My Thoughts on Theme Week

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I’ve always been sort of indifferent towards theme week, and it dates back to the first time I ever participated in it, way back in April of 2020. That particular theme week was the VHL’s way of getting input from the community on some recruitment ideas, which I didn’t think was the greatest idea for a theme. There are only so many different ways you can effectively recruit, and by Sunday when I do my point tasks most of the good ideas were already taken. After about 500 words of incoherent rambling and some other bullshit in my media spot, I was done. It wasn’t pretty, but I didn’t want to miss out on that uncapped TPE. I believe the biggest problem we currently have with theme week is lack of interest from the community. For every Gustav that writes an good article and actually seems engaged, there is a Ferk who just shows up for the TPE.

 

One of the biggest gripes I see about theme week is that it restricts member’s creatively for that respective week. I however have no problem with that as I’m generally terrible at coming up with ideas for a point task, regardless if it’s a graphic or a media spot. However, if the theme is a bad one like my first experience was, it can be a chore. So the question arises, what should we do to fix theme week?

 

Likely one of the most popular ideas for a theme week replacement is a system similar to the SBA’s all star week. It’s the same general idea as theme week as you receive a free doubles week once per season for doing a point task, with one exception; you aren’t restricted by what you can make your point task about. Any point task is accepted for a doubles week, as long as it meets the requirements set by the league, whether it’s 500 words on a media spot or a certain amount of effort for a graphic. There are some that feel that theme week is alright how it is currently run and I’m not 100% on board with it sometimes, but I’m someone with a severe lack of creativity. I appreciate having a set topic to write about sometimes as I’m not very good at coming up with topics to write about on my own. For example, I once wrote an article about how Jeffrey Pines should’ve gone first overall. Having someone else to tell me what to write about is sometimes a welcome sight, depending on the theme.

 

I think we could come up with some sort of compromise between the two. Instead of having a theme week every season and running out of ideas, like what seems to be happening right now, we could have one every few seasons. In the place of the missing theme week every other season or so we could adopt a week similar to the SBA's all star week and hand out a doubles week for any kind of league point task. I think this sort of idea could make the theme week haters happy, the theme week loyalists happy, and anyone in between.