Out of curiosity, what's the process like working at Dramabeans? How do you guys decide who recaps what? xD
There’s no hard and set rule, but assignments are predominately based on schedules. When you’re wrapping up a show, they’ll check in and see what your availability is for the upcoming month or so, and what shows will start airing that they think they’ll want covered.
My work schedule right now means Weds/Thurs dramas would be incredibly hard for me to recap in a timely manner, so I automatically know they won’t be looking at those for me, which means we were looking mostly at Mon/Tues shows. But when I was wrapping up My Secret Hotel, I told them that the only upcoming show that interested me was Misaeng (which worked well enough with my schedule, even though I don’t have the time to write it up until Tuesday).
They do try to take personal tastes into account — you don’t want someone who hates the show they’re recapping just because it’s something they wouldn’t watch in the first place (which is why you’ll probably never see me recap a melodrama).
For those of us who still need subs to be able to fully understand everything, there’s also the issue in making sure it will be available on a subbed site in a timely manner. That was the issue with Golden Cross — there were recappers available, but they would have needed subs, so they couldn’t do it.
As for who gets paired up together, that’s still a bit of mystery to me. I think it’s still based on availability, schedules, etc. I’ve worked with all the new minions at least once, I believe (and only worked with LollyPip twice because we specifically asked if we could work together again).
But all the recapping decisions seem to be more of an art than a science, and I figure it’ll adapt as everyone figures out the best way to do things.
