Things to Announce for July

Hello, lovely people on various parts of the planet! I’ve been posting nothing but episode reviews recently, but I realized that there are a couple of things I’d like to bring up this morning.

#1 Happy Canada Day!

Happy 151th birthday to Canada. I regret to say that I don’t have any fancy plans for today. Adding maple syrup to my matcha this morning was about the only Canadian thing I did. Here’s my favourite Canadian recipe though, for those of you into baking: beaver tails! I can’t advertise it enough – it’s super easy to make. Also, you can make it a mealtime staple if you take out the sugar and cinnamon. I eat it like naan sometimes.

#2 Jon’s Creator Showcase

Yup, I’ll be your host for the month! For those of you who don’t know, this showcase was created by Jon Spencer @ Jon Spencer Reviews, and its goal is to feature the works of bloggers/creators/artists every month. More details: here. I made a Tweet today for those of you with Twitter to submit your works and tag some others (you can check out my Twitter here).

I do know that a lot of you don’t have Twitter, so if you still wish to submit a blog post from last month (June), you may link it in a comment below. It can be a post on anything as long as you’re proud of it! It definitely doesn’t have to be on anime.

#3 Small Update, In Case You Wonder Where I’ve Been

I’ve been posting 1-2 episode reviews a week these days, which is a lot less than I’d like to. I’m also very behind on any nominations/tags and on seasonal anime. The reason is mainly that I’ve taken four literature courses at the same time to meet my requirements when I thought it would be two courses per term. And since summer courses tend to be intensive, that boils down to 3-4 novels a week, not including supplementary articles (a lot of them…). And of course, I’ll have to write papers on about half of them (mildly panicking).

The classes I’m taking are fun: Victorian lit, children’s fiction, YA fiction, Canadian lit. Perhaps not at the same time next time though.

…and more to come!

On top of that, I’ve started working part-time for my internship as an editor for an e-zine and a book project. I’ve been doing that for a while already, as I’ve mentioned once, but the difference is that I’ll be paid for doing work over the summer. My supervisor is really nice and is willing to pay me for distant work hours too, provided that I do work at home and keep a record of it, but anyhow, I’ll be a lot busier starting this month than I’ve ever been previously. I won’t be surprised if I have to go on a short hiatus at some point.

#4 Speaking of that Book Project…

The book is going to feature a local salon in Vancouver – not the hairdressing type – think Enlightenment and French Revolution type of thing. Apart from documenting the particular Salon’s growth and interviewing the people who participate in it, the book can perhaps be considered a study of how community works, and is an attempt to explore different potentials for it especially in its final chapter/section. And what’s more exciting is that I’ll be contributing a piece to it!

I’ll be writing about online communities, based on my own experiences and hopefully yours as well. Having introduced my supervisor to the world of blogging, I am now responsible for gathering thoughts from anyone who is willing to contribute. There is rather little commitment to your participation in this – I’ll be making a full post explaining it shortly, but all I really need from you are any of your thoughts on being a part of the aniblogging (or any corner of WordPress) community.

Potential prompts:

• How do people bond through blogging (and what is the nature of this sort of bond)?
• How does being a part of an online community impact you?
• How do virtual interactions compare to real life ones? Advantages of either?
• If you have the chance to meet your blogger friends, would you prefer to share the things you normally talk to them about with them in person? (Are online exchanges a second-best option to real life conversations?)

These are questions many of us already muse about on our blogs, but while we may each have some of our own answers, the online community we’re so familiar with is something that anyone outside of this niche can’t quite relate to as readily. Because I’ve heard many opinions in favour of real-life interactions over virtual ones (which are even said to be dangerous) in the process of putting together this book, I would really like to collect some of your thoughts on the matter and learn something about the nature of an online community myself.

I’ll probably come up with more questions later on, and make a Google Doc or something. Expect a post containing more details soon. Please do let me know if you have any thoughts on this (or suggestions on how to make this mini field study work best)!