CAUTION: Do not read the notes in the pictures if you haven't watched Victory Gundam episode 47 yet! There be spoilers.
My notes don't always look quite like this, but for a dense episode where I feel as though there's a lot to talk about, this is pretty typical!
I start by watching the episode through (pausing, rewinding to watch certain scenes again), noting down what happens, significant lines, and any reactions/thoughts/things I want to discuss. This takes 1-2 hours. Then I'll read my notes to get a sense for what the overarching topics seem to be, and go over them with a bunch of highlighters, color-coding the notes by topic. Finally, I'll make a discussion outline, with the various points organized by topic rather than by when they happened in the episode:
The kicker of all this organization being - we usually don't discuss one of these topics through without pulling in points from one or more other topics. That's just the nature of discussion, and of stories - it's all interconnected. But by the time I've got my notes organized in this way, I almost don't need to consult them, and it's much easier to keep track of what we've talked about and what we haven't.
And since I actually have no idea what Thom's note-taking and discussion-prep process is like, hopefully he'll share that here next week!
Have any ideas for the kinds of posts you'd like to see here? Drop a comment below or message us - we'd love to hear from you.
Wishing you a very genki weekend,
Nina