#outside of kdrama/cdrama fandoms

[moki-dokie]

sometimes you gotta follow a bunch of artists in fandoms you don't know or care about because you need some diversity, dammit.

[yea-baiyi]

Hi....If you don't mind, can I ask, what are your top 10 (or top 7) favorite media (can be books/ manga/ anime/movies/tv series)? Why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this question before......Thanks....

hi it’s been a while! i love getting asks from you because it lets me ramble about my favourite things, it makes me so happy so thank you!!! i hope you know how much joy you bring <3

(i’m sorry i haven’t replied to your last top 10 ask, i started the list and it got so humiliating that i’m unable to look at it again.)

anyway “top 10 media” is a broad question, so i have picked the top 10 media i love to ramble about. the kind where i could talk for hours about each one. are these objectively my favourites? maybe not. are they even good? only like half of them. but they certainly are top. enjoy!!

top 10 media of all time (not ranked):

1. tgcf (novel)

its still too early to say if this is a permanent top 10, but it has consumed my life for the better part of a year so it gets on this list. i have difficulty describing tgcf, it’s not particularly an excellent novel by many metrics, but it gives me endless satisfaction — the breadth of the story, spanning hundreds of years and a broad range of plotlines, plus the incredible depth of each moment, with sensitivity and humanity behind every hilarious-ridiculous-bombastic moment. i keep finding new things with every new chapter i annotate, even on my 4th/5th read. it’s rare that a piece of media gives me so much to think about, i’m just trying to savour the enjoyment for as long as it lasts.

2. the untamed/陈情令 (tv show)

oh man what can i say about the untamed. what can i NOT say about the untamed. the show i resisted for two years before finally being pushed into it. and i have been hurtling down the danmei rabbit hole ever since. for all that it was my intro to danmei and into the modern cdrama fandom, it really is SO MUCH just on its own. i daresay no tv show will ever be able to deliver such pure insanity juice straight to my brain ever again. deserves its spot. show of all time.

3. fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood (anime + manga)

i was a weeb for YEARS. consumed hundreds if not thousands of episodes of anime and manga. and this is the only one that stuck. obviously a masterpiece of storytelling. i revisit this constantly. i love stories that can be grim but still hopeful and endlessly sincere. also if you can’t tell i’m a huge sucker for stories where the side characters clearly have their own histories and relationships outside of what we get to see, and fmab has that for ages.

4. the legend of korra (tv show)

i cannot in good conscience say that i like this show. if you asked for my opinion, i would complain in your ear for an hour straight, minimum. (i have done this. multiple times. don’t ask me about the legend of korra.) and yet it is the piece of media i think about the most, that i have dedicated the most of my writing to, that i rewatch most often. lok aired when i was 13-17 and i grew up with it on tumblr. the people i followed and the things they talked about shaped how i interact with fandom today. maybe one day i will be able to move on, but this one has a sure spot in my top 10.

5. sense8 (tv show)

this one i can wholeheartedly recommend to any queer person trying to grow up in the world. yes, the orgies are gratuitous, the first season has some 2014 cliches, and overall who cares about the plot. but it’s such an unabashed expression of queer joy and unconditional love. there’s something so comforting in the idea that other people will volunteer to share your pain, your happiness, and your loneliness. that everyone in the world is connected by their ability to feel, to laugh, to scream, to cry, to love— you are only as alone as you let yourself be. this show carried me through so many dark times and helped me to keep believing in people. maybe i’ve outgrown my need for this show now, but i will always love sense8.

6. my ajusshi/my mister (kdrama)

is it one of the best kdramas ever made? yes. am i also incredibly biased because it’s IU? also yes. i strongly recommend it if you have the patience. this drama is slow and melancholy and washed out, its characters are weary and cynical and not always kind to each other. but that is precisely the point, because the drama dusts off their dull, exhausted lives and finds within them something worth living for. sometimes it’s enough to know that you have the power to make someone else’s life better. you might have lost the love of your life, but you have a spare mattress in your bedroom for a scared, lonely girl to sleep on. you might have lost your marriage, but you have enough money to pay for an old woman’s funeral. your career might be going nowhere, but you can be the cheerleader and inspiration for a silly woman that loves you. you might be a gang of sad, broke, middle-aged failures, but you can all walk a young woman home together and make her night a little less dark. my ajusshi is not an easy drama to watch, but similar to sense8, it’s one that gives me hope.

7. the k2 (kdrama)

firmly convinced that tumblr is sleeping on this drama. it is so absolutely batshit feral unhinged. let women be a mess!!! let women be so wrong!!! let women scheme and threaten and fight and manipulate, while the man looks on with protective anxiety and/or dead-eyed absolute competency. let a woman run barefoot through the streets of spain in a nightgown, tears streaming down her face. let a woman past her prime be psychosexually obsessed with her stepdaughter’s bodyguard whom she is locked in a blackmail revenge plot with. let him lead her at gunpoint into a car so he can escape the standoff, only for it to become a car chase with her enemies, and for him to flip the vehicle over. let him walk back into the burning car to carry her out.

8. man of steel (movie)

not gonna lie haven’t rewatched those one in a while! but officially my #1 favourite movie if anyone asks. i have moved on from capeshit but this movie still has everything i love: a world that breathes, people that live in it, and a clear message of hope despite how bleak things might seem.

9. rogue one (movie)

i mean. i mean. it says something that i was working on my (planned out, the story exists fully formed in my head) tgcf rogue one au when i opened up my writing notes and found that at some point last year i had written an entire mdzs rogue one au. brilliant. unparalleled. so blessed that this movie got to exist in between the endless cash grabs that are the other movies. as a star wars fan since age 13, i can say with full assurance this is the only star war that matters actually.

10. the infernal devices (novel series)

not sure if i’ve mentioned this series on this blog before, but to this day it’s one of my favourite YA series. yes it is your standard cliche fantasy series but it has will herondale, the best payoff to the typical angsty brooding male lead to ever exist. writers try to justify brooding characters like “they have valid reasons to be that way, deep down they’re really loving blah blah” but this series takes that and delivers. because the moment will is free from the legitimate reason he was acting that way, he is bursting at the seams to show his love. he runs to the girl he loves and tells her he loves her. he tells the woman who raised him that she’s awesome. he spends the rest of his life so, so incandescently happy, simply because he gets to love the people he loves. also the ending of the second book is possibly one of the wildest cliffhangers for a love triangle ever. i clearly love to have an Experience while consuming a piece of media.

(if you’ve read til here, thank you for reading and letting me ramble some of the words that go through my brain endlessly. if you’ve ever consumed and enjoyed any of the things i’ve mentioned, please feel absolutely welcome to message or dm me, i am dead serious about being able to talk about these for hours. in fact i would love to. please)

[yibowang]

1) I am wondering if you can comment on the difference in experience between being a fan of kpop idol/actors vs someone in the c entertainment such Yibo? Difference in fandom? Difference in source material? Difference in culture? Size of international fandom?

2) I feel like lots of c netizen rates CQL quite terribly (feel like their opinion is quite influenced by the fact that it is based on BL novel + idol actors). I am not sure if mydramalist has a more subjective rating either because only those people who might be open to like cdrama (and possible not against BL content) tends to watch CQL and thus might have inflated rating. Your thoughts?

3) Also want to ask you, do you feel like fanning someone in C entertainment is somewhat lonely existence? I feel like sometimes there is big gap between opinions for i fan vs c fandom (culturally). Unlike kpop/kdrama that tries to cater to western audience, there is very little effort made on c entertainment part.

hello! i want to start off by saying that yibo is the first and only chinese artist i’ve stanned so i really don’t know much about the c-ent industry and fan culture outside of what’s related yibo. i’m also relatively new to stanning a chinese artist and there’s honestly still a lot that i don’t know/don’t understand so this is just my limited experience. also i won’t be commenting on cql bc i really don’t know what c-netz think of cql ;;; this might get a bit rambly as well adjklfahdfk

in my experience yeah, there’s a big difference in stanning a kpop group compared to yibo like i was honestly scared when i first started stanning... there were so many new things i had to wrap my head around, so many new apps/websites i’ve never navigated before, different unspoken rules as to how fandoms run etc etc. but the first thing i want to say is, stanning yibo even tho he is only one person takes up so much of my time. like just constantly heaps of content + information is being released i feel like even when nct is actively promoting there’s not these many things to look out for. this might have to do w the fact that he’s insanely popular so there’s constantly brand promos, shows, new releases, rumours, fandom drama that needs to be kept up with. and omg the rumours. like this is not really something that was a big deal in kpop but for yibo??? i feel like rumours are a big part of c-ent. rumours of which brand he’s going to endorse next, which drama is casting him, which actors want to work with him omg like i said before just sm information even if it’s unreliable information 😭😭and before as a kpop stan all my info was from twt but now my main source is weibo. i think we’re quite lucky tho bc yibo’s international fandom is relatively big so a lot of weibo info does get shifted over to twt!

as for the fandom itself, i always feel like international fandom is quite chill lmao maybe bc i’m nctzen 😶but compared to i-fans. yeah. they’re really passionate and do a lot of things in support of their idols. for e.g. recently yibo’s fans have been going out in public asking for people to vote for yibo. this is not really something we’ll see in the kpop fandom. fans also play a huge role in the artist’s image + selling value i feel like? yibo on his own has a good reputation amongst gp but his fanbase also have to reflect that. it’s kind of stupid but the fans really do impact the artist a lot more. competitiveness is also on a whole other level bc of this passion tbh like fandoms of the top traffic stars generally don’t get along well + should try their best to stay away from each other. for this reason stats + rankings seem to be pre important and i need to mention this bc why are there sm rankings??? it’s like everything is ranked adjfgfhdkl and there’s weekly rankings for everything!!! just as how fans are super supportive antis are insane. hate is everywhere and in my opinion a lot worse than what goes on in the kpop fandom bc of the scale that it can get to. i feel like this is bc of the behind the scenes influences that go on in c-ent which seems to be a lot more apparent + stronger than kpop. like there’s a lot of shit that goes on behind the scenes that we don’t know about and is really out of our hands bc power + money does matter 🤭

as for accessibility yeah )): it can be difficult but like i said before i think we’re lucky bc of yibo’s relatively bigger international fandom. his china bar also tires to cater to international fans and provides subs + information on twt. but content esp older content is a lot harder to find sometimes it’s not like kpop where you can find almost everything from a few sources and just need to slowly make your way through it all. with yibo i’m constantly discovering new things i’ve never seen before but it’s usually through digging or pure luck 😩😩ngl frustrating at first esp when you’re not familiar with navigating the necessary apps. however you do get used to it and eventually it kind of just becomes like any other stanning experience tbh only a bit more effort is needed! 

sorry this got kind of long i hope i made sense but this is honestly something i can go on about bc the experience really is so so different. i tried to only talk about the main things i find diff but there’s sm little things that also play into it ahhhhhh c-ent really is complex 

[kewltie]

You’re brain is amazing in so many ways, how do you come with all these ideas? I get burnt out so quickly and takes me a million years and more to even come up with one

Hi anon!!!!!

THANK YOU FOR SAYING SUCH NICE THINGS AHH YOU’RE MAKING ME BLUSH!!!! but really idk either. i just consume a lot of media. LIKE A LOT. like A SHIT TON. if you catch me on twitter you’ll me tweeting a storm about a tv show im watching, kdrama/cdrama, fanfics from various fandom outside of bnha, games, etc. anything i can get my hand on and that hit my buttons, i just devoured like a starving beast. so think when you’re exposed to so many different genres, subjects, themes, etc your taste become as eclectic and wild and ideas just come easier for me bc i can pull from so many sources, ya know? sorry if that make any sense! also, it helps that im naturally inclined to different things and i like to mix it up (i.e. the princess bride au but like steampunk, or like mermaids BUT IN SPACE, etc). creativity can come naturally to some ppl but you can always practice and learn to draw your inspiration from things around you and things you consume everyday. 

idk if that any help at all but i wish you a ton of luck and believe you can definitely do it!!!!!!! and beside dont be afraid to indulge in your comfort zone and cliches bc that’s all I DO lmao (me and my millions abo fic and arranged marriage au). don’t let your fear that you’re already doing something someone else had already done bc your story won’t be exactly like them. it’s always going to be your story so tell it how you want and put your footprint all over it bc it’s your and you should write what you love and not force to be ‘unique’ or ‘diff’ to stand out. my motto that took me years to grow to accept is: write what you love and they will come to love what you write. 

thanks again!!!!! and i know you’ll do great!!!

[lavenderbyun]

So I get asked quite often about post aesthetics, and just received a request to do a tutorial on them, so here we are! Essentially, these are just pointers on how to make your blog look neater, how to get more notes on your posts, and basically improve your blog’s overall look. I should mention though, this is just my opinion, and is not the only way of doing things. At the end of the day, its your blog so do whatever the hell you like ;)

Basically this post will go through: gifset aesthetics, text post aesthetics and reblog aesthetics with a bunch of screenshots to help explain lmao

As per usual, this is quite long (but its mainly because of the pictures!)

This also goes for photosets, screencaps etc. 

I guess the basics would be:

1. Don’t make super super long posts on a regular basis? If its more than 5 gifs, I’d say avoid using 540px gifs? This doesn’t mean don’t do it at all, but if people see the same set in 268px and in 540px I feel like they’d be more likely to reblog the smaller set?

2. Make sure your subs are readable, aka not like the OUAT gifs on the righthand side of this old set of mine:

3. USE THE TUMBLR DIMENSIONS! If you’re making 2 gifs per row, each gif does not have to be 300px (or anything above or below 268px)?? tumblr with shrink/stretch your gifs if they’re the wrong dimensions and your set will look bad! 

4. If your gifset has 1-4 gifs in it, don’t use short gifs? Like this:

Try and use square gifs, trust me it’ll look 1000x better!

5. Avoid over saturating colours on your gifset, and over sharpening them.

aka those two vs. this: 

if you can’t get your sharpening right, use a gaussian blur layer on top of it to smooth it out ~

6. Don’t caption your gifs using the ‘header’ option - i’ve seen people do it, and it looks really messy: 

Whether it's a review, a mini rant, a shitpost or a quote, I feel like keeping it small is a must. 

There are two options here, 1. your average text post, with everything written in the body of the post. Like this:

 or 2. use the html code for small text, so it looks like this:

Things to avoid: 

1. Using the titles. This sounds stupid, because why else would they be there??? but honestly, this:

just doesn’t look as neat as a text post without the title looks, and thus is less likely to be reblogged? 

2. If its a long text post USE A READ MORE! Put a general outline of the post or the first part of the post outside a read more so people know what the post is about, and then put the rest under a read more. No one wants to be scrolling through bulks of text and numerous screenshots - and a lot of people will be less inclined to reblog such a long post. 

3. If you’re adding a reaction picture, I feel that in a text post this:

looks better than this:

(aka the first gif isn’t stretched to fit the whole post)

most reaction gifs wont even belong to the blog tumblr takes them from, so it looks better to just save them and upload them. 

if it is a gif that belongs to a tumblr user, and they would like to be credited, or even just out of courtesy then make sure to credit them when you use the gif.

I should reiterate that it is your blog so you can reblog whatever the hell you like! however, if you’re creating a blog with the intention of gaining more followers, here are some tips:

1. Avoid reblogging posts that don’t have the aesthetics mentioned in the above sections ^^^ e.g. text posts with huge text, over sharpened gifs or illegible subs. 

2. Don’t reblog super super long posts that look messy. If someone is looking at your blog and see numerous posts like that, it’ll ruin your blog’s overall look and they might not follow you.

3. If you want more people from a certain fandom to follow you - try and stick to 80%-90% of your posts being in that fandom. e.g. if you want more followers who watch kdramas, but 60% of your blog is kpop/cdramas/other shows people who are only interested in kdramas might not follow you.

4. Don’t reblog reposted edits! Its very clear when gifs are reposted 1. all the gifs might look different, 2. theres no “my edits” or something tag, 3. you’ve seen the gifs on another blog with more notes, 4. if you look at the blog’s other gifsets the colouring/style doesn’t match

I think thats everything? If i missed anything or you’d like more details on anything do let me know!

Hope this helped ~