you actually deleted your origional post so your followers couldn't see the criticism of you as easily. I wonder why? You made your stance clear, though. "I should have put more warnings on my work, but it doesn't matter anyways because it's all fictional." But then, immediately after, you started relogging an account that makes photoshopped foot fetish content of male celebrities for some reason...?

(I censored the feet myself because its just weird) Oh, and weird AI pictures of him, too.

There were worse ones, but I didn't screenshot everything, and you deleted these posts just a few hours after reblogging.

You followed it all up with this now-deleted post about how you wish you could make your notes private. Again, I wonder why? If it really is OKAY to sexualize incest, rape, and abuse just because it's fictional, why would people be scared to support you? Why is no one willing to publicly like your posts, or speak out in your favor? Even some of your biggest supporters (@leah-hutcherson @teenagedreamsss @cuteskunkz @renaissancebewbies) who continue to like (some) of your posts, still haven't come to your defense. If writing about fictional rape, abuse, and incest really and truly wasn't harmful, why would you need to hide?

Once other people started catching wind of what was going on, you responded in some... interesting ways. Like here, in response to this ask (from a person who is a minor BTW). You switched up your story from "I should have tagged my work better" to "everyone hates me now because I forgot to put warnings on ONE story" (which was just blatantly false, as you had been posting other triggering things at the time with no warnings whatsoever.)

It was absolutely ridiculous of you to claim you put warnings on your work when I could scroll down two posts (back before you deleted this) and see a post about Mike beating his kid.

Like... please show me where exactly the warning is?

Then, when this person, (another MINOR, btw!!) posted after reading Mike's breakdown of your behavior, your responded by DMing them a slur.

I don't even know what to say to that. A minor. A slur.

But as much as you like to INSIST your work isn't for minors, you sure seem to interact with them a lot.

This person who reblogged your masterlist? They're a minor.

^^ You can't say you don't want minors to read your work without actually taking all precautions possible to prevent them from seeing it. (Tagging your content, blocking ageless accounts, NOT REBLOGGING MINORS!!!)

Yes. This person is also a minor. Which makes, what, the 4th minor you've interacted with in the past few days? At least from what I can tell.

They also hate you btw so I don't even know why you reblogged them.

FINALLY, this user commented under one of your posts in an attempt to get you to AT LEAST tag your posts correctly if you're going to write triggering shit. (Which was the same think Mike asked you to do, if you remember, but he got "poop" and reblogs of foot fetish posts as a response.)

But then it looked like you either blocked them or removed their comment, so they tried again.

You ignored this message, then apparently posted this?

So they tried again (being much nicer that I would have)

And you finally responded (and still got blocked anyways because your posts are DISTURBING and GROSS)

I doubted you'd actually fix your page, because again, you ignored the same request when Mike asked, and in the past admitted you tagged your fics wrong but just never bothered to change it.

But surprise surprise, you actually went through with it and added trigger warnings to your content.

Though, I'm still not sure "non-serious" is an appropriate tag for a post where mike beats you to death...??

Look. I appreciate that you're at least TRYING now, but it was a fucking FIGHT to get you to do the bare minimum. What I, and apparently 84% of people actually want you to do is delete your account.

(This is from @mike-schmidtten's breakdown post from a couple days ago)

I know you want to PRETEND that just because something is a work of fiction, it doesn't have negative real-world effects, but that's just not the truth.

A lot of people were hurt when you posted things without trigger warnings.

And even now, as you continue to post fetish content for rape, incest, and abuse, people are still being hurt. MINORS are still being hurt.

Yes, obviously, if you post something on the internet, you can't completely 100% control who sees it. But you don't even seem to TRY.

(Dming minors slurs, letting minors reblog your masterlist, letting ageless accounts interact with you, reblogging minors, answering asks from minors, etc)

People, minors, CHILDREN, are raped and abused by those closest to them every day. It's disgusting and horrifying to think about, but it's the world we live in.

You aren't "helping people cope" by writing these stories. You're normalizing abuse. And allowing the most vulnerable people to read it.

You're taking actual things that have happened to real people, and sexualizing it for others to get off to. It's immoral, disturbing, and disgusting.

To my followers, if any of you support this kind of content, you are NOT welcome on my page. Please unfollow or block me and go seek help.

And to you, lamb, I hope you come to your senses and either delete all of your rape & incest fetish content or delete your account entirely.

At the end of the day, you KNOW you're in the wrong. Or at least some small part of you does, or you wouldn't have been afraid to reblog Mike's post and respond defending yourself directly. And you wouldn't be afraid to reblog mine either, which you undoubtedly will.

I know you used to follow me, so maybe you'll take this all to heart. But probably not.

I won't block you. (for the next few days, at least). I'll be here if you want to try and have a civil discussion. But just know I will NEVER agree with the sexualization & glorification of violence and abuse.

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 致命游戏 / The Spirealm.

The Spirealm is a 2024 drama about two young men who fall in love while basically playing a whole bunch of horror-themed escape rooms that can for-real kill you.

This show/book combo has gripped my entire ass. The second I knew I wanted to watch this, almost immediately after it started airing, I muted the tag. I was so right to do this, because this is worth not spoiling yourself about. If you are a Guardian fan in particular, you owe it to yourself to watch this for reasons I think will become clear as you go about watching it.

So! If all you need to know is that I think you need this show in your life, great! You don't even need to scroll down to the end of the post for the links; go to Viki and press play. In case you need more convincing than that, though, I'm going to give you here five reasons to watch it that are as spoilerless as I can make them.

Before we start, though, I'm going to take a moment to note that I had to torrent the video files so I could make screenshots of my own, and if I hadn't, this would have been a much uglier rec post than the others I've done. Not only were there not many promotional materials or official stills released, the show itself barely stayed up two hours on iQiyi, and that's because this drama is a...

1. (Barely) Censored Adaptation Of Same-sex Original Work

Ah, you know that MyDramaList tag well, don't you? Yeah, the original novel, Kaleidoscope of Death (which has a rec post of its own!), is supernatural story about grief and loss built on the love story between the two male leads. Now of course you know already that a mainstream Chinese television adaptation of something like that is going to straighten up everything and turn the horror romance into the sci-fi platonic love of besties.

...But damn, folks, it's still real gay.

Ling Jiushi, the sweet-faced newbie, is a canonical virgin and loving cat dad who plays the mysterious video game once, then finds himself suddenly able to enter the game worlds bodily -- and of course, if you die in the game, you die in real life. He's pretty much doomed, until he meets...

Ruan Lanzhu, the cool-as-a-cucumber veteran of the door worlds, who falls pretty much immediately for the completely oblivious Ling Jiushi, then has to spend the rest of the series consumed with lust while trying to keep him and a couple other dipshits alive.

The show preserves so many overtly gay beats and declarations of affection from the novel, to the point where it's just this side of suggesting that the romance is actually, textually happening just offscreen, every time the camera cuts away. I am forever grateful that working with Zhu Yilong on Reunion seems to have perfected sweet baby Junjie's ability to look at a man with nothing but love in his eyes.

I adore so much the dynamic they have, one where a man who has never told the truth a day in his life encounters a man so sincere and naive that you cannot seduce him with anything but absolute honesty or he's never going to get it.

There are three (3) separate door worlds where they share a bed, and in every one of them, they both sleep with their shoes on. Like the absolute freaks they both are.

2. It's puzzle solvin' time!

So if you've read some of my rec posts before, you know that I am critical of stories that center around cases that are unfollowable, uninteresting, or both (e.g., Mysterious Lotus Casebook and White Cat Legend). I am therefore thrilled to tell you that the door worlds are actually (largely) thoughtful mysteries with reasonable solutions, where you care about what's happening and why.

The way each door world is set up is that you have to solve the puzzle to find a key and unlock the door that will let you leave. One of the challenges is each world's door ghost, who has the key and does not want to give it up. The other challenge is the world-specific set of taboo conditions, where violating them means the door ghost can kill you -- and you are not always told what those taboo conditions are. That means that solving a door involves 1) figuring out what will insta-kill you, 2) not doing that, 3) finding where the hell the exit door is, 4) placating and/or scamming the door ghost long enough to snatch the key from them, and 5) running like hell to the exit door with that key before the door ghost fucks you up about it.

As the show goes on, you get introduced to the concept of door-passing shepherds, which are experienced door-finishers who take through lower-level players, building them up in the process. A lot of these shepherds work for organizations, such as the one Ruan Lanzhu runs. And a lot of them are ready to reach the exit by climbing over everyone else's corpses.

That's part of the fun of the setup: You're not just thrown in alone. You show up with a random number of other players, some with very different levels of experience. At least one of you will make it out; not everyone will. So you can add a step 6) to the list above, which is: surviving all the other players who will gleefully stab you in the back in order to be the first player out the door.

The door worlds are also lovely. They all feel like sets -- and I know that's a weird thing to say about places that are literal sets, but they manage it feel it even on film. In fact, even the show's uses of clunky-ass greenscreen feel appropriate, because of how unreal everything is supposed to be. Everything looks like a dream, which is only amplified by how beautifully everything's shot.

(What's that you say? You say the guy who directed this was the editor on Infernal Affairs? No kidding.)

From a fandom perspective, what's great here is that even though there are technically just twelve doors, there are canonically way more than twelve door worlds out there. That means that whatever worlds you want to create are valid. The best pieces of fanfic I've read are the ones that dream up their own door worlds, complete with taboo conditions, key puzzles, and world-specific perks that lead to gay sex, because come on.

3. A good middle ground of horror

So at this point you are perhaps wondering: How scary is it?

And the answer is, kind of as scary as you're willing to let your mind go with it. Everything has been science-fictioned real hard, including the video game premise that "explains" what's happening with these doors. It relies on dread way more than jumpscares. The blood/gore/gross content is extremely low, again on account of Chinese content censorship. Most icky things are done with offscreen sounds and shadows. I'm pretty squeamish about pain and injury, and I can't recall a time I had to look too long away from the screen.

However, that means the show works some real conceptual horror. That picture up there is of a man forcing three young girls to hold raw eggs unbroken in their mouths. There's nothing about that image that's not technically G-rated, and it's awful in context.

The best bits are when the monsters don't need a lick of CG to become horrors. They cast a contortionist in the Waverly Hills door world, and she absolutely earned her keep.

I have a lot of critiques about how the show handles things, especially in terms of defanging the horror elements (which it does), but one thing I think it absolutely gets right is that it understands that ghost stories are first and foremost tragedies. That's a thing I've always liked about Asian horror in particular, how often you wind up siding with the ghost. Yes, sure, she tried to strangle you with her hair, but have you ever considered she's the real victim here? There's always a bit of a calculus: Can you negotiate with the door ghost, or do you just need to stab them and run? The Spirealm prefers negotiation, and frankly, so do I.

So yeah, it's about as scary as you let it be. If your horror tolerance is low, watch it in a well-lit room and focus on the unreality of it, and you'll be okay. If you're looking for something genuinely spooky, spend some time thinking about the existential dread of the entire situation, and that'll be good for a couple good spine tingles.

4. The Obsidian Family (& Friends!)

In a show where death is always an option, you have to have characters where you actually care if they live or die. Fortunately, all your allies are charming and loveable enough that you are going to be real upset every time they get put in danger!

Obsidian is one of the organizations I mentioned earlier. It's run by Ruan Lanzhu, and it includes a cool and collected doctor, a mom friend who cooks for everybody, a guy who's maybe not having the best mental health day of his life, and two identical twins who could not be more different if they tried. They all live in the same amazing big fancy house, which is where Ling Jiushi too goes to live when he joins the group. They have big family meals, they look after one another, they hang out together -- I mean, if this is the kind of setup you love, then you will love this setup.

There are also plenty of allies who aren't technically part of Obsidian, but who are our friends nonetheless, and who come over to hang out in the Obsidian house from time to time. Some of them are rivals turned friends, some of them are clients turned friends, and some of them were just friends all along! Surely nothing bad will happen to any of them, and they'll all live happily ever after, right? ...Right?

5. Toast and Chestnut!

Of course, the true heroes of the show are Toast the Corgi and Chestnut the Kitty.

Animals are so good.

Truly, I love that one of Ling Jiushi's defining characteristics is that he is a Cat Dad. He is a simple man with simple needs, and one of those needs is to pet his kitty or he'll explode.

caveat: Some thoroughly bad adaptation choices

Yeah, so I keep talking about the novel (and talk even more about the novel in its own rec post), but I assure you, you don't need to have read the novel to feel the degree to which this is an adaptation -- and one that's had its rough, nasty, spooky, gay edges all sanded off in the desperate hope of ever seeing daylight.

Now, sometimes I consider batshit nonsense janky creative decisions to be a selling point for a show (see: Mysterious Lotus Casebook, Legend of Fei, Sand Sea)! In this case, however, I'm going to have to take points off for how incoherently bad they are here. We're talking Psych-Hunter levels of Why Would You Do That-- and the answer, as always, comes down to how you write around what censorship won't allow on television.

The novel says the doors are supernatural. The show says they're a virtual-reality computer game. Now, on the surface, this move sort of makes sense -- you can't have ghosts, but you can have computer games that make digital ghosts, which, sure, okay. But then the problem quickly becomes that the plot of the novel is not remotely built to support a sci-fi premise, so a lot of things have to be grafted awkwardly on. Like, say, a bad guy who stole his corporate logo from Even Worse Twitter. Or a game-designing bestie whose face is never seen. Or [late-stage spoilers about a major character].

The eventual explanation is that this whole setup is a righteous and good game that has somehow been corrupted by evil game-designing capitalists from the West, and that's why it can abduct you in broad daylight and kill you if you fail it. There are good people who want to purify (???) the game, and evil people who want to make money off the game. And I don't mind spoiling you for that part, because it's garbage nonsense. You will be deeply unsatisfied with the show's half-assed attempt at resolving it all. (You may, however, have that disappointment tempered with the amazing concurrent display of heterosexuality that is apologizing to your best bro by coding his perfect man for him. The Spirealm is a land of contrasts.)

Look, I consider myself a mild to moderate socialist, and even I was yawning and making jerk-off motions every time someone started to wax halfheartedly poetic about how evil American capitalism is. Like, yeah, but not because some college student made a vile and wretched video game that eats people! This show is a critique of capitalism like a five-year-old crying because he doesn't get ice cream before bed is a critique of authoritarianism.

And even this, I can't be too mad at it about, you know? I just assume that this was some absolute Hail Mary attempt at getting past censorship -- you know, maybe if we make all the right "grr, USA bad!" noises, they'll let our gay ghost story slip by? And it worked! I mean, just barely, but it did.

So yeah, fair warning that the Spirealm is a show that, if you love it (and I do), you will have to love despite some glaring flaws that haunt it all the way through and hit especially hard during what should otherwise have been an amazing endgame. But hey, we're c-drama fans! We're good at loving janky things, right?

Want to enter the World of Doors?

As I said at the start of the post, Viki's got it -- and only Viki. I'm not sure what circumstances got it up on Viki after iQiyi pulled it, but I'm glad. Watch it quick, before Viki changes its mind!

Hug him! Hug that boy!

[destinationtoast]

Hi, I would like to know how to make a list of all the ships in a fandom on AO3. For example, I use the Tag Search on "Transformers - A Media Types", but it shows that Jetfire/Starscream is the most popular with 641, but it is actually only the 6th with 1074. Furthermore, it quickly drops to showing Relationship with a single digit when I know that there are dozens of Relationship with hundreds of Works! Why don't most Works appear? Do you know of a way to find All the ships of a fandom on AO3?

Hey! Sorry for the slow reply... I was traveling and then covid knocked me flat for several weeks. :P

So let's talk about AO3 Tag Search. In general, I'm very excited about recent improvements to this feature... There didn't used to be any way to find the top ships (or characters, or freeform/additional tags) across all of AO3. But now you can* by doing a tag search and sorting by uses (descending order):

*In practice, though you won't exactly get a trustworthy list of top tags (and, as you pointed out, in some cases tags may even be missing! we'll get to that later). You will get a list where the numbers are not correct, sometimes to a bizarre degree:

For example, when you click through on the Derek/Stiles tag, you find far fewer works using the tag (note that these are the public works -- if you're logged in, you see a somewhat higher number, but not as high as in the above screenshot):

I will be posting some stats soon that show different numbers (and a different order) for all of the above top ships. But why is there the discrepancy? Here are several guesses about why some works are wrong in Tag Search (and then I'll get to why some ships are missing and what to do about it):

TAG INFLATION #1: The above numbers probably include tags used in AO3 bookmarks, which increases some of the numbers quite a lot. [Evidence: if you search for top freeform tags, you get tags like "To Read" high on the list, and authors don't use those tags.]

TAG INFLATION #2: The above numbers seem to include draft works. [Evidence: I just tested this out by finding a rare tag with only one use... I created a draft of a new work using that same tag, and even though I didn't publish the work, Tag Search now showed 2 uses of the tag.]

TAG DEFLATION: The above numbers do NOT seem to take tag wrangling into account. Some AO3 tags have a lot of synonyms or subtags, but I think only exact uses of the tag get counted in the above list. [Evidence: I found at a tag with only one use according to tag search, but two works when I clicked the tag (Peter Gabriel/Mike Rutherford). I found that one of the works contained a synonym of the main tag ("Mike Rutherford/Peter Gabriel (Imagined)"). That would match with Tag Search only listing one of work for "Peter Gabriel/Mike Rutherford." And when I created a new draft work that used the main tag, it increase the count in Tag Search for "Peter Gabriel/Mike Rutherford" -- but when I created a new draft work that used the synonym tag, it did not.]

There may also be other factors affecting the overall Tag Search numbers.

Okay, so I suspect #3, tag deflation due to no tag wrangling, is (helping to?) create the unexpectedly low numbers you are seeing for ships like Jetfire/Starscream. I suspect that many people do not use the full canonical tag "Jetfire | Skyfire/Starscream (Transformers)", and those other uses don't get counted in Tag Search. The only way to address this issue is to click through on a tag returned by Tag Search and find out how many works the tag has once you look at its list of works.

But why aren't some ships showing up at all? That's a different question. Here, I suspect the answer again is related to tag wrangling. Every (?) canonical ship tag has at least one parent tag that is a fandom tag (as well as the relevant character tags). You can see the parent tags for Jetfire/Starscream on its tag page:

Skyfire (Transformers), Starscream (Transformers), The Transformers (Cartoon Generation One), The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers (Dreamwave Generation One), Transformers (IDW 2019), Transformers (Marvel Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Animated (2007), Transformers: Armada, Transformers: Beast Wars (Cartoon), Transformers: Cybertron, Transformers: Cyberverse, Transformers: Energon, Transformers: Prime, Transformers: Shattered Glass, Transformers: The Headmasters, Transformers: War for Cybertron (Video Games)

Jetfire/Starscream has "Transformers - All Media Types" as a parent tag, and I suspect that is why it shows up in the Tag Search for that fandom. I would guess that some of the bigger Transformer ships do NOT have that broad fandom as a parent tag. Let's check the parent tags of Megatron/Optimus Prime:

Megatron (Transformers), Optimus Prime, The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers Animated (2007), Transformers: Armada, Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2001), Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015)

Megatron/Optimus Prime does NOT have "Transformers - All Media Types" as a parent tag. I suspect that's why it didn't show up in your tag search.

So what can you do? Unfortunately, I think the only way to be sure to find all the Transformers ships is to do a Tag Search within each of the different Transformers subfandoms (and I know there are a lot) and then combine the lists of ships you find for each. And then be sure to visit the tag works page for each resulting tag to get the actual number of works, as discussed above. I also discussed other ways to get the find the top relationships here, but I think they're all either less reliable or more arduous than this method, at least for a big fandom like Transformers.

Best of luck!

[babycharmander]

TW ANTISEMITISM. THERE WILL BE DEPICTIONS OF ANTISEMITIC ARTWORK AND TEXT IN THIS POST.

Okay so, this is not the kind of post I normally make, ever, nor a sort of post I ever wanted to make. But this is an incredibly important issue that goes beyond fandom stuff, and I've talked with a few other people about it to confirm that it is something concerning.

I want to start by saying that I am not Jewish, but I know that you should never let antisemitism get its foot in the door. (If anyone who reads this is Jewish and needs to correct me on anything, please do so immediately.)

This was posted to the tags yesterday:

[ID: A screenshot of a post from @/liu4ka. The caption at the top reads "well he looks at me / and i look at him / and then he smiles" in very small, stylized text. The image below is artwork of Otto, facing right, with his eyes squinted and his mouth in a skewed, toothy grin, with his hands held up in a strange way. /end ID]

This picture looks perfectly fine at first glance... but the thing is, that caption you see there was not the original caption. I managed to get a screenshot of it before it was changed, and the original caption was this:

[ID: A screenshot of the original caption of the above post, which reads "well he looks at me / and i look at him / and then he smiles like sly jew" /end ID]

That's... a weird way to describe a smile. I'd wondered if this was referencing something, and apparently the first two lines are lyrics from a Weird Al song, but the third line is definitely not. That was making alarm bells ring in my mind, along with the pose Otto was in (which I'll explain in a moment).

Still, I wanted to give this user the benefit of a doubt, because it's entirely possible to unknowingly say something that sounds Bad. So I looked at their other account on VK (which is a Russian website that is, as I understand it, similar to Facebook--they have the same name there and post some of the same art). It didn't take me long before I found... this (photo taken with the google translate app). (I hate sharing this, but I need to show proof here):

[ID: A photo of a computer screen taken from the Google Translate app. It features a character facing right, with their eyes narrowed and with a toothy grin on their face and their hands clasped in a specific way in reference to the "happy merchant" Nazi meme. The caption reads "SCARY JEWISH MUSIC PLAYS." /end ID]

It's not in the screenshot here, but the post this was in also had a song linked with it whose title directly referenced the "happy merchant" meme.

If you're not familiar with that meme, please look it up, as I'm NOT comfortable putting that image on my blog. But it's an image people should be familiar with because it is VERY FREQUENTLY referenced by white supremacists and nazis, and that's what's being referenced here.

Obviously not every single piece of art with a character giving a sly look is going to be a reference to that meme, but CONTEXT is important. The Otto image isn't posed exactly like the meme--the hands are not the same--but alongside the original caption AND given the other art this same artist has drawn, I don't think there's any room for doubt here.

What also doesn't help the case is that there was misinformation going around that Otto was canonically Jewish, so I don't think any of this is coincidental.

I feel awful writing this stuff up. I never wanted to make a post like this, but this was a case where I felt like I should not remain quiet. Once again, this is something that goes beyond fandom. Antisemitism is not something you ever, EVER want let through the door, ANYWHERE. I do not want it in this community, and you shouldn't either.

If any member of the Jewish community wants to correct me on anything or add to this, please do so.

Thank you.

[proshippers-against-censorship]

hope what i’m bringing up here is appropriate for this blog. i could try finding any other outlet, internal or outside resources that would help me get through this, but i’m trying not to ruffle any feathers.

so, since last year i’ve been watching something i used to be into when i was younger and participating in its fandom. through rewatching it i found out that i shipped two characters that i always had a noticeable affinity towards, except i realized i like the pairing way more as an adult because of everything i missed between them since i last saw the show. they were paired with different characters by the end and even if it was shown to make more “sense” for them according to the greater fandom, i initially didn’t care because of how much i enjoyed their dynamic thoughout the show’s duration. i felt that it brought out a bunch of discussion to be told whether you saw it the lens of a romatic or platonic relationship. most of what happened in the show’s main timeline could not go on without their involvement, and their individual development arcs kicked off because of the undeniable romantic relationship they tried to pursue at one point.

the big thing about their relationship that apparently makes it a “proship”/comship is the huge age difference between them, and unfortunately that’s unfortunately all what the fandom sees them for. i feel that even when talking about the romantic/sexual aspect of them together and the implications, they have one of the least discussed dynamics i’ve seen of many of the major characters, which doesn’t make sense because they’re both the male and female mcs. it’s always “thank god they didnt get together, i’m sick at the thought of them with each other” even though thats beyond what their relationship was like as the story was drawing to a close. one tweet i saw which was a quote of one which showed a screenshot of the characters in the ship i’m talking about in a canonical platonic showing was something along the lines of “the four people who still ship this must be on suicide watch” which is just an awful thing to think of about anyone.

i do try to feel good about shipping them publicly despite all thats been brought towards me for it. or, at least the nothingness of it. a lot of blogs i’ve interacted with and been interested about following in the past through tag scrolling have blocked me for shipping it. i know this because i always notice that a couple blogs who mainly post about the fandom aren’t on my dash. it’s weird, i don’t even like it as a “standard” underage ship. i’m not saying they’re wrong for keeping themselves safe from things they don’t like, it just glooms me out because i still want to interact with much of the fandom, even if we don’t agree on stuff. i’m too old to be spiralling over these things and activating the sanctification in me i’m trying hard to undo to enjoy my hobbies. why does it even matter to me this much that people block me because they don’t like shit i create or post

with this i feel like anti culture absolutely neuters any kind of intellectual discussion about characters who were in a “problematic” relationship and gone out of it to be part of a standard platonic one. i don’t how unique it is for this ship, but i do imagine that people look into the bad things about it far too much. and hey, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure

(i’m being vague to protect myself from antis who might find me out and send me dumb shit, forgive me)

No, no, you're very right. The rise of anti culture has definitely led to a decrease in having decent, intellectual conversations about pairings in media and how the relationships between characters shift in ways that display incredibly important aspects of their stories.

But that ties back to the loss of media literacy, I fear.

[suemooon]

Origins of the Oncest ship: the history

Travelling in The Once-ler's fandom history | by suemooon

Welcome Oncelings!

to one of my most serious researchers I have ever done before, now, here’s a little explanation:

I wanted to make a fandom analysis using old posts, the way back machine, and other stuff to try to compare the once-ler fandom in its golden age and now, trying to suppose how it was and trying to see what happened there, but it would be later. Because I got a really interesting capture that I got while I was checking the Oncest tag in the wayback machine, and I got this:

IT QUICKLY GOT MY ATTENTION

Someone saying that they were the first ones to show the Oncest ship term.

I wanted to see if it was real and not a joke or something like that, so I copied the url of the tumblr and desired that the blog is still up, and I got it!!!

I explored their tumblr for a little while, and I noticed another thing, there’s a bunch of photos of the once-ler BEFORE the movie of the Lorax came out, this of course means that ye, there was some people who found the once-ler attractive and begun to share his pictures in tumblr (without any tag, if it wasn’t the help of this blog and some other ones, I probably couldn’t got them).

This makes a lot more sense than saying that the once-ler fandom was born after the came out of the movie I can say.

Those pictures belongs to all the Lorax trailers, in which ONLY appears the gray once-ler, not greedler. So we can say that the people who find him attractive in the beginning, the greedler was like a kind of ���plot twist”

But the topic of the whole fandom will be for my another analysis, now let’s try to focus on Oncest.

2. Possible date of apparition

In my research, it seems that Oncest was born between 19th March, 2012, but where did I took this supposition?

Checking the dates between their first Oncest mentions (and also checking other old inactive once-ler’s blogs), there’s some important dates to make a highlight.

link to post: https://theambernerd.tumblr.com/post/19771248254/thank-you-all-you-lovely-people-for-following-me

In this screenshot, someone responds that this pairing has a name, this is from March 22, 2012, so the ship already existed and had a name too, so let’s check out the other blogs and their archives.

temporarilycheating

squidmama

Suddenly we see Oncest fanart.

The dates are between 19th and later, is this the origin of the ship?

Of course this is just a supposition, I had to see it at that time to prove it, but it’s not the case. All I can do is make suppositions.

You can take it as something true or fake, that’s your opinion.

3. Who was the original person who brought up with the Oncest idea?

This one was one of the most complicated things that you can try to research, we are talking about something that is 11 years old, so some pretty amount of information got lost with the time.

In words of temporarilycheating.

IT’S CALLED ONCEST BECAUSE I SAID SO! Lol but really…actually, I’m kinda the one who came up with the name in the first place… The pairing existed, but I think it was originally called twincest or something… But anyhow, in month one of the fandom, back when Sirsteeve made some of the first oncest fanart the fandom went CRAZY over the idea…and so did i. So I was sitting in my living room having a feels moment over this new OTP…but since the fandom didn’t really have a name for it, it made me think… It came to my mind that the fandom was somewhat dividing the once-ler into two seperate people of the same relation-oncie and greed-ler. To me, it sounded like incest. So I played around with that idea a bit in my head. And after saying incest repeatedly in my head I noticed the ‘ce’ in the word. I came to the conclusion to 'once’ in addition to the 'est’. thus 'oncest’. I had a fangasm and posted my idea to tumblr ASAP. Apparantly, it caught on cuz it’s still called oncest today and is widely known C: That has to be one of my greatest achievements in this fandom.

link to post: https://temporarilycheating.tumblr.com/post/25857778616/why-is-it-called-oncest

There's a small mention to someone named "Sirsteeve" who explains that were one of the firsts ones to draw Oncest.

I searched and their oldest Oncest post I found is this one.

Date: March 19th, 2012 by: sirsteeve ( hour - 5:22 PM )

So we have in our eyes one of the first Oncest post ever.

Is that the original Oncest post? I don’t know, it only says that is ONE of the first persons in the fandom who brought up the idea. Is it made by one person or a group of people? I don’t know.

Other very first posts about Oncest:

Date: March 19th, 2012 by: cartoonjunkie ( hour - 10:39 PM, 5 hours later after sirsteeve )

Date: March 20th, 2012 by: owlapin

Date: March 21st, 2012 by: rutella

4. Who gave the name of "Oncest"?

GUYS!!!! I KNOW WHAT TO CALL THE PAIRING!!!!! Y'know, once-ler/green suit once-ler!???? IT SHOULD BE CALLED ONCEST!!!! GET IT!? Its like incest, but with himself! :D WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK!? If you like the idea, reblog this to spread the word! :D

Date: March 20th, 2012

It seems it’s true, temporarilycheating was the one who created the Oncest term, we should give her more recognition for it!

link to post: https://www.tumblr.com/temporarilycheating/19650360910/guys

Conclusion

Second part? who knows. But the only thing I can say is… this one was one of my most complicated things to find, but now I got some important information. I'm here for you to share my knowledge!

I must say, I’m very proud of me for this, you guys have no idea how excited I got when I found these photos and data, maybe is not too much but I think they’re really important yet; this information forms part of our fandom history, and I think we should keep that information up and don’t lose it.

As a reminder too, as I already said once…

Oncest is like an icon for our dear Once-ler Fandom, whether we like it or not.

We can’t deny its existence, we can’t blame it, we can’t try to delete it, it always will exist as always the fandom will exist and some people like it.

And… My opinion about Oncest?

Well, I don’t hate it, I don’t love it thou, but I can like some posts about it, I can appreciate art from this ship, and it’s idea too.

Any reblog, like, and comment it's appreciated!

[grainjew]

On Gallifreyan Vestigial Gender

[this is the revised and expanded version of some rambling i initially did in my cowriter's discord DMs. i tried cite sources where i could, but a lot of this has been marinating in my brain since half-absorbing posts twenty pages deep into peoples' dw tags 3 years ago, and also i spend way too much time on the wiki, so please excuse anything i can't quite source, which is most of it. huge thanks to @oriigami for being my original conversation partner and contributing extremely to the concepts here, and to @bird-of-paradox and @waywren, neither of whom I am being allowed to @, for bothering me into not leaving it as unreadable discord screenshots]

-

There's this tendency among queer Doctor Who fans to look at Time Lord society, with its alienness and regeneration, and ask, frustrated, "Why do they even have gender?"

I sympathize with this extremely. I've been the one asking this question plenty in the past, and I do think it's a bit silly, and even sillier that the genders are "man" and "woman" and there are apparently two of them. But I also think that the section of canon most insistent about the Gallifreyan gender binary, the 7th Doctor novels from the 90s, also has the potential to be the most interesting about it.

Now, this is not to say that the text of those novels isn't weird about gender in a flawed, written by (as far as I know) cis people in the 90s way. But I think that you can extrapolate and queer what's there in very interesting ways, often because it's so flawed in the first place: Gallifrey, too, is an extremely flawed society. Decadent, degenerate, and rotten to the core, as the show put it.

So, VNAs Gallifrey: living Houses and their female Housekeepers, cultural and literal planet-wide sterility, Loom birth, rigid overcomplicated bureaucracy, the enduring legacy of the pre-Rassilon Pythian regime. The gender binary as presented here goes something like

women: chaos/magic/psychic powers/superstition/the house (scary)/biological childbirth/fertility men: cold rationality/order/science/bureaucracy/loom-birth/sterility

The Pythia and the Lord President. Magic and science. The House and the Web of Time.

Obviously a lot of this is classic gender binary stuff. But let's put the exasperated question of "Why must we do the gender binary like this?" aside for a moment and think about Gallifreyan society instead.

Pythia-ruled and Time Lord-ruled Gallifrey have a lot of the same problems in the end, just wearing different faces: they're both very much totalitarian states that believe themselves to be above everyone else. But while the Time Lords observe and micromanage the Web of Time from their Panopticon, maintaining its integrity to their standards, the Pythians didn't have time travel, so this preoccupation with control manifested--as far as I know; this is the bit in the meta where I admit I haven't actually read Time's Crucible yet--as keeping the entirety of society in one psychic hivemind, leaving nobody any privacy, plus a lot of future-reading and prophecy and whatnot.

The main relics of that societal layout into post-Rassilon Gallifreyan society are the Matrix, which has every single dead Time Lord's brain in it and does their prophecies for them, just couched in a little bit more science than Pythian magic, the Houses, which are alive all around you and in which you're constantly being watched by the Housekeeper through her mirrors, and, of course, the gender binary.

The Pythia was always a woman. Women were the ones with vast psychic powers, with magic; women were the ones in charge. Pythian Gallifrey was a heavily gendered society. This is because Gallifreyans are a kind of bug /shot with the "irrelevant to the point at hand" gun.

And so, when Rassilon rebelled, he was very much playing the part of "opposite gender with opposite worldview." The Pythia had female magic and superstition; he had male science and technology. His most trusted Founders were either all or mostly men, depending on the version of events you prefer. (Personally I have my doubts about the Other.) Rassilon built his new society as a man, among men, in opposition to the matriarchs before him.

Gallifrey, despite the invention (or theft, depending on the story) of regeneration allowing people to trans their gender randomly and sometimes unintentionally, never left the gender binary behind.

The whole point of modern Gallifreyan society is that they're still stuck in that exact same moment Rassilon took over (and the Pythia cursed them to sterility, if thats the version you're going with). You could easily make an argument for this being some cycle of abuse type situation; Rassilon and co overthrew the Pythia and immediately did exactly what she was doing to them to the wider universe. I tend to read it as a regeneration: it's the same society, really. It just died and was reborn, and now it looks and sounds different.

-

The downside of trying to translate a discord conversation into a proper meta post is that sometimes making a coherent transition between thoughts is impossible. So to introduce the next bit of this post, I'm going to hand you off for a moment to this post about the 8th Doctor's "I'm not sure I've ever even been a man" quote from Interference. As op of that post says, the Doctor is genderqueer even by Gallifreyan standards- he's being questioned in that scene by another Gallifreyan, who doesn't understand his experience of gender.

The EDAs are full of "Eight is nonbinary" quotes, of course. Every queer fan who's ever engaged with them has a collection (and if anyone knows where that one google doc compilation that was going around awhile back went I'd be in your debt, because I'd love to know if my collection is missing any), but almost all those quotes refer to his genderqueerness in human terms, as observed by human companions, or in response to human assumptions. Except that one. Not only is Gallifrey's gender binary alive and well in a society where people can literally change their gender when they die, but the Doctor doesn't fit inside it.

All this to say that being a renegade Time Lord is a nonbinary thing to do. Especially the Doctor, with all sorts of weird Other Timeless nonsense in their biodata. Women stay on Gallifrey (or Karn!) and do magic and watch you. Men stay on Gallifrey and do science and watch other people. Renegades go out and do whatever they please. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

-

So. Gallifrey has a gender binary. It's vestigial, a remnant of an earlier iteration of society with a much sharper male-female divide, and it doesn't make logical sense for it to exist. So: How does it manifest? And what function does its continued existence serve in the interests of the status quo and ruling class?

Let's take a look at 7th Doctor novel Lungbarrow.

Lungbarrow introduces us to (among many other things) the living Houses of the Time Lord Families, and to the family structures within: the patriarchal figure of the Kithriarch, the always-female Housekeeper, bound in her ritual marriage to the House itself, and hordes of petty squabbling Cousins.

Kithriarch is already an interesting title. It's obviously a gender neutral version of matriarch or patriarch, but the role itself seems to be almost entirely a male sort of thing in opposition to the feminine Housekeeper.

The Housekeeper, meanwhile, seems to be in a direct conceptual and societal line of descent from the Pythian priestesses: she can see anything within her domain, she has a psychic connection to the House, from whom she cannot hide anything, she can command the wooden Drudge servants and other House subsystems, she prioritizes the House above all where the Kithriarch is supposed to prioritize the Family. Women are frightening and powerful psychics. They know everything you want to keep secret, and prioritize the collective.

(There's also something here about how Lungbarrow presents duelling dualities--the Doctor and the Master, the CIA head and the Lord President, the Kithriarch and the Housekeeper, the masculine and the feminine--but I haven't quite tied it into the rest of this yet.) (Although while we're mentioning the Master. He's girlcoded by Gallifreyan standards and the Rani is boycoded by the same. I will not be expanding on this at this time just trust me.)

I think Housekeepers and women who want to be Housekeepers try to keep their self-image as women strong enough that they never regenerate into a male body (whatever a '"male body" means, of course, but I'm not sure Time Lords have gotten that far in their queer theory yet). I also think that there are more female Kithriarchs than male Housekeepers, because Housekeeper is much more heavily ritualized role in keeping with the Pythia's more ritualized general vibe, but I do think female Kithriarchs are still few and far between.

I also think that these are probably the most explicitly gendered occupations on Gallifrey, although of course you'll see some drift. Most women are out there getting the same scientific, military, and bureaucratic positions as men. But there's this lingering specter of gender roles, a Pythia-shaped hole that exists around the concept of womanhood. As my cowriter put it when we were talking about this, an "ideal of womanhood. not ‘ideal’ as in desirable, [but] ‘ideal’ as in the quintessential image of the thing."

This is further amplified by the continued existence of the Pythians in the form of the Sisterhood of Karn, living in their perfectly functional all-women magic society just out of sight. Their presence at the edge of the Gallifreyan consciousness must haunt the Time Lords, as any imperialist power is haunted by its own past and its own ultimate impotence.

Because that's the other thing. Gender roles are, to quote my cowriter again, "stupid and antiquated and historically potent tools of authoritarianism." Of course the Time Lords have them. Have you seen them?

They're tools of control, of conformity, of idealizing the past. Of conservatism. Consider, to once more quote my cowriter, "the weird traditionalist psychosis of having gender roles in a society that can’t bear children."

The ideal woman on Gallifrey is still the Pythia, millenia or even billenia on. And the ideal man is still the Lord President Rassilon.

-

[thank you for your time! if you liked this please consider checking out my fic Something Old, which is about lungbarrow, the adventuress of henrietta street, and the gallifreyan concept of marriage, and in the writing of which i initially articulated most of the thoughts in this post. i've previously characterized it as a fic that's actually a meta post. and please don't be too mean to me for anything i got wrong in here! i'm just a little guy]

[konaiiro]

★ Art Tag ★

thanks for tagging me to play @doshiart @spookygingerr @michellemisfit

Have you always been interested in creating art? Kinda? No? Not sure. I think I've always been interested in art in the 'wow, thats cool' way, not really creating though.

What's your favourite medium to use? If digital, what programs do you like? I taught myself to draw on digital (wacom intus medium i still use) and have the free program firealpaca - im too lazy to change now. I've owned sketchbooks to take with me and it's good but I don't think I'll ever really get over not having the command + z tool.

Do you create outside of fandom? A little, I've got ocs who I draw occasionally.

Share something you haven't finished and/or never got around to posting OH so many, its not funny. But here's a more recent piece which was initially for AFTG pride zine. It was so good, I just couldn't make it work for WEEKS. I ended up switching up and doing something else.

Favourite piece you've made? OH well, i've got a few but this would be my pick for 'konaiiro wrapped'.

Draw your icon in a minute or less - pass!! :,)

An underrated piece you've made in your opinion

you lads slept on this one (forced to screenshot from instagram bc its old and i can't find the file and, as established, im lazy). So much wrong with it and yet i fuck with the vibes and texture and expression and pose- UGH

Do you do art in a professional setting? No, not really. I've done comms in the past and I was going to go do animation in uni, but found that i like to keep my creating up to me. I would be open to run comms again, but under a different structure I think.

A piece you don't like but did really well on social media

yall flocked over these two idk. i like them enough just,, i'm so aware about all the mistakes lmao.

Post an old piece and compare it to your most recent, what are the similarites? I've done some redraws so NOW is a perfect time.

Ian and Mandy (March 2022 vs September 2024)

i think from a creation perspective, i know my base lineart is much cleaner and rendered.

Background is,, actually there lmao. It kicked my ass to draw but it happened.

Style has changed a tonne to more realistic (?), proportions are less all over the place.

effects are just better

I can actually draw hands huzzah!

They actually have a skin tone (+freckless!!)

Have you ever collaborated with another artist/s?

Yeah! A tonne; for events, challenges, zines, charity art calendars (hint hint aftg 2025 calender sales end 31st of Oct, all profits go to help those access gender affirming care.)

What piece has the most notes? Are you surprised?

I've been active on tumblr from around the start of the year, but I think its this one?

Who/What is your favourite subject matter?

honestly i think my blog name summarises better than I ever could.

Show us something not from fandom you've made

old oc art

Where do you like to create?

Desk in my bedroom! I like facing my window so I can look out like some tortured artist when my eyes need a break.

Give yourself a shoutout, where can we commission/buy/follow you for more pieces?

I'm on twitter, tumblr, instagram all are @konaiiro !!

Any mutuals, if you've made it this far, this is me tagging you lmao

[centrally-unplanned]

FLCLick Noise - Archival Scan

We should be a go!

[Internet Archive Link]

FLCLick Noise is a book published in 2010 that is a deep dive into the production of and creative influences that went into the 2000 anime FLCL by Studio GAINAX. Framed as a conversation between FLCL director and series lead Kazuya Tsurumaki, and FLCL character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, the two creatives watch the show together and record their thoughts episode-by-episode, alongside a prologue and a “bonus track”. It is in Japanese, with primarily text and screenshots from the show for use as conversational reference, though there is some art as well (almost all of which is available elsewhere).

FLCL is pretty infamous as a show for its free-wheeling compositional style and loose production process; everyone involved was able to throw in visual ideas, dialogue, plot concepts, and so on. Additionally, FLCL slots pretty clearly into GAINAX’s “Otaku commentary” oeuvre - it is very much anime, *extremely* anime, it would be ludicrous to suggest otherwise; but in addition to being anime it was also a vehicle for the creative team to put in ideas and influences that they believed the anime industry was not utilizing at the time, such as its rock-album concept soundtrack or its josei/seinen manga inspired-character designs.

It is this backdrop that makes a book like FLCLick Noise simultaneously more valuable for understanding FLCL than most other shows, and even possible to exist in the first place. Much of it is fun asides, many of the creative decisions are personal whims, but there is so much to those whims that it is worth reading a book about them. If you want to answer the question “why does FLCL exist the way that it does”, this book will answer that question in more detail than any other source will.

Alas this is a complex and large book - I will aim to translate it someday, but I cannot guarantee neither the timeline nor the quality of that translation as I am by no means a professional in that regard. If you want to get a sample of what the book contains, anime-youtuber-extraordinaire Hazel quasi-coincidentally just released a video essay on FLCL that has an entire section on this book and its contents (I learned of this book from her tweeting about it during research for the video, so the timeline is not pure kismet). If you want the highlights and so much more, it is an amazing video. Meanwhile, I do hope to post a “raw text” version of the different sections somewhat soon, to assist those who do want to read it themselves and would find that would help with the translation.

As always, I hope this is a valuable addition to the ‘akashic record’ of 90’s-era anime history, and gives something special to the FLCL-heads out there like me.

(I'll tag @flclarchives for the two-for-one this week, if they don't mind! And I apologize for the scan quality here - I wanted to do it non-destructively, as this is not a large print run book, which meant my typical flatbed was a no go and the new overhead setup I used was a comedy of errors. Fortunately this is a book about reading text, and despite the errors it's all perfectly readable.)

[respectthepetty]

I'm gracing you inbox again, Pet, because I saw colours and of course thought of you...

Ploy's Yearbook finished this week and whilst I don't think it was necessarily colour-coded (there are a lot of characters and I didn't put much effort into tracking visual patterns) I wanted to share this moment of deliciousness at the end:

Do you see it? I'm sure you see it... (the blinding light of yellow love and the deep purple and the piiiiiiink 😍).

Anyway, the series was a generally okay het offering which mostly showed that the women at GMMTV need more opportunities to shine. But what it did do very well was the period representation (like, actual talk of bleeding), Joong looking like a whole-ass meal in the last scene (seriously, I think you'll want to go see that, it's a bit too blurry to screenshot), and the woman popping the question for once! (oops 🤭 spoilers, I guess).

#I wish there was a way of adding tags to an ask #so that I could leave a sort of post script ramble #maybe this will have to do #there isn't really any point to this ask #just that I wanted to say hi and that I thought of you #💛💙

*warning* This is going to turn into a

Cupid's Last Wish Appreciation Post

"Do you see it? I'm sure you see it…"

I thought twice about using the above image because it comes across a bit hostile, but any chance I get to insert a Big Dragon moment into the conversation, I'm taking it! Also . . .

Hopefully, we ALLLLLL see that pink = 💕love💕even when it's for the het couple (when the only het couple I've ever cheered for was this one, which oddly enough, also included Namtan).

So maybe I'm just really rooting for Namtan and the other ladies because I'm already seated for her and Film to hit me with that Blinding Light of Love in Pluto.

You already know that I agree with you that GMMTV underutilizes its women, but since I gave Namtan some love, let me turn to Earth while I give some love to Cupid's Last Wish for having good period-rep as Korn clutched every kind of tampon and pad

For his body-swapping not-yet-boyfriend!

And not only did the man buy all the pads and tampons, he bought pain relievers and chocolate based on the staff's recommendations. THEN, he gave his guy a warm water bottle to help with his cramps and held him all night!

And that as AFTER he hugged his man when he was having a breakdown about his body betraying him.

Not only did Korn exhibit the highest level of emotional intelligence every second of that show, in this specific moment, he stopped the vehicle, asked Win what was wrong, and actually took in what Win was saying without dismissing it. Then, he got out of the car, went around to hug Win properly, apologized, and waited until Win hugged him back.

I have my grudges against this show (THAT DAMN MOTHER!!!!!), but Korn was the greenest of all green flags and the way he handled his future boyfriend's period should be held up as the standard.

But one of the writers of the show was Pong who also wrote the screenplay for Cooking Crush and Only Boo! which are two shows I think epitomize care and comfort between partners.

So now that I've gone on a tangent about partners actively taking care of each other, I hope you are enjoying seeing your flowers growing and not stressing too much over things beyond your control. I also want to let you know that I thought of you when I realized Domundi played me and instead of giving me a Pink Person in Your Sky, gave me a Yellow Yal, so I'm getting another Blue x Yellow pair.

But for some *reason*, I'm less petty about it.

I hope you find comfort in that. 💙💛

[intotheelliwoods]

Oh do please tag me! Even if I do not reblog it I would still love to see it :)

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So the Sprout keychain would probably look something like this!

Meanwhile I got in some proofs for what Poptart would look like, here they are:

But I do want to note it may be a while till the Poptart ones are finished, looks like there may be some shipping delays and they will not be available for buying until somewhat late November. That and this is definitely going to be a big learning experience for me!

Point being, may take awhile until I can get some ones for Sprout, some things might change, and even then if/when I do a batch two I may order a mix of both leos anyways :)

@alltheyearsblog

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Putting all the tumblr error anon asks into one little segment here, uh let me try and explain what happened!

I think tumblr implemented some, new image filter system...? Which for some reason, did not like some of my panels in comics, making it so they would not show up on dashboards, only my profile

Tumblr was no help on this, did not respond to any emails (at least not yet...?)

Since less people followed my main I posted each panel one by one to see which panels got through the filters and which ones the new filters had issues with

I also want it to be known that it was not just a my account thing, some friends of mine also attempted posting the panel with no luck on it showing up on dashes

So after finding which panels the filters didnt like, it was a matter of editing the panel until tumblr decided to allow it through the filters, you are going to laugh at these results, I had to put filters over them for tumblr to even allow these discord screenshots:

(have fun even spotting the difference with the donnie one lmaooo)

In conclusion: tumblr is being really stupidly picky over the images I post out of nowhere, and if this happens with each comic I try to post I will go mad

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Oh the perch is such a good idea!!! @cartoonfan

And oh I didnt even think about how Raphs big form could fit into this.... hmmm I will ponder these ideas, + the ending I have in mind isnt much of an ending anyways, its still open for story!

AND AH. I HAVE NOT READ OPEN YOUR SHELL TO FIND YOUR WINGS but I have heard of it!!! They would be disaster beetles.....

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hhehhhuehuhe :) eee