Author spotlight/Themed weeks planning

[geraineon]

Hi all,

I'd love to get some stuff going in August, so I'd like to ask you all if anyone wants to help out with this!

Author's Spotlight

What: A post, or collection of posts (depending on your energy/time) on one specific author and their works. Ideally it will include links to the works, available translations if any, some thoughts of your thoughts on some of their works. Feel free to include your favourite fanworks too or other reviews!
When: An author every month

Please reply to claim an author and month!

List of authors and months (will be updated as we go):

August: geraineon (Jiang Zi Bei)
September: momijizukamori (priest) + requesting for help
October: geraineon (Musuli) [note: if you want to do this, let me know!] We will have a themed novel spotlight instead! (thanks hazevi)
November:
December: douqi (Ning Yuan)
January: hazevi (Yi Zhan Ye Deng)

Themed weeks

What: During the themed weeks, recommend anything related to the theme or create fanworks/request for fanworks related to the theme (e.g., Thousand Autumns, but make it e-sports). Or discuss them however! (We can even do read-alongs, I think?).
When: Every month, for two weeks (tentatively, testing it out the week of August 4th)

This is what I'm having more trouble trying to think about what to do and duration. I have a list of suggested themes and genres compiled through past posts (thank you!). I suppose we can try it first? Any and all comments/suggestions appreciated on how to do this! (if you have examples from other communities/other spaces, that'd be great!)

List of suggested themes/genres

Sci-Fi
Detective stories
Esports/Entertainment industry
Female Protagonists
Quick Transmigration
Infinite Flow/Unlimited Flow
Modern Day
Xianxia
Wuxia
No Romance
Short stories/Novellas
Short Novels (max of 50 chapters)
Really Long Novels (500+ chapters)

Comments

[hazevi]

It's taken me such a long time to work up something to pitch here haha. I'm currently more interested in
the themed weeks because I think I definitely read more by genre than by authors in general.

I'm currently thinking of doing one (or maybe a series???) on school romances (high school and college), it's a big enough genre. I've glanced at my finished reading/watching list recently and realized that there's an overwhelming amount of this genre and even then I've been finding more to read.

Anyways, the reason why I was considering a series is because my list is actually decently well spread out over BL, BG and GL, so dividing like this means I can compare similar works while avoiding issues like comparing apples to oranges in terms of relationships. (also the fact that my BG list leans more of a watch list from drama adaptations of novels means it will be a bit different). Or I could maybe separate depending on what type of tropes it has (?) since a lot of school romances also usually bleed into the 破镜重圆 trope (reconciling after separation) and stuff like that. I'd probably cover more ground with more books mentioned.

If I do a singular post, it's probably going to be a 3 book case study, one from each, and I already have the list:

过门 (Through the Strait Gates) by priest for BL
最好的我们 (Our Best) by 八月长安 for BG
她的山，她的海 (Her Mountain, Her Sea) by 扶华 for GL

And then I'll probably throw in some self-reasoning about why I like the genre so much haha. This is definitely a pitch type of thing and I haven't really seen the theme weeks being implemented (although I have been traveling and haven't kept up too much). Let me know what seems better.

(Or I mean... I could also do both???? I'd be very slow though, since knowing myself I'm gonna reread stuff to word my thoughts better.)

[geraineon]

Yes, please!

I don't have the brains and breadth of reading to be able to do themed weeks myself, and yeah, I haven't implemented themed weeks yet because I don't want to have to lift author spotlight and themed weeks myself (author spotlight at least has other people who volunteered). Very happy that you want to do one!

Let me know if there's anything I can do to support you! Either way works for me. Hm, I guess we can try a themed week for school romance, launching with your 3 book case study and then inviting others to also pitch their fav school romances?

[hazevi]

Yeah doing the case study definitely works! I'm def ready to re-read my chosen books for it haha, just to start off discussion and stuff.

I definitely have a longer list of BL school romance books I want to talk about at some point in the future, but now that I think about it, those can definitely make their own themed week for like 'BL modern romance with reconciliation' or I can just bring them up in discussion instead, while the other genres are all over the place so I think focusing on one book will be good for me haha.

I guess the final thing to do is to set a time; I'll aim for like early October since it seems like Author spotlight hasn't been taken for October either? It can definitely change according to the comm's convenience as well.

[geraineon]

Romance with reconciliation can be a whole thing by itself XD it's such a good trope imo.

Early Oct sounds good! I was gonna do an author's spotlight on musuli if nobody wants to do Oct, but I'm actually pretty busy then.

Thank you so much! I'm excited for the case study~