When did TsukuJaku become so popular?
So, I have, by no means, been in this fandom for much of a long time. I discovered Masa's music in around April of 2024, was a casual fan in July of that year, and then became super hyperfixated that October. So I could still be considered pretty new, but I still wanted to talk about this because it's something I noticed.
If you're familiar with me at all, you're *very likely* aware of the fact that Shikyou is my absolute most favorite Onibi Series character. And upon forming an obsession with Shikyou last fall, I found out about the ship TsukuJaku (Tsukuyomi Oborodzuka x Shikyou), which had quickly become my favorite pairing. I would desperately look for content of these two, anything that could quench my thirst for yuri, but searching "TsukuJaku" on Tumblr would only ever bring up like 6 results and they were all years old.
So I had to take it upon myself to make TsukuJaku content. I was literally in school making Tsukuyomi and Shikyou flirt with eachother in Pocket Chibi with no shame and wrote "TsukuJaku 4 Life" with chalk on some bench in public while on winter vacation, y'all have NO idea how crazy this thing got 😭 But I was making fanart, animations, memes, etc. And a majority of the interactions I got were "I've never seen these two shipped before, but this is cute" or "who's that character next to Shikyou?". Getting a comment that said "Omg people still like TsukuJaku!? :D" was like finding diamonds to me because it genuinely felt like I was the only fan of this ship.
But that was over a year ago. Now, I've been noticing a huge rise in TsukuJaku shippers as of a few months ago. Now, I'm not saying that every Masa fan I encounter is non-stop yapping about TsukuJaku or anything... But there is certainly a noticeable increase in the amount of TsukuJaku talk I've been seeing lately. I'll see people in comments sections just casually bring up how much they love TsukuJaku and go "TsukuJaku canon/peak ship!!" or things of that nature. Sometimes I'll see fanart, but that's still pretty uncommon. And to be quite honest, I don't know how I feel about it. Before I started noticing all these new TsukuJaku shippers, the only other TsukuJaku shippers or enjoyers I knew were just 3 friends of mine who I had introduced the ship to and a few others. And now, seeing all these other people start liking this ship when it used to feel so unpopular just feels so strange to me. It feels less personal to me, I dunno.
And I'm not tryna act like I'm some TsukuJaku pioneer or anything. I've clarified that I'm still a relatively new fan for this reason. I obviously didn't invent TsukuJaku, and claiming I did would be ridiculous. Nor am I trying to say "new TsukuJaku fans BAD, old TsukuJaku fans GOOD!!" or gatekeep TsukuJaku from anyone. I LOVE that more people are starting to like this ship. Ship TsukuJaku all you want, it's not my place to tell people what they can and can't ship. It's just so foreign to me seeing this new influx of fans out of seemingly nowhere.
Does anyone know how TsukuJaku got more attention all of a sudden? I mean the fans could have just been there the whole time not saying anything, but there's gotta be more than just that, right? Is it the Wingstop fic?
