Those of you who read my Sailor Moon or Noragami post this week already know this, but Station Management (read: my own stubborn work ethic) accepted my time off request, so I’m taking my very first blogging break! There won’t be any WordPress posts for a solid week, although I do still have some goodies queued up on the ol’ Tumblr to keep you entertained.
While I’m out, I figured I’d take this downtime to talk about something I’ve been considering for a while, and give everyone a chance to weigh in.
As much as I love blogging about anime, it’s by no means my only interest, and I’ve been getting the serious itch to set my nerd flag down in other geeky territories as of late. I started doing the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D recaps on The Mary Sue to sort of test the waters, and they’re pretty nice waters, so I’m thinking of semi-gradually expanding The Josei Next Door into a Friendly Neighborhood “Anime and More” Blog. Anime would still be my primary focus and you’d still get most of the reviews you get now—you’d just get other fun stuff mixed in there, too.
Thing is, I don’t want to drive any of you lovely readers away, so I figured I’d offer everyone the chance to weigh in on this decision and help guide the direction of the blog. This poll is by no means binding, but I am curious to get a feel for what you’d be interested in seeing here at JND, and intend to take that into account as we move forward. So please take a look at the options below and vote for as many topics that tickle your fancy:
*I wouldn’t enter “video games” unless you reeeeeally want endless posts about Dragon Age. I don’t game very much, sorry!
Thanks so much for your feedback and just generally being awesome people, and I’ll talk to you all again when I get back from my week of fun in the sun!
The Josei Next Door 
I would love to see you expand into more general geeky things! I enjoy reading your views on anime and I assume the same sort of thinking goes behind other facets of geekiness as well. Can’t wait to read more from you!
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You certainly deserve a vacation; I hope you enjoy it. Now to address your question to readers: First and foremost, write about what you feel you *have* to write about, no matter what we say. Second, I think your newbie guides to Utena and Sailor Moon are wonderful; they’re what brought me to the blog in the first place. If you’re up for doing that for any other series (anime or not) I think that would be great. (Again, you pick the series.) Third, turning to a more conventional “business perspective”, are there particular areas that are underserved by online reviewers/recappers and where your particular skills and sensibility might add value? I mentioned manga in my response because I think the (legal) streaming revolution may hit manga like it did anime, and if so I think it would be great to have someone with taste and intelligence serve as a guide to readers facing a plethora of candidates for binge-reading.
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Thanks for responding! I do enjoy doing the episode-by-episode write-ups (both “Newbie” and “Watch Party”-style), so I absolutely intend to keep doing those in some form. I’d like to kick up another Watch Party at some point, but I can’t seem to settle on which series I’d want to tackle. (Time is a big factor on those, too, as they generally require multiple re-watches and at least a little cultural/historical research on my end.) We’ll see, though.
I agree that manga has really been taking off in the last year or so, and with the selection constantly expanding, it’d be nice to get more anibloggers (myself included) talking about what’s available and what’s worth checking out. I’d like to at least pop in every so often with suggestions, for sure. Glad to hear my doing that would interest you!
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Just talk about Dragon age 24/7.
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As a blogger myself… and a writer, I think its always a good idea to expand and write about other things. The one thing I’d caution on, just from experience, is covering too wide a range of topics.
Before I started Anime Evo, I used to have another site that covered both Video Games AND Anime. Staying current on Both was so darn difficult that I ended up giving on games entirely, not because I don’t like video games, but because I started to feel overwhelmed.
I think when you have less to cover, and you feel like there’s something you can add to, in terms of the conversation of a particular topic, its tempting to just write about as much as possible.
But, I also think that there needs to be time to just sit back, relax and avoid writing about everything perhaps?
That’s my opinion as a writer, but as a reader and fan of your work, I’d say I’m definitely excited to see your thoughts on other things.
What do you think about comics, for example (Its something that I’ve fallen out of thanks to marvel and DC’s “reboots and relaunches”) or movies, or TV Shows. I’d be curious to see you cover something like the Flash or Arrow e.t.c.
I think, once you’ve written about a few things, its pretty easy to talk and cover anything else, provided you know the subject matter, so hey. I’d say go for it, but dial back if it becomes too hard of a thing.
You could also use this blog/JoseiNextDoor as a hub of sorts where people can find all your various posts, and then be able to find whatever site/topic you post them on.
Eitherway good luck, and I said it before but, Have a good a fun break! :D
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Thanks, Setsu! And yeah, I’m going to do my best not to overload myself. I have a tendency to do that, so I’ll for sure have to be careful of burn-out. The idea here isn’t so much that I’ll be forced to keep up on EVERYTHING (fortunately I don’t do news stories here, so I don’t have to be up on “current events” necessarily), but just that, because I’m already reading comics/manga, watching other geeky TV/films, and listening to podcasts, that I wanted to give myself the freedom/leeway to be able to talk about that stuff here if I ever got the urge. Glad to hear you’d be interested in reading it, too!
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Do what makes you happy. Really.
Personally, I tend to agree with Setsuken up there, but mostly because I’d hate to see you running yourself even more ragged trying to do too many things.
That said, if you wanna do it, just do it.
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Like I told Setsu, I do have a bad tendency to overload myself, so burn-out is something I’ll definitely have to watch out for. But I was starting to feel confined by that “anime” in my site’s tagline, so this was more a way to see if people would be interested in reading posts about other topics here if I got the urge/time to make it happen. The response has been really supportive so far, so that was great to see. Thanks!
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I for one would be five hundred percent on board with endless Dragon Age posts!
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This is the second one of these I got! You guys are cracking me up. I won’t make any promises, but if I ever (finally!) finish DA:I, there could be a write-up about the series in the future. Thanks for weighing in!
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Do you do table top RPGs? I’m always up to read a campaign journal be it mainstream like D&D or Pathfinder or one of the other interesting games out there like the new Star Wars or something like Tenra Bansho Zero
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I do, actually! My friends and I get together once a week for ongoing games, in fact. I’m not familiar with campaign journals, but it’d be something to look into, for sure. Thanks for the suggestion!
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