#i'll only use tumblr now for my fail gifsets

[lamonnaie]

bad buddy fandom getting-to-know-you meme!

Thanks for the tag @fiercynn !! This is a really lovely idea :)

note: i consider "fanworks" to pretty much everything people create related to a fandom, including but not limited to meta/analysis/discussion, gifs, fanvids/edits/fancams, filk, fanart, fanfic, fan food, fan crafts, etc. please include this note with the meme unless you have a different definition!

name and whatever you want to share about yourself hi i'm mars, i use she/her pronouns, i live in australia and i've been into thai/asian bl for a little over a year now. i mostly just lurk and mass rb on tumblr lol, but i'd definitely like to get to know more people !!

when did you watch bad buddy/join the fandom? I was actually trying to track down the exact date recently (i failed), but i watched it for the first time around mid-september 2022, ended up binging it in a day and been a part of the fandom since

favorite ship(s) patpran <3

favorite character(s) pat !! he's one of my favourite characters from any media ever. I just love how selfless he is and how he transforms through the show, and how bright he is but knows when to stand his ground. i could wax poetics about him fr <3

favorite episode(s) Whenever i watch/rewatch bad buddy i tend to binge it so i can never distinguish betweens episodes lol. In general, ep 12 is definitely one of my favs because i feel like it ties things up nicely and i like seeing them happy :) i can probably give a better answer for favourite scene...

favorite scene(s) ...which is why it's great that this is the next question!

In no particular order: the staircase proposal scene, the bus stop roleplaying scene, the post-curtain bench hand holding scene (specifically that one face pat/ohm makes which imo is the single most most heartbreaking frame in the entire show), the ep 12 post-credits scene (wait was it actually post-credits, i don't remember ajksdjf), the screaming on the rocks at the zero-waste village scene, and the rooftop kiss (ofc)

Basically i just like to see them happy (most of the time) :)

one thing you would change about the show if you could the whole making-it-up-to-wai arc was not it for me. WHY was pran the one apologising and going after him??? still makes me mad to this day, but i think i'd have a lot more animosity towards wai if ep 12 didn't exist (also all the wai redemption arcs in fanfics have made me warm up to him :P)

what are your some of your favorite fanworks made by other people? ahhh so many!! joy of stanning a show that's finished is that it stays going through fanworks, but also now there's too many that i absolutely adore to remember in the moment, sp here's some:

we both know you're my only dream (fic) by @fiercynn: one of my favourite fics ever that i constantly go back and reread whenever i'm having a bad day (or not)

yield strength (fic) by @dulosis: the physics analogies do something to my brain /pos

10 things i hate about you (fic) by @nobodynobodyno: this one's so cute and i reread it all the time

this fmv to tujh mein rab dikhta hai by @transpat: desi moots, iykyk. but fr this holds such a special place in my heart, the lyrics are so patpran and the editing and clip choice is just *chef's kiss*

this fmv to dandelions: IT'S SO GOOD. all the parallels, the dialogue overlaying is just perfect, and the TRANSITIONS (the one at 1:28 especially)

every single one of @hereforlou's art: i'm literally obsessed, i don't always see everything on my dash so i'll literally check their tumblr every couple days. is this stalker behaviour? possibly, but if you've seen their art i think you'd understand.

Also special mention to this one gifset of the staircase proposal scene which was my first ever exposure to bad buddy, it made me watch the show to begin with, but i didn't rb it when i first saw it so now it's lost to the times 😭😭

I have an insane amount of fanfic i wanted to put here but for the sake of length of this post, i restrained myself ajskdjf

(if you create fanworks) what are your favorite fanworks that you’ve made? i do not (yet 👀)

a song that makes you think of bbs (the ones in the show don’t count lol) pretty much every fmv/edit that i've rewatched a couple times set to a song will make me thing of bbs lol, so some are tujh mein rab dikhta hai and dandelions from above, emily by Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler because of this amazing fic, and gorgeous by Taylor Swift because of this gorgeous edit (y'all please go watch it it's amazing).

idk anything else you want us to know? It's the perfect timing for this because these are my nails right now ):)

honestly not super sure who of my mutuals are bbs moots so i'm just gonna tag some people, feel free to ignore this if you've already been tagged/don't want to do it! :)

@nobodynobodyno @dropthedemiurge @justafriend-ql @cornflowershade @hometothecanyonmoon @7nessasaryevils

If you see this and you want to do it, this is is me tagging you as well !!

[maclovius]

To match my terrible Raku gifset I made an equally bad one for Tomoya’s 15th birthday.

[heyninja]

Episode 5: The Scream-ening

This show continues to take some genre staples and just flip the bitch. I thought from the morning conversation with Porsche and Kinn that Porsche didn't remember anything (which, unfortunately, can be a side-effect of GHB) and I thought OH NO, not this again.

But no. Porsche remembers. He just doesn't know what do do with it. Kinn is treating him like before, maybe worse than before. Porsche is being punished by the bodyguards he's supposed to be in charge of. Kinn flaunts having a different lover right in front of Porsche, and flippantly makes clear to Porsche that whatever it is Porsche is doing with his time, it is of less than any concern to Kinn.

The only marks that Porsche bears from his time with Kinn are the marks of punishment, and his entire bearing, his entire demeanor, shows that he is struggling to find his footing in this space and failing.

Gone is the animated, over-exuberant man who flings himself around and happily inhabits the life of the party. His actions are tempered, small. His face is a mask, his eyes are downcast. When he interacts with Kinn he tends to hunch, to turn aside, to turn the volume down from 10 to barely heard. Even when directly confronting Kinn it's worn down.

Even then, from Kinn's perspective, it's clear that Porsche takes up all the air in the room. When Porsche tells him if Kinn can do whatever he wants, then do it, Kinn physically sways into Porsche like he can't help it. Now, whether Kinn is not allowing himself to name what he feels for Porsche because a) whatever in the past that happened throws a pall over it or b) he literally is just not allowing himself for personal reasons, it's still the same outcome - Kinn will not let himself admit that Porsche is different to him. Despite how his actions are screaming out those differences.

I think, when he got the advice from Pete on how to talk to Porsche, Kinn was honestly just thinking "how to get through to my most dumbass body guard, excellent" and nothing more. And he's clearly super, super bad at the execution. Though it does give Mile the opportunity to show off how he normally handles himself vocally (soft but assured and pointed) versus how Porsche ends up twisting him up (frustrated, snappish, verging on loud).

Also, I mentioned this in one of my gifset tag explosions but: the tryptich scene, where they showed both Porsche and Kinn attempting a casual hookup while BOTH of them were thinking of the episode 4 hookup, and thus neither one of them could get very far because it did not live up to the memory of their time together: chef's kiss. I was screaming into my hands about that.

Anyway, I love the range here of both characters. Porsche withdrawing, trying to find some way to connect to Kinn, and withdrawing even further when those efforts are rebuffed. Kinn trying to find his equilibrium by falling into business as usual and trying to keep his father's good opinion, and still finding no solace, and finding himself in the position of trying to connect with someone on their terms instead of his. Just a REALLY great character study here, especially when neither of them is admitting to their true turmoil out loud.

Mile and Apo just buried everyone with how well they did with these complex emotional interplays and how well acted they were. I am just over the moon about how well they complement each other.

ALSO ALSO. That chase/fight scene. Glad the budget was there for this one, it was so good. I love me some drift compatible battle couples. Seriously my first post on tumblr after I decided to start using it in 2012 was a battle couple post don't @ me.

I believe in the power of being handcuffed together to force people to face their feelings.

(Plus I am waiting for Porchay to wreck Kim's everything by being the sunshiniest cinnamon roll ever and giving him all the feelings. I'll wait.)

[disaster-fruit]

End of Year Review

tagged by @kaimaciel

1. What fandoms did you create for?

Latin Hetalia and... Latin Hetalia. and only brarg for that matter. I have one obsession at a time and i am loyal to it

2. How many works did you make this year? Fics (posted on ao3 or tumblr or wherever), edits, gifsets, moodboards, playlists, fanart, vids, meta?

19 fics, 21 sfw pieces and.... 59 nsfw pieces. seems impressive but i think i actually drew very little art these year. But it was a very horny art year clearly.

What are you most proud of?

I've mentioned it before here but in the beginning of last year I posted what i think are objectively my three best fics, Passarinho, Anjo Caído and Twist of Fate. It has all been downhill from there unfortunately.

Any stats you wanna tell us about?

Well oxiosa already said that I now have the crown of most brarg fics in the Explicit tag, though I am sad to say I failed at my true goal which was to dominate half the tag, and only hold 40% of it as of now. But i think i'm gonna take a break from smut for a while so i might never reach the 50%

What inspired you this year? Any specific works or creators?

Writing wise i mostly wrote smut so...... hornyness lol Also i watch shows that give me cool vibes i want to recreate, but it's hard to think specifics, it really depends on the fics. I wish i knew better where to find my inspiration so i could go look for some of it now

What’s a piece you didn’t expect to make? Why?

Coreografia because it was a gift for ber's birthday but i found out that it would be her birthday literally THE DAY BEFORE and had to speedrun a fic i didnt even had an idea for. Also Sore Loser because i wasnt expecting us to lose rip

What are you excited to work on next year?

I am BLOCKED currently, because personal reasons i cant write smut anymore, i have no patience or motivation for plot stuff so WHO KNOWS. Besides 2022 hopefully the online classes will be over and i'll have actual classes so i wont have too much time to write or draw so... 2022 is set to be a very unproductive year for me.

[hegodamask]

I think you've already talked about this before but I couldn't find the post on your Tumblr, so I was just wondering what your process was for making animated gifs. Like what methods you use to make them, what software you use, etc? Also, what parts do you find most fun or difficult or challenging? I've started making some animated gis, and while I don't know if I'll ever be nearly as prolific as you are, I was interested in learning more about them.

Oh hey! Thank you!! I don’t think I’ve ever gone through the process of how I make gifs in detail before, mainly because I don’t use Photoshop so I just assume my advice won’t be helpful to anybody. I don’t know how helpful this will be to you, but I’ve done a little step by step walkthrough of how I make a gif with a few general pointers thrown in. I was gonna try and keep it brief but it turned out much longer…..sorry.

I’ve put what I find most difficult and fun at the end, so you can just skip to that if you want.

As for the rest, here goes���.

So, background: I taught myself how to make gifs using Serif Photoplus X2 because we used their products in highschool. Then a few years later, I updated to Photoplus X7 (made hardly any difference though). Serif doesn’t even make the Photoplus range anymore (they still sell X8 but it’s rubbish and crashes a lot, and their new product Affinity doesn’t even let you make gifs!). I’ve tried to use Photoshop in the past and everyone says it’s better, but I’m stuck in my ways like the stubborn old woman I am.

Anyways, when I want to make a gif I start off by capturing screenshots for the frames. I’ve always used GOM Player and their “Burst Capture” option to do this. GOM Player lets you choose the format your images are saved as and where you want the frames saved to. I have a special “captures” folder for temporarily storing the files in. So for example, these are my frames:

A good general tip for making gifs with any software is to use the best quality video you can find. Most of the stuff I make is with 1080p or 720p quality. I find it helps when it comes to colouring and making the gif look clearer.

Once I have my captures, I copy them into my animation “canvas” (or SPP file) which has a base colouring I’ve already made on it. It’s kind of like a PSD on Photoshop. I select my captures and drag them onto the canvas which looks like this:

The canvas is 1080p, the same as the captures but everything will be resized later. I originally captured 100 screenshots here, but I’ve decided to use only 40 in the end because I want to make a 540px width gif. If I used all 100 frames for a 540px gif it would end up being way over the 3mb limit and it wouldn’t work on Tumblr.

Now this is where the time consuming work comes in for me. Once my captures have been copied into the SPP file, they actually become layers which I have to turn into gif frames (if that makes sense). So at the moment they look like this

But I don’t have any actual frames yet at the bottom of the screen. So what I do next is go to the layers tab at the top of the screen and click “hide layers”, making them all invisible

Then basically what I do next is create a frame at the bottom and assign an individual capture to it by clicking the little grey square (making it visible again). So as you can see, my first frame is for my first capture/layer. The next frame will be the capture/layer on top of that.

So yeah, that means I create each frame individually. It’s veeery time consuming but you get quicker at it the more you do it (it’s also faster to do on a laptop touch pad rather than a mouse.). 

Once I’ve created all my frames, I reselect the colouring layers at the top so they’re visible on every frame. It should look like this

Next, you need to crop your gif and resize it. I want my gif to be 540px by 270px so I put 54.00 and 27.00 into the crop feature to get it accurate. This allows me to crop the canvas into the right dimensions.

Once I’ve cropped the canvas, I then go to the Image tab at the top and click “Image Size…” and set the image size to 540px by 270px. I usually ignore the Print Size bit.

540px is the best size for a full width Tumblr gif, anything bigger or smaller will make your gif look blurry. This gifset is a good guide for making sure Tumblr doesn’t blur or crop your gifs.

My gif is almost ready to be exported. But I want it to look clearer, so I sharpen all the layer/captures (yes, individually again). I have no settings for sharpening, but I find using the standard “Sharpen�� effect under the “Effects” tab is enough. 

Once I’ve sharpened everything, I get to the colouring and exporting which is the biggest challenge for me. Photoplus’ options for exporting gifs are limited, so the only decent export options are these

“Web-safe” and “Ordered” makes the gif look like this

“Optimized” and “None” makes it look like this. Okay, but the background looks low quality and patchy

“Optimized” and “Error Diffusion” is the only one that to me, looks the best quality. That’s probably why it produces the bigger file size too (the gif below is 2.78mb)

But there’s other downsides to Error Diffusion which I’m still trying to figure out to this day.  Like how it makes parts of the gif “glitch” (that’s the only way I can describe it) or look extra fuzzy. The only way you can fix it is by playing around with the colouring. And by “playing” I mean adjusting and previewing until you want gouge ur eyes out :)

I think that’s why I like giffing The Terror so much, because the film they used has a grainy texture to it, making it easier to hide all my Error Diffusion sins. Though there’s been many times I’ve posted something and hoped no one’s noticed all the mistakes. 

Some general tips for colouring

Unless you’re going for a certain effect, emphasise on the colours that are already in the shot. In my gif  above for example, I turned up the blues and cyans.

Use Levels or Curves instead of Brightness and Contrast.

Zoom in on your gif to spot any Error Diffusion glitches.

Be mindful about whitewashing POC, especially if you’re following the pastel gif trend.

Look at how other people colour their gifs and use PSDs for reference but don’t rely on them too much.

Colouring can increase or decrease the gif file size. If you need to get below 3mb, try toning down super vibrant colours. If the shot you’re giffing is dark, make it a bit darker. If it’s light, make it a bit lighter. 

If all else fails, just make the gif black and white.

Reading all this back makes how I make gifs look like a nightmare lmao. But I’ve been doing it this way since like, 2012 and i love it. I started out making very bad Star Wars and Lady Gaga gifs but as time has gone on and I’ve gotten better, I’ve found I enjoy making things for smaller fandoms much more. I like that if I want a certain set or edit on my blog, I can just go and make it (with varying degrees of success) instead of waiting for someone else to do it.

You appreciate the work that goes into making a movie or show when you make gifs too. Like, you notice subtle little things in the actors performances or something the cinematography is trying to convey. You get to revisit a scene in detail and then share it with everybody else and if you’re lucky, watch them scream in the tags get some nice comments.

There’s lots of other stuff I like about making gifs but I’ve rambled on far too much so I’m just gonna shut up for now. But I think I’ve covered all the important stuff. I don’t know how much of a help I’ve been (there’s still stuff I don’t understand myself) but if there’s anything else you want to know just drop me a message. Good luck with your own gifs!! I’m sure you can do  a much better job than me!