Visual Expression and Social Media (ABEA Day #2!)

Hi guys! I’m participating in the second day of Armchair BEA. 🙂 The blog topic today is are Visual Expressions and Social Media. Here are the prompts exactly!

~Visual Expressions~

There are so many ways to tell stories. Whether it’s comic books, graphic novels, visual novels, webcomics, etc, there are quite a lot of other mediums to tell a story. On this day, we will be talking about those books and formats that move beyond just words and use other ways to experience a story.

I think a variety of book formats can definitely appeal to a lot of different people. Some are fond of just the words, others like illustrations like in Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children or Challenger Deep. I’m not super familiar with graphic novels or visual novels, but I have a few to talk about! 🙂

My first (and only) graphic novel experience has been with Sailor Moon! In the last few years, Sailor Moon has been taking off again with a graphic novel/manga reprint with new translations along with Sailor Moon Crystal, an anime adaptation of the manga. I’ve only read up to the this volume of Sailor Moon though. 😦 Because they’re just a little expensive! I think people who might not like to read regular books would really like reading graphic novels. There’s also a really big variety of them, there’s horror, romance, fantasy, supernatural, “slice of life”, and shoujo. Basically something for everyone. 🙂 The animation is also nice to look at!

And because I love it sooo much (I’ve watched the anime<3), I’m going to show some manga pictures!

         

Now I’ll talk about visual novels. If you don’t know, a visual novel is an interactive story told on a computer that generally has choices you pick that impact where you end up. Most visual novels, that I’ve seen,  revolve around the main character ending up in a relationship. These are sometimes called dating sims which from what I read isn’t technically true.

Generally the main character of the visual novel is a guy, but I have seen a few where a woman’s the main character. Dating sims are where the story focuses quite a bit on romance and where you (as the character) end up. There’s generally a few different people the main character can end up with, it all depends on your choices.  I’ve found that I really like the plots of a couple.

My first visual novel was Katawa Shoujo. The plot does revolve around romance, but there’s also a lot of talk about people’s disabilities and how they don’t necessarily hinder them. It’s interesting to see how each person adapts to their disability.

I think people who want to be more “interactive” with their reading would enjoy visual novels. There are a lot of different ones, the only downside is that a lot of them are Windows only. 😦 And if you have a Mac like me, that’s a bit of an inconvenience. If you haven’t tried visual novels, I would definitely recommend trying them out! A lot of them are free, but there are some you have to pay for like The Royal Trap, though you can try a demo of it. 🙂 This one features a female main character. It’s sort of a romance mystery.

Here are some pictures from Katawa Shoujo.

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~Social Media~

How do you use social media to expand your blogging/writing horizons?  Social Media is all about networking and connections, and utilizing today’s technology to the fullest.  Make sure you mention your own social media pages. Do you have another blog, maybe a Tumblr? Have a Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook? Or maybe there’s an underrated social media program that you like.

I use social media to interact with someone! I remember when I was researching about book blogs (stalking book blogs), I remembered it was HIGHLY advised that you make a twitter account because of readers, authors, publishers, etc etc. I am so glad I did. Twitter has just been so awesome and I always had it before, but that was for following fictional accounts and bands. 🙂

Twitter’s definitely helped me a lot with blogging. It’s helped me:

1. Share my posts

2. Find friends!

3. Discover new books!

4. Talk to authors!

5. Follow publishers

6. Discover newly added ARCs to Edelweiss and Netgalley!

Most of all, I just love how many people I’ve met because of Twitter. I’ve made friends, found bloggers and talked to so many authors, it’s just been so awesome. I’d talk more about it, but as my blogaversary is in two months, I’ll hold off. 🙂 There are always tons of Twitter parties and Twitter chats and I just LOVE that. It gives me the chance to meet new people, find someone who loves the same book I do, that may be underrated and have fun. I always find out when publishers do eARC drops on EW because everyone will get all excited and tweet about it. 🙂 So that’s convenient. 😉

I do have a couple other social media pages. I have a Facebook page, but I haven’t updated it in forever which I really need to do for my 25 followers. 😉 I also have a Pinterest, which is mostly personal, but I’ve been (veryyyy) slowly adding my book reviews and such there! I’m probably going to create a new one for my blog though, possibly. I have instagram, but I forget a lot to send pictures there! And then it’s always a struggle for me to figure out how to use instagram on my Ipod touch. 😦 But I’ll learn soon enough! I will! I’m sure! I hope.

I really love Goodreads too. I did use it in the past before I started blogging, but that was very rarely for books, most for groups. ;). Now I use it all the time to add books to my shelves (mostly 2016 and 2017 :P), see what friends are reading, and read reviews! I think it’s nice to have a Goodreads account because you can track your reading by it by making different shelves and stuff. 🙂 It’s also fun to join groups and participate in those.

I think having a variety of social media accounts can definitely benefit you and your blog. You reach different people on Facebook than you would on Twitter. There are benefits to Pinterest (such as making different collections) and Instagram (showing off that bookography! Oh, is that a word? It is now!). Though, you do have to worry about having TOO many social media networks, I would think. Because odds are, you’ll cross-post and depending on how you do that, readers may be more likely to discover your posts on Twitter than your others and so it may be beneficial to cut one of them out and focus on the others! The two social media networks that I use most for blogging are Twitter and Goodreads.

Overall, social media is such a huge game changer with the ways people can share your posts, especially on Twitter with retreating and the option of tagging people and using hashtags.

Now for my social media pages!

Twitter / Facebook / Pinterest / Instagram / Goodreads

 

Okay, so what social media networks do YOU like? What do you think about Pinterest? Should I make another Pinterest for my blog? What do YOU use? Share your links! Have you ever read graphic novels or visual novels? Do you have any favorites? Let me know. Happy ABEA!