Help me lure them in!

[mecurtin]

I'm writing a post for my slasher friends about Why Guardian Could Be Your Next Fandom. *rubs hands evilly* I could use some help!

First, I need some visuals--finding or making my own will take forever:

1. A gif of the episode 2 wound-healing scene

2. An image of the whole team putting their hands together, or of everyone present for a holiday meal. Something to illustrate the concept "Found Family".

3. (Separate) images of Kun Lun and BB!Shen Wei taken from the first few episodes.

Then, some decisions about spoilers:

A. Does the fact that Zhu Yilong plays a double (or triple?) role count as a spoiler? Does the existence of Shen Wei's twin brother count as a spoiler?

B. I don't want to spoil the ending, but I DO want to warn people that they'll want to fix it, and that tears may be involved. RL is too tense these days to sucker my friends into something that will make them cry if they're not emotionally prepared for it. How do I do this?

Help, please!

Comments

[naye]

Unfortunately can't help with giffing now - the only downside of holidays is being away from my laptop! -but the way I've warned for the ending was through informing people the author of the original novel wrote a bonus chapter to soothe her fans' tears at the drama's ending...

[mecurtin]

What software or process do you use to make a gif from a video clip?

That's a good suggestion!

[naye]

I use VLC media player to capture smaller clips with the recording function, then I import those clips to Photoshop with "import video file as layers". (Finding where VLC puts them can be a challenge!) Photoshop has a setting for getting the interface set up so you can see your individual frames at the bottom.

The most important thing I learned is that a frame rate of 0.07 seconds is what looks most natural. Then you can use adjustment layers to play around with brightness, contrast and other values for the entire set of frames (you just need to make sure your adjustment layer is on top).

Finally in Photoshop you export your gif through the "export for web (legacy)" option. It's where you can see how big it's going to be and what it will look like in action! (It's very easy to make huge gifs. Tumblr has a 3mb limit, but I if you have a good place to host them you could go bigger? The easiest way of making them smaller is through limiting the dimensions, number of frames and colors. Using fewer colors will make it look less nice though!)

There's lots of good tutorials out there, so if you want to have a go I hope you can find something useful!

[jo_lasalle]

If you can read Chinese, the credits give the triple role away. I can't read Chinese and I watched it and didn't even know he was the Black Cloaked Envoy, and had Quite The Moment when Ye Zun showed up the first time - I would go the 'avoid spoilers as much as possible' route, because I personally enjoyed that ride very much.

As for handling the ending vs spoilers, I recently recommended the show to someone and said that the show, despite being my happy place, wasn't 100% happy sunshine, and whether she thought she might want or need warnings about less happy elements. (She didn't.) Whether that's useful for the kind of intro format you're thinking of, IDK!

[mecurtin]

When did you figure out Shen Wei=BCE? Do you remember?

[qwerty]

I got in via a friend mentioning in chat that she'd been sucked into some Chinese series, and I looked it up and found on youtube, all casual "so what's this anyway?" and then "aaarghh why can't I stop watching?"

Unfortunately, Chinese series being what they are, although I love the theme songs, the opening and ending credits are pretty spoilery, so that might be something to tell people to skip for initial watch.

Apart from that, I thought SW falling off the roof and BCE showing up was a pretty big signpost, but then I consume secret superhero type media, so that might not raise the same flags to everyone.

[mecurtin]

Since I'm writing for (e.g.) my friends from Smallville and MCU fandom, I'm using "identity porn available here!" as one of my lures.

[jo_lasalle]

By the end of the second episode due to eyes and mouth recognition.

[trobadora]

For spoilers, maybe you could include a warning in blacked-out form, so that people who want them can look, and the ones that don't know there's something to be warned for and can choose to go in blind?

[goodgriefcharlie]

1. Wound-healing scene:

I don't know how to gif but you can totally have my screencaps:







3. Kunlun & bb!Shen Wei





I don't have any of bb!Shen Wei by himself without a lollipop in his mouth, lol. (I haven't gotten to the later episodes yet and most of the early flashbacks are focused on Kunlun.) But if you want a different pic to introduce bb!Shen Wei, you could probably crop this one?



Re: spoilers:

I think in general what counts as too spoilery varies too much from person to person to know where to draw the line? I'd second what trobadora suggested and have a separate page or blacked out text for spoilers/warnings so those who want to know can find out and those who prefer not to be spoiled can avoid them.

[mecurtin]

Thank you so much for the screencaps!

[clevermanka]

I mostly lurk here, but good lord, thank you for those Ep2 screencaps.

[asya_ana]

Good questions! For me, anything beyond what is shown/implied in the first few episodes would count as spoilers vs. premise. So Shen Wei being the BCE is to me a premise, but Ye Zun is a spoiler. The end would also be a spoiler, but you could be vague. Since many of the episodes could require a trigger warning on the basis of the content (e.g., rape, hanging, etc.) you might consider inviting people to ask you if they would like trigger warnings.

If you don't want to have to reinvent the wheel too much, I honestly think rheasilvia's primer is a fabulous way on its own to lure new people in. It has worked on a bunch of fans already, including me!
https://rheasilvia.dreamwidth.org/122887.html

I also have a non-spoilery starter kit that goes into more details on getting started questions I struggled with when I began watching.
https://asya-ana.dreamwidth.org/101282.html

Good luck on your noble mission!

[melannen]

As a person who has only seen the first ten or so episodes but spoiled herself on fanfic:

A. I would say the existence of Ye Zun is a spoiler; Shen Wei's actor playing a double/triple role probably isn't (since the BCE thing is obvious early on, and a general mention of that kind of identity games wouldn't give away more than that.) (Zhao Yunlan is Kunlun with time travel is also a spoiler; that there's some kind of shared identity going on with them obviously isn't.)

B. Dunno, part of the reason I'm only up to episode ten is that somebody told me I wouldn't like the ending, so I'm trying to put off getting to it. :P I think something along the lines of what you said right here is probably fine, though, and gives enough info to let people know if they want to ask about more.

[trobadora]

Dunno, part of the reason I'm only up to episode ten is that somebody told me I wouldn't like the ending, so I'm trying to put off getting to it. :P

Just saying, opinions are divided on that point, so don't let someone else's POV deter you! Personally I loved it. (I can say more if you want, even if only about the general mood, but I don't know what exactly you've already heard.)

[melannen]

oh, I know everything that could reasonably be deduced by following this comm and reading a lot of the fanfic! I probably have many details wrong but as long as I don't watch the show I can pretend it's just a depressing au.

But honestly for this kind of show, anything other than "it just carried on forever the way it was in the middle of the season, except happier" is a disappointment (I fail to finish a lot of shows.) "it has an ending in which things change for my otp" was enough to make me hesitant. :P

[trobadora]

See, that's the thing - I don't find the ending depressing at all. It's not a happy ending, that's true, but it's also not unhappy. It's vey hopeful.

(It makes me want a sequel, but honestly, I wouldn't change a thing about it otherwise.)

[melannen]

Yeah, I get the impression it's a little more hopeful (and a lot more open to fix its) than the general reaction last summer right after it aired when I started watching. But srsly, "there is an ending about which people have strong opinions" was enough for me to not want to ever get there! Usually if we start getting major plotlines that change things I nope out by s2, also.

(sga never established a gate bridge to earth, Mulder and Scully never quit the x-files, the Community gang are still in their second year of college, and DS9 never went to war with the Dominion. Yes I realise I do TV wrong.)

[likealeafonthewind]

The way phyrry prepared me for it was to say that the drama ending was sad but the novel ending was happy and that we have plenty of room for fix-its (we met each other through the Star Wars prequels where everything goes down in literal flames and fandom lives in fix-its).

She also pointed me to rheasilvia's intro post, which was helpful but spoilery about Shen Wei being BCE (the show hints pretty strongly at this in the first two episodes, anyway, when Shen Wei let himself get pushed off the roof and then BCE appears; then later he's healing the scars on his shoulder that he got from the shadow man. And as qwerty said earlier, the intro credits with the theme song is pretty revealing too).

[abyss_valkyrie]

Ummm.The twin thing would be spoilery for me! XD The Black cloaked envoy thing?I think it's easy to see it in the first episode itself and isn't gonna take away anything. Aaahh,that scene with the barbecue when Shen Wei gets invited for 'garbage food' lol.
I'll gif it today, but usually for long scenes, the colours get distorted so I hope you don't mind if I separate it into two three gifs. :D

[mecurtin]

Gif(s) would be wonderful! It's only 20 seconds long, so shouldn't be *too* horrible at a reduced frame size.

[abyss_valkyrie]

Aaahhhh!I made them!I'll link the full gif here. XD
It actually turned out well! The first one is a bit saturated and the other one is a bit muted because I couldn't decide which one looked better. :3
https://i.imgur.com/mblRY7x.gif
https://i.imgur.com/nidEvHD.gif

[mecurtin]

Excellent! I think I'll use the less-saturated one, but both are (of course) GORGEOUS!

Staring at them like this, I now wonder if they serve a plot point as well as fanservice. Could this be the first hint that Shen Wei's power is fading, as is implied later (in convo with Butler Wu, Ep. 5)?

[clevermanka]

Bless you for doing the lord's work. Special thanks for catching the sweat drop on his chin.

[abyss_valkyrie]

XD Weeeell,glad you like it! XDXDXD!