Discussion Friday

[geraineon]

Time for Discussion Friday again!

Since we have a nice school romance themed post earlier this week, let's talk about school experiences!

How was yours compared to the school experience you read in the novels set in schools? What are the differences/similarities (e.g., did you have to clean the class, did you have to wear school uniform)? Did you experience a school romance?

And if you haven't read any school romances or do not want to share about your school experiences, what would you like to see from your cnovel school-era romance?

Comments

[geraineon]

I've read *one* and half school era romance so far so I can't really say too much about it.

Hm, no school era romance for me but definitely a lot of school era passionate friendships (girls school, lol). And because we have the same classmates for the whole year (teachers move, students don't), there is a bit of a in-group/out-group rivalry thing so I definitely empathize when I read Wait for Me After School xD (yeah! Beat the next class in sports!! Etc.).

I am curious how schools work in other countries!

[llonkrebboj]

Yes! I'm curious about the students move and the teachers stay in their classrooms model. Doesn't it take more time? 👀 There was talk about implementing that a couple of times, but never came to anything lolol.

[geraineon]

I guess it gives a lot more flexibility... because if students don't move, then they have to take all the subjects as everyone else in that class. pros and cons!

[aurumcalendula]

That's interesting about the teachers moving - I think generally once we had more than one teacher for subjects it was always the students moving and the teachers staying.

iirc in elementary and middle school each grade level was divided into smaller groups that were together in classes for that year (I was very sad when my best friends from particular years didn't end up in the same group as me).

[geraineon]

we had different teachers for different subjects, and a homeroom teacher. So we just stay in the same class while teachers go in and out based on the subject. That does mean there's a lot less room to tailor our education (we get assigned to classes based on our preferred subject "package").

mm, when I learnt about the system where students move, I did think that it will be somewhat disruptive for friendships... unless you end up in the same subjects all the way.

[aurumcalendula]

Now I'm curious how who moves stuff developed (and what's common where)!

We did get to see each other at recess and lunch, but it was frustrating (going by my old yearbooks, I think it was randomized).

[geraineon]

Due to classes being sorted by grades, and people staying in the same classes all year, I end up being classmates with some people multiple years in a row. And it's easy to get to know everyone in the class. I appreciated that a lot more after learning about other systems. But I wish we could have chosen other subjects (I wanted to do English literature but it was impossible unless I took classes outside of school).

Yeah, I wonder too! Which countries decided on teacher move vs. student move...

[aurumcalendula]

I haven't read any school era cnovels yet (I don't tend to read a lot with that genre in general), so I'm not sure how my experiances compares.

I went from public school for elementry and middle school to an all girls Catholic high school. I didn't particularly mind the uniforms in the latter (public school didn't have them).

No school romance, although there was some one-sided pining on my part in high school (I'm not sure how subtle I was about it).

[geraineon]

Ah, are uniforms a feature of Catholic high schools? Are all Catholic high schools private?

[aurumcalendula]

I'm not super familiar with them outside the one I went to, but that's the impression I got. My school's uniform involved a plaid skirt, polo shirt with the school's logo embroidered on it, a sweater with the school's crest, and knee socks iirc. The skirt and sweater were required on Mondays, but we could wear dress pants of a particular color and a sweatshirt with the school's logo on other days if we wanted.

Yeah. Any parochial school in the US is a private school.

[llonkrebboj]

I remember maybe... three novels that are set in high school (the other handful were either university or taking shelter in a high school during the apocalypse 😅, which feel a bit different from school era romance xD) and only one of them even had romance during that period of the protagonists' lives xD so +1 on can't say much about it.

I was in an all girls catholic school and basically a big salted fish about studies in general (ahem. was more busy with novels, fic and library rep duty), so reading about the school/class flower and grass tropes, especially when they are also overachievers, was very entertaining. We also had class/subject monitors and group classroom cleaniness duty, so those aspects were relatable!

Entering the school on the first day, we're sorted not only into classes from day one, but also into four colour coded houses named after saints, and get that strip of colour over the top of the school crest pin to put on, and a house T-shirt (a separate T-shirt from PE shirts, which are white). The houses were for school sports day and misc. competitions. But the rivalry is just as familiar xD

Our inter-class competitions were more like... special subject activities? Like the time everyone had to adapt a scene from our literature books and put up a performance. Or the rewrite pop songs with lyrics about history and geography (don't ask lol, the things are still stuck in my head). Again, as a salted fish this was all torture to me LOL.

No romance. I like and liked my ficton more. We did hear a lot of tea about friends and schoolmates tho. Like a surprising amount for 16 and unders.

[geraineon]

Haha, in my school, the popular ones are the sports people and those who are somehow well known seniors in the uniformed clubs, and I guess those who get really good grades? Idk, I was more into anime/manga/books and didn't really engaged in all the Valentine day gift giving of roses. We also have colour coded houses! I forgot what they were named after oops (I was one of those who liked to skip sports things). We had those inter-class competitions too!! (and every week, the cleanest class and the dirtiest class gets announced...). As a kid, I was too aro and ace to notice things going on around me XD

[llonkrebboj]

We had a student council (schoolwide event planning), house committee (intra school games etc.), class committee, club committee and so on, and many of those, being vote based, were partially popularity contests. Except maybe the club ones for smaller clubs? If you didn't have enough people, whoever volunteers just gets a walkover LOL. OMG the cleaniness announcements!!!! YES.

[geraineon]

We had a student council too. XD and all sorts of committee. Class committee. Prefects. Librarians. And people in charge of cleanliness and beauty of the school. Club committees. Etc.

So busy aiyo (I skipped most of these. I was not a model student xD)

[llonkrebboj]

Oh! Librarian o/ that was me!!! Always choosing to hang out with books over people 🤭

*shakes your hand in not model student*

I was using sewing skills from home econs to make nets for catching fish from the school pond xD

[geraineon]

Omg, haha. Did you catch any fish?

I was the type to skip activities by ... going to the playground next door or to the mall.

[llonkrebboj]

I did!!!! All the little baby pond fish that got flustered by my little pink checkered (palm sized) net.

Ofc, I trapped them and let them go bc the fun was in the catching xD

[halfcactus]

Wow the color-coded houses was not a thing for me, but our classes were also named after either saints (grade school) or, Catholic values (??? high school). XD

I don't remember having those inter-class competitions lol. Interesting! But that would also be torture to me. XD

[llonkrebboj]

xD Oh!!!! We had those values (I think school values and motto though, not catholic ones? Faith, Hope and Love or something like that at the front of our school hall and maybe another set below each balcony thingy on either side flanking the hall.)

Classes were named after flowers in Primary - you had to be observant to figure out which was the top class xD, and just numbers (i didn't like that) in Secondary.

[hazevi]

Diverse, big public high school and an even bigger, even more diverse public university in America for me. On paper, it's really quite different from the school settings in cnovels that I often enjoy reading, but there are still similarities that stand out. Everyone in the same grade literally loves tea about romances, if a pair has gotten together or broken up. I didn't personally get involved (I'm too invested in my 2d stuff to care) but it was happening all around me and I'd sometimes listen to friends talk about their (usually somewhat toxic) relationships and I'd occasionally quip "so why not just break up?" which wasn't that appreciated but.

Competition for academics is still quite brutal, though not based on tests in cnovels. It's mostly stuff like GPA and those who care really care and those who don't really don't.

Since I've seen a lot of international students around me (some being of Chinese origin) I do wonder if any author has done/might do a novel with that background setting, like the characters meeting while being international students somewhere? There probably would be some bonding over same origins, struggles, etc. I guess that does call for the author doing extensive research or having a similar background though, which might be rare.

But yeah, I'll probably be a school romance enthusiast for a long time hehe.

[geraineon]

I imagine there must be novels that feature international students! But how well they are portrayed might be another matter... (alas, I have very little knowledge in school-era romance cnovels).

Everyone in the same grade literally loves tea about romances, if a pair has gotten together or broken up.

A universal constant XD

[ehyde]

I remember a friend posted about a novel about an international student! I don't know much about it or if it fits in the category of school romance though as it's not translated (or wasn't, at the time). I'll have to look up what it was called.

[geraineon]

I'm gonna treat you as our school-era romance expert!

Referring to the comment here: https://cnovels.dreamwidth.org/31798.html?thread=607030#cmt607030, are the school-era romance you read usually pure/innocent slice-of-life type of stories?

[hazevi]

I'm in no way an expert haha I just happen to read it more than others I suppose

Yep, I usually lean towards the innocent slice of life stuff because that's my preferred vibe with these types of stories- something youthful and fluffy

I think even in terms of hardships depicted they rarely get to the point of gangs/really vulgar. It's mostly like dealing with life/death situations, relationship/moral issues or something like that outside of studying with the looming entrance exams. Stuff in cnovels usually don't go past hiding somewhere to smoke or like bullying? (not to say that bullying isn't insignificant irl but it usually is downplayed to a minor thing that happens.)

The one exception I can think of off the top of my head is Guomen; highlight for spoilers! * A side character gets in trouble with the law after someone shady essentially blackmails him; there's jailtime involved. It's not graphic at all, though, just mentioned as a thing and then time just steamrolls on.*

[halfcactus]

My school life was very forgettable and not particularly comparable to c-ent school canons but I just like ensemble-cast + youth dramas + friendship shenanigans, and school settings are good for that! I really enjoyed the My Huckleberry Friends cdrama adaptation (it's based on a novel series), which had a lot of nostalgic beats about music and fandom (anime/sports). Same with the GL manhua Their Story which, even though I know it's incomplete and controversial, is a comfort read for me... Just kids being stupid and young.

Not a fan of: gaokao storylines which is mostly centered around stress and angst...

[llonkrebboj]

I'm very facinated about the concept of going home for lunch and staying in school till 9pm for revision on the regular - since we're on the subject of gaokao. The latter is a bit horrifying?

[geraineon]

Kids being stupid and young... Also that period in our lives we can do many stupid things and get away with it (sorta)

My school was not very high stress in terms of exams I think. But I definitely don't miss stressing over exams...

[hazevi]

Ooo My Huckleberry Friends! Out of all of the Zhenhua series I'd wish to have the same experience as Lin Yang and Yu Zhouzhou but With You will always be my favored Zhenhua series simply because Geng Geng is my favorite girly out of all of the Zhenhua peeps. Still I think that My Huckleberry Friends was a great drama

[halfcactus]

LOL I've only seen like 1-2 eps of With You, but Geng Geng being somewhat disastrous makes her a more relatable protagonist. XD Lin Yang and Yu Zhouzhou in the drama adaptation were great for the chemistry and various friendship dynamics, but I'm not sure how much I'd have loved them on paper.

My favorite parts of the cdrama were really just all the pop culture references that you can see and hear (cosplay! music!), and the many different expressions of fandom... And the hilarious bit where the anime club enacts a Li Bai X Du Fu play being all like LI BAI IS SAILOR MOON... 10/10 for shenanigans.

[douqi]

I went to a Chinese medium primary school (as in, all classes were taught in Chinese except other-language classes) and then to a secondary school that was technically Malay medium, but culturally extremely Chinese. The latter was apparently blacklisted by the national police headquarters for gang activity (I do remember vague stories about a student whose older brother was killed in a gang war). I was good at academics but had negative school spirit (as in, I only did extra-curriculars when forced, and never joined any student committees, even though most students who got good grades did so. I did become a student librarian, but only for the instrumental purpose of being able to borrow twice as many books per week as other students). This seemed to annoy many teachers, because it bucked the norm.

I think I've read exactly one school-themed c-novel, and that's Her Mountain, Her Sea. The boarding-school model, the bullying and gaokao stress depicted in the book was very different from what I personally experienced in school. However, there was one thing that struck me. A (British) friend who was also reading the novel at the same time commented that 'of course you can tell these girls are lesbians, their whole social and emotional life at school revolves entirely around the other girls, and the boys are just and afterthought'. That describes my entire school social life. The social hierarchy was ruled by and determined by the girls; boys were distant adjuncts to our friendship groups. This had nothing to do with sexual orientation. My friend then explained that their school friendship groups had always been mixed-gender, which was why they found it so striking.

Some time ago, Chu Dao, the author of Burn, started posting a high school baihe c-novel where the protagonist is startlingly vulgar and sexual and extremely badly behaved. I was following this with interest, because my impression of c-novel school romances (particularly for baihe) is that they tend towards sort of 'pure, innocent' slice of life, and this definitely bucked the trend. Think Eliza Clark's Boy Parts, but as a high school story. Sadly this has been on hiatus for the last little while.

[geraineon]

Gang activity!! Wow. I did Form 6 at a school with gang activity too... but I didn't really have a lot of encounter with that. *high fives in having negative school spirit*

That's pretty interesting, what you said about your British friend's school experience. I wonder what led to that type of difference in socialization...

My sense on school romances (not c-novel but hm, jp impressions I guess), is that it can be pure/innocent, but it can also be messy as hell (heights of passion, terrible decision-making). I'm gonna ask our school-era romance expert!

Hopefully that high school baihe will go off hiatus sometime!