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

[geraineon]

Only if nobody wants to do august: I'll take Jiang Zi Bei

(If anyone has strong feelings about Jiang Zi Bei, lmk! I'm taking this only because I'm blasting through their works right now)

[duckprintspress]

I'm definitely interested but I don't think I can commit to anything right now. *sweatdrop*

[momijizukamori]

I could maybe commit to doing something for Priest, though if anyone else wants to help out that would be excellent because I'm not sure I can do her justice on my own XD Anything other than August would be fine, I've got some other stuff due in August so I'd rather not be worrying about this as well.

[douqi]

I can do one for Ning Yuan in, let's say December?

(future douqi will regret this because she will be neck-deep in work shit around that time, but hey, that's a problem for future douqi)

[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.)

[halfcactus]

Could we link to the corresponding spotlight posts in this post + add them to the community memories, maybe?

[hazevi]

Okay... put me down for author spotlight down in January- I'll be doing baihe author Yi Zhan Ye Deng (the author of the novel I finished translating)

This is somewhat spite fueled and I might regret this later since school but... honestly I've stewed in my annoyance for two days so might as well.