I actually don't know what happened with the particles at all @_@ I think I might have checked the particle box on accident when I meant to only do it for certain clips where the explosion wasn't apparent but it left it on for all of the recordings. YOU WIN SOME YOU LOSE SOME :(
edit: Apparently there's a bug with Lawena and Windows 8 Users where Lawena won't actually replace your current config with the max quality (for map textures) one if you don't manually do -dxlevel 98 beforehand. Kind of stupid that I learned this afterward and now I'm sad but oh well, just for anyone out there using windows 8 and running dx8. 8 is not the perfect number for frag movies I guess.