#bl spreadsheet

The resources I’ve found so far tend to sort by country and don’t seem to go back very far.

Signed, a huge nerd falling down another rabbit hole

A second ask from this same person said they found a spreadsheet.

BL Tracking! 

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 

heat - rated from 0-3

kiss - graded from 1-10 

sub paring - side dishes 

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. 

I also color code:

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. 

Tabs 

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. 

When I do this:

(source)

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.