#I know there’s like a billion variations of this fandom that’s the whole point of the post I’m just too lazy to tag them all

[alleycatchitchat]

being in the acd Sherlock Holmes fandom is so crazy like you know how people will read hundreds of fics about their otp falling in love in slightly different universes? We get to do that but with like,, canon tv shows and stuff

[slouchingprovocatively]

saraluvstiva replied to your post “reposted gifs suck and you need to stop doing it”

Hi!! I was wondering if you could explain how someone (me) might know if we are doing this or not doing this? I know making gifs is not easy and I want to make sure I give credit and am being respectful to users who take time to make them! I also don’t know how to use gifs all that well and have noticed that my selection is very limited.

okay so @saraluvstiva asked me this and i rambled out a very bad answer in the replies lol so i’m gonna answer it again here with some pictures to demonstrate what i mean lmao words are hard i’m deep in academic description for uni i can’t make sentence

but thank you for wanting to credit people!! that’s awesome!

first, i think everyone’s totally fine with people reposting gifs as reaction gifs and not crediting the op. we all forget where reaction gifs came from, they’re just in a giant folder on our computers that we’ve had since 2010. in that case, a gif of a character sobbing on a reblog of an emotional text post or a cute gif of someone smiling under a nice ask, i think we can all say we’re pretty cool with

what’s annoying, is when people actively repost gifs as photo posts with no credit, and kinda imply they made the gif. if you don’t recognise the gif then it’s easy to mistake it for the reposter’s, rather than someone else’s that they’ve taken. it’s frustrating whether it’s one gif just posted and captioned like the reposter made the gif, or a whole hodgepodge of gifs taken from many original gifsets and squished together despite mismatching height, colour, style, etc. the worst is when someone reposts a gif with a watermark, i’m like, uh we can see that, and yet reposters and even just people who reblog it who don’t notice the watermark are like wow what a gif

in all of these, the main issue anyone has with reposting is the lack of credit. which is super easy to do!!

so, for instance:

the gif is posted as a photo post, with no credit given, and the caption implies that the reposter made the gif because they noticed the thing. even without the caption, there’s no disclaimer that the gif isn’t the reposter’s.

a nicer way to repost would be:

ie, crediting the original poster, but also making the gif part of a text post, rather than a photo post in which, say, someone reblogging and commenting “hey, that’s my gif”, can be missed due to original reblogs preceding it and the blank repost going around first (this can still happen on text posts obvs, but the person shouldn’t need to comment if they’ve been credited lol)

also, it’s so much easier to just reblog gifsets than repost them! i’m not saying this to people who occasionally post a gif uncredited i mean people i see who repeatedly repost and repost and i know they’re getting the gifs from the original blog. reblog = one button. just one. boop, it’s done. to repost means you save it, you upload it, you tag and caption and pretend it’s yours, and then you post. it’s so much effort, and often, at least i can tell right away. like, i can spot an @alyssinmymind​ or a @classydepablo​ gif in a second. they have distinct styles i can identify super quickly, so if i see their gifs coming from another blog and people are thinking the reposter made the gif, i know it’s not right.

and a final thing in terms of how you can know if someone’s reposted; if you’re not sure if a gif is a repost or not, the best thing to do is check the person’s post and look at their tags. most gifmakers use tv edit tags ie “#ncisedit”, and a personal edit tag ie “#mine” or “’#mygifs” or sometimes just an asterisk. if you’re still not sure, it’s not always a surefire way, but look at the gifs they’ve posted. if they all look similar in colour, captioning, sharpening, they’ve probably all been made by the same person; if they have variations, so, some are captioned in a totally different font, some are very smooth while some are really grainy, and they don’t have an edit tag, they’re very probably a reposter.

i hope this makes it clearer!! i said the word reposter a billion times and got a bit carried away, but truthfully, as a gifmaker it’s really frustrating to both have your stuff stolen and see other people’s stuff stolen, but as someone who also used tumblr as a complete newbie with no photoshop skills, i also reposted gifs uncredited because i wanted to contribute to the fandom and didn’t know how else to do it. and i soon realised it’s pretty sucky and the original posts have 1,000 notes there’s really no point in trying to pretend i made them lmao

anyway just

be chill, don’t repost, we’re all here for tony and ziva

[neverlearnedtoread]

The Bride Test

⭐⭐⭐; would have been a 4-star read had it not coincided with a fandom sinkhole so strong i hit the earth’s core head first

Oh?? 👌😉😏

#ownvoices neurodivergent rep - male love interest (and deuteragonist) is on the autism spectrum

diversity!! most characters are PoC - either american-vietnamese or vietnamese. the story itself also touches on racial identity and asian diaspora, and both main characters are bilingual

intense secondhand embarrassment not withstanding - dudes being dudes and talking about sex in a mature and open manner because they’re adults, dammit!

girl is more sexually experienced than the guy, but isn’t pushed into a ‘femme fatale’ archetype. sexy 🤝 cute rights!!

familial relationships - even if they are not a ““traditional”’ family! family is family because they love and support you as a person, not because a billion years of filial piety and tradition forced them to

No.. ❌🤢🤮

some leaps of logic and plot progressions that felt rushed to keep the story moving forward

weird miscommunication stuff (less than there was in The Kiss Quotient)... sometimes they talked it through, and sometimes they simply...did not

‘almost get married to the wrong brother so your real love will have to reconcile his true feelings’ is a trope that happens, which lowkey squicks me out

not really that big of a deal in the long run but that one time got Mỹ got blueballed so hard i felt shortchanged....big oof. pour the whole six-pack out for her lads

Summary: A mixed-race girl working as a cleaning maid in Ho Chi Minh City, Mỹ Tran gets the once-in-a-lifetime chance to travel to America, where the father she’s never met came from. If she pulls this off, she could get her family out of poverty, give them the better life they deserve. The only catch? She’s technically supposed to be there to seduce the youngest son of some rich Vietnamese-American lady who waylaid her in the hotel bathroom. Despite her generous benefactor’s high hopes for the match, Mỹ learns that the son in question, Khải, believes he’s just not cut out for loving people, having struggled internally to match the depth of emotion he’s observed in others his whole life. What’s a girl to do when the better life you’re trying to build rests on marrying someone who’s convinced they’ve got a heart made of stone?

Concept: 💭💭💭

I read the blurb for this book in the back of the Kiss Quotient, and I really liked the set-up - technically I’m not asian diaspora, but also I kinda am? So I definitely gravitate to reading stories like this one, especially with both characters being PoC while also having a different relationship with their shared culture. And I’m not gonna lie - I like the arranged marriage trope. It’s all about the fiction of living in close proximity with someone you don’t know well and that somehow actually working out great for you! The inherent romanticism of developing genuine intimacy through artificial domesticity!! 

Some spoilers under the cut!

Execution: 💥💥💥

I got what I wanted, and I wanted what I got, which was a cute fluffy story about two people really attracted to one another who have to live together and then they fall in love and everything is great. Good vibes all around, serotonin aplenty in the air - it was a great read, up until the point I fell into shipping hell for a pairing I have only experienced through tumblr osmosis. The sheer quality of fan content I had accidentally stumbled into slapped me full across the face and before I knew it, it had been four whole days since I had thought about this book, having burned a hole into ao3 with the force of my speedreading. For better or worse, there’s nothing like reading fanfiction.

Personal Enjoyment: ❤❤❤❤

That being said, I did really like this book! I was definitely taking my time with it before I fell into fandom hell, rereading chapters and bookmarking cute parts. The interactions between the two main characters felt a lot more nuanced, the plot development less choppy, especially compared to the author’s debut novel. There were some parts I felt were kinda rushed, like the race to clear everything up by the ending, but it was definitely better handled and more believable this time around! I liked the brothers’ interactions in particular - siblings being there to annoy and support each other every step of the way is always the best. And I think Hoang is going to centre her third book on Quan, so I’d be interested to see him in the spotlight!

Favourite Moment: When Esme cut Khải’s hair and he explained that he liked firm touches but not light ones. In general I liked the exploration of his character, because I liked the variation in Hoang’s neurodivergent characters. Plus it opened up a lot of cute opportunities for both of them to figure each other out, and then learn to reach a new equilibrium. The hair cutting scene was an intimate scene without necessarily being a sexy one. I liked those well enough too but there’s something about letting your love interest gently touch your face as they make you look nice, you know?

Favourite Character: I loved Esme (or Mỹ)’s character arc. Khải was great! But Esme’s personal development and her decision to take this opportunity to find her father and maybe give her kid a better life, alongside her determination to just work really really hard to achieve her goals...oof. Oof. The Real Immigration Wish-Fulfillment Fantasy (TM). We love to see a good person get their happily ever after by simply never giving up!