First, I love all your reviews and recommendations but now my list of watched shows is getting too long and I need to organise them. Can you please give me more information on how you set up your spreadsheet. I have name, country, year, number of episodes, run time, my rating, what else should I include? Please help me organise this BL list nightmare.
OMG you're so cute. And I am SO SORRY.
The spreadsheet of doom has columns for the following:
code - that’s a short search code for me personally so I can find screen caps stored on my hd, but also the one you see @heretherebedork and I (in particular) using as shorthand when we chat, e.g. UWMA & FUTS.
MDL - whether the show is on My Drama List or not (Y, N, na, and R) na = Vietnam & Cambodia, R = I reviewed it. (I also use MDL as a kind of back up and because I track all the other Asian dramas I watch there, although I don’t rate the het stuff) - you probubly don’t need this one if you don’t watch VBL or use MDL. I’m considering deleting this column since it’s redundant.
year - generally the year the show is given on MDL (release year, rather than completed year), which conflicts with when I post and talk about shows - i.e. Bad Buddy I consider a 2022 show (when it ended), MDL lists it as 2021 (when it started)
title - generally the one we talk about it here (as opposed to whatever MDL or Viki decides on)
subtitle (or alternate title) - the other one
origin - who produced it, I pick the dominant language for those co-produced, so Korea got Peach of Time, Taiwan got Because of You, Thailand got Present Perfect (there are so few of these I keep track of them in a post rather then on the spreadsheet)
rating - in my case, out of 10, i dislike an out of 5 rating system
apx hrs - so this is my best guess at the finished hour total FRESH content for each series, since (for me) length of treatment is important to track when answering wave data and exponential growth questions
length - this is the column needed to calculate the previous one, so it’s: number of episodes X length of episode - average % of credits/recaps/stingers sponsors (usually around 22%)
main trope - so like the major romance trope foundation of the story, enemies to lovers etc...
sub trope - cohabitation, paranormal, etc...
setting - home, office, r&b (restaurant & beverage), university, high school, historical
pair tone - pining, crush, soft, hard, etc...
main pair - grumpy/sunshine, sunshine/tsundere etc... AKA archetypes in play
couple - the names of the two lead characters
sub pairing couple - names of the side dishes
kiss - the side couple’s rating
source - which platform is hosting the show
link - to that show at it’s current source (that I know of)
MDL - a link to the show on My Drama List
R - whether I personally have digital hard copy or not, and whether I want to
trigger - any notes I have about traumatic elements
pitch - my short paragraph summation, if I wrote one
review link - a link to my review on tumblr
more - anything I don’t have a column for
Things I wish I included from the start!
DATE I FINISHED WATCHING IT - because I didn't track this I failed to track my own taste and journey through the genre (MDL tracks this for me, now, but I didn’t have an MDL account at the start)
actor couple/ship name - like OffGun etc... only recently has become necessary since prior to this they had maxed out at 3
language or caption/translation notes/links etc... - this would mostly be for the Thai stuff for me, but like there’s a great convo about the language used in DNA on one of my blog posts right now and I wish I had a place to store that info
directors - specifically because of Vietnamese BL, otherwise MDL mostly tracks this so not necessarily except for sorting reasons
native language title - as in, in the script of the country of origin, or in the case of Japan YET ANOTHER title (I could also use this column to track things like MAMEverse, or Japan’s linked movies) - again MDL has this info
adaptation - if it was from a manga, manwha, or y-novel and who wrote it - MDL has this info tho
OTS - not me, but you might want to consider this since it’s a popular topic, if you happen to be into the audio side of BL tracking the MV of the theme songs might be useful
Production house/studio - used to be there were so few it didn’t matter what their records was, now it does
My memory is SO SO bad ya’ll. Now the spreadsheet acts as a brain back up devise too.
blue for ones I am going to try to get hold of hc,
red for ones in progress (currently airing),
grey for short works (anything that’s fh total is under 45min).
pink for ones I just can not find
So my spreadsheet was designed originally for tracking wave data, hence my prioritized intersted in calculating length and run times of fresh content, then I evolved it to be a review tracking system. But that wasn’t how it started. So it’s messier and less comprehensive than I’d like for its current use. (But honestly, that’s the nature of ALL long running data sets.)
But at 400+ is now too large for me to modify from memory, and 80% of BL I never want to watch again, so it takes a lot to add a new column now.
I also have a tab where I track my rating system.
And a tab where I track my tumblr posts and reviews and such. I started doing that because I am terrible at tagging (and tumblr keeps shadow banning tags and I can never remember which ones are “safe”) so I just could never find anything in my own blog. I needed to do this because people would ask the same question here.
Speaking of which, I’ve actually answered this question before. But I didn’t track it, to my shame.
at the bottom of a post it means I am tracking that post for reuse/update.
Other tabs that might have been useful
A tracking tab for announced/never made BLs with notes and sources of information. Or for the “coming next year” BLs.
Currently I keep this info as part of my big end of year summation post as a draft here on this platform, but I’m petrified Tumblr will delete that or otherwise crash. It’s a MONSTER post while it’s in progress.
