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Current Mood: happy bday bbanghoon
Current Music: stylish - THE BOYZ

Entry tags:

sunshine revival challenge

sunshine revival challenge #6

once again I'm so sleepy and tired I'm just gonna make a post to keep my eyes open. picture me as tom from tom & jerry putting toothpicks under his eyelids to stay awake.

Challenge #6
Journaling prompt: What games do you play, if any? Are you a solo-gamer or do you view games as a social activity?
( not a gamer but not NOT a gamer )

Entry tags:

recs-tv,
tv-cdrama

CDrama Rec: Nothing But You

Wu Lei and Zhou Yutong in Nothing But You

Nothing But You (愛情而已) is a 2023 cdrama. It's a noona romance set in the world of sports: between Song Sanchuan, a professional badminton player who later switches to tennis (Wu Lei - you might know him from Nirvana in Fire, or maybe from Sand Sea), and Liang You'an, a sports company sales person/executive assistant (Zhou Yutong). He's 22, she's 32, and basically the whole obstacle to their relationship is that she thinks he's too young for her. That sustains the tension for a very long time indeed. :D I personally find both of them very cute (and I say that as someone who was indifferent to Wu Lei's looks before).

Is it a rec? Yes! Yesyesyesyes! It's so, so good.

Does it have a happy ending?

ending spoilers

Yes! So much yes. They manage to wrap up pretty much all the storylines in a saccharine finale, and I didn't hate even a single one of the choices.

Where to watch? You can watch it on Viki or Youtube.

I love so many things about this show!

A) There's not a single 'evil' character on it (minus one very short exception in one of the later eps). Every character has their own valid reasons for doing the things they do. Some of those are callous or misguided, but nowhere near as cliched as I'm used to from other dramas, and overall, most of the characters are just wonderful all around.

B) Many of the main characters are women, and I feel like the story is definitely told from a female perspective. All the women are encouraged to stand up for themselves and follow their dreams. The men aren't idiots either, though, which is just fun to watch. Of the secondary characters, I especially like Sanchuan's stepdad. He always has good advice (which doesn't always match Sanchuan's actual needs, but I love that too), and while I don't know the actor, I got the distinct impression that he must be a popular comedian. I also really like the boss's storyline. Overall, I like a lot more of the storylines and characters than I expected.

( many more reasons, not spoilery (two minor spoilers separately tagged inside) )

Now I'm looking through fanvids and interviews on bilibili instead of starting something new. That's not the case for many cdramas for me, and I'm enjoying that, too. (I haven't found any really good ones yet, though. I'll keep looking.)

Some pictures of the couple

They always look this adoringly...

Nothing But You - dinner

...at each other

Nothing But You - good hair

He looks good sweaty and sporty

Nothing But You - cuddles

They're very cuddly together

Nothing But You - baobao

Gimme a hug!

Nothing But You - hugs

More hugs

Another hug!

Nothing But You - kiss

There are quite a few kisses too

Nothing But You - hugs

But mostly hugs :)

x-posted to

c_ent

Entry tags:

Fannish July

I was still terribly stressed and my stress-watching is usually things I never planned on watching in the first place. I got very lucky with all my choices this month!

TV new

Ballboy Tactics, a Korean BL on iQiyi - Han Jiwon, retired gymnast, meets Kwon Jeongeu, their university's most popular basketball player. It's a very slow, thoughtful drama with a lot of internal dialogue. There's communication and sweetness instead of unnecessary drama and tropey staged scenes. I loved it a lot! There are barely any external obstacles (depending on how you count the base setup of homophobia in sports), it's all in their heads - I found that awesome! I absolutely rec this show. It has only eight 25-minute episodes, and I went through it in two days.

When it rains, it pours, a Japanese BL on Viki - Hagiwara lives in a frustrating sexless relationship with his girlfriend, while his colleague Sei lives with his best friend from childhood on whom he has an unrequited crush. They connect via a wrongly addressed email, and start confessing their problems to each other. There's a lot of talk about sex, which surprised me - it's very blunt and honest for a Japanese drama. There's also actual sex, and I really enjoyed the sex-first-romance-later plot here. Both characters are interesting, and I found the actor who played Hagiwara, Muto Jun, especially good/attractive. It's even shorter than the other one with only 7 25-minute episodes. CW for rape and infidelity.

My watchalong finally started When A Snail Falls in Love, with a few weeks' delay. It's an old cdrama with Wang Kai and Wang Ziwen. I'm enjoying how much more Chinese I understand now than when I first watched this seven years ago. The only thing that confused us is the weirdly unfitting soundtrack. Sometimes it tries to pass the show off as a Bond film (which is fair enough), but other times we were completely unable to figure out why the music was chosen the way it was. Granted, that's not unusual for cdrama, and it's not going to stop us. :) We've seen three eps now, and are mostly just cackling at Wang Kai's character's Bond-esque swoops and saves-of-the-day and general hero-halo awesomeness, at the Sherlockian intuitive leaps of logic of the female lead. So far we enjoy Wang Kai's voice and the leads' combined tall-and-smol-ness. What's not to like? :D

And then the biggest surprise of the month:
Nothing But You, a noona romance cdrama set in the world of sports (badminton and tennis) - a rec from

china_shop. When I'm stressed, I tend to drop all my shows and instead watch silly romance things that I hadn't planned on watching. But this one was so good I just tore through it, I binge-watched all 38 eps in three weeks, and I ended up loving it from start to finish. It's a romance between a professional badminton player who later switches to tennis (Wu Lei - you might know him from Nirvana in Fire, or maybe from Sand Sea) and a sports company sales person/executive assistant (Zhou Yutong). He's 22, she's 32, and basically the whole obstacle to their relationship is that she thinks he's too young for her. That sustains the tension for a very long time indeed. :D I personally find both of them very cute (and I say that as someone who was indifferent to Wu Lei's looks before). I am writing up a proper rec post for it and will post it soon. You can watch it on Viki.

Movies

I saw #schwarzeschafe at the theater. I should not go to the theater anymore, the camera movements on the large screen make me so nauseous! I had my eyes closed for the second half. Despite that, I rec this movie. It's a German comedy (a loose sequel to the original "Schwarze Schafe" from 2006), and it's about a handful of very quirky characters whose storylines intertwine throughout the movie during a heatwave in Berlin. It's really hard to describe, and all the trailers are (imho) misleading. What can I say, I enjoyed it, I rec it.

Entry tags:

rl-thingslearned

Things learned in July

I felt like I learned a lot... more than half the slots are filled, yay. \o/

( 16 things, all different categories this time )

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: you and I - THE BOYZ

Entry tags:

blog

blog: sleepy

I'm so exhausted I'm battling my eyelids rn but I'm not home yet so lemme just type whatever here, just so I can keep myself awake.

I love stylish! which is surprising because a 2-min long song comprised mostly of random english words and sang mostly by dancer line isn't always my favorite (see: watch it, trigger, maverick), but I really like the sound?!? I've been going STYLISH STYLISH~ ever since the teaser came out LOL it's fun!! it's catchy!! ARE WE ALL LISTENING TO THAT MOONBAE PART??? love younghoon's lines too. they did so well with juyeon's "drop" lines. needless to say I'm obsessed with eric's part too, and I think he looks stupidly hot in that MV outfit.

another surprise is that I'm not super into constellations, at least not as much as I thought I would be... however! isn't changmin incredible on guitar?????? I love the guitar sound in it. very curious too to know if younghoon is on bass or drums because if he's on bass I #manifested it!

the band unit song is the only song I'm not totally on board for, but I'm still excited for the stage at the concert. (they're playing... right?) SO excited for the aura stages too!!!!!!! in eric we TRUST, the choreo is perfect T__T

the mood in the fandom right now sucks ass btw, I know fandom is never the most pleasant place to be especially when shit hits the fan but jesus christ.
( marge simpson voice guys can you lighten up a bit )

with how late the online streaming announcement came, I'm wondering if it's gonna be different than last time? or did they just forget to do the announcement earlier? lol it's kinda amazing that not a single country in the world seems to have good concert producers. someone give me money to start a company, I'll do it. it can't be that impossible to organize live events!!! someone back me up with the capital and I'll do it, I'll organize kpop tours!!!

no you know what I'm not done hang on,
( still about the album but I'm ranting now )

Entry tags:

art-tutorial

Two short tutorials: water effect and glowy text

Because I felt like it, I wrote up a few quick tutorials for icons that were either difficult or unusual for me this year, where I think writing it up might help me reproduce the effect and be enjoyable to read for others. Here are the first two. I hope you like them!

These icons:

icon one - Lone Star icon with water effect

This is the cap (open or download the image to see at full size):

1. I used this texture:

2. and applied a motion blur filter with an angle of (more or less) -15 degrees and a distance of 19 pixels:

3. and desaturated it:

4. then I masked the two subjects out of the original cap and sharpened them and put them above the background:

5. they were too dark, so I duplicated them and set the second layer to Linear Dodge (Add) (100% because they were *that* dark):

->

6. they were still too dark, so I duplicated the layer again, inverted it (black background only for visualization purposes), and set it to Soft Light 100%:

Now they're light enough not to get overshadowed by the background! \o/

7. On to the text. The color is a light, almost grey shade of blue (#a0adb5) that I picked out of the background, and the font is Tarzan at 10pt with a kerning of 180 (black background only for visualization purposes):

8. Then I distorted the layer with the wave function. For that you have to rasterize the layer. (I duplicated it so I would still have the text layer later. The original text layer I set to invisible.) I have no idea what settings I used, I usually click randomize until I like the result:

I put the distorted text layer behind the subjects.

9. I still thought it was too dark, so I took this texture by dragonslayer, desaturated it, and set it to Hard Light 32% above all other layers:

10. Now for the final touch of the watery look, I wanted some water effects in front of them, too, so I painted a few lines with the same color I used for the font into an empty layer (black just for visualization), and masked away some of it in front of their skin so it wouldn't turn blue:

11. I duplicated that painted layer and stretched it out (I usually use Free Transform for everything):

12. I set the first one to Color 100% and the second one to Color Dodge 26%, to get the effect of a water ripple reflecting on their bodies, and that's it! Final layer palette and result:

icon two - sleepwalking Fitz

The important part in this icon is to make the person stand out and to clean up the background. I always make sure not to leave any distracting details in icons.

This is the cap of Fitz sleepwalking through St Pierre in his pyjama pants (open or download the image to see at full size):

1. First I cropped it so he's in the middle:

2. Then I removed the raised flower bed (or whatever that is) in the lower left corner. I don't remember how exactly I did this, but I suspect I painted over it with the clone brush with the empty street from his other side:

3. Then I made him stand out more by masking away everything apart from his body. As you can tell I just did this haphazardly with a small hard brush. Then I set this layer to Linear Dodge (Add) 100% :

4. I thought his pants were still too dark, so I copied the layer again and removed the mask for his upper body. I set this to Linear Dodge (Add) 100% as well:

Yay, now he's lighter than the background!

5. Now for coloring. I wanted the background to be more uniform and also warmer. So I added a plain brown color layer (#9a725a) on Overlay 100%. I put this layer in front of the background layers but behind the subject layers from steps 4/5:

6. I liked the way the street lights illuminate the scene from the far back, so I added more colors to enhance this (but not too much, he has to stay in focus). The colors are yellow on top (#ffcf16) and orange on the bottom (#ff8937). The middle is transparent - I only added a white background here to make it easier to see for the tutorial. I used the same mask I had already made for his body, just inverted, so his body wouldn't get affected by the colors. The layer is then set to Multiply 100%:

7. I thought he still wasn't standing out well enough yet, so I added a bit of black behind him. I used the same mask as before and set it to Multiply 63%:

8. Textwork! I couldn't think of anything good to say, so I just added the words "sleep" and "walk". I put each on their own layer. I used the font Franklin Gothic Condensed BT at 18 and 12 pixels, the colors are yellow (#ffde00) and orange(#ff6600). I set both layers to Color Dodge, around 70% opacity:

9. I thought the top half could also use some text, so I duplicated the text layers and moved them around. I didn't change size or color. I set those three all to Color Dodge 61%:

I then decided that the text at the top wasn't well readable and detracted from the depth of the street background, so I did not use that layer group after all. So I set those to invisible and called it done! Final layers and result:

I enjoyed writing these up, I hope you enjoy reading them! <3