"Blackwood" sounds interesting for the mystery (though usual cast of misfit and bad boy). "Shift" sounds like a thousand other "geek gets powers and magical pixie girl" stories. "Poltergeeks" - well, it would depend on what the world is like. The blurb doesn't really tell us much about the story beyond "special girl is special". Though with shades of Scooby Doo. :)
How about "Don't be boring" and leave it at that?
Also this is more "ten marketing myths" than rules. There sure isn't a "rule" that women can't write hard SF - there's a myth. And most of the rest are marketing trend-related.
It looks like fun and I'll probably watch it, but I just can't get past "prison in space". That's like $100,000,000 of expense per prisoner. Have these people never heard of islands?
Ah- thanks for the heads-up. I, too, want to support legitimate methods of buying online translations of manga.
Edit: Oh, wait. North America only. Guess they're not interested/haven't licensed selling the thing to the rest of the world.
Self-publishing is simply another option. It's not going to kill the publishing industry (I should hope not!) But it does give writers a chance to get their work out there. Some writers will continue with large or small publishing houses. Some will self-publish. Some will do both. It is especially a huge boon for writers who have out of print backlist, or writers who don't fit into a convenient marketing niche.
Very few people taking up either option will sell a million of anything. Self-published or not, a million-book author is a rarity. Most books put out by publishing houses would be lucky to sell 20,000 copies (which is the level of a bestseller, apparently).
But a book will unequivocally earn more from self-publishing than it will sitting on your hard drive. I've earned coming up on ten thousand dollars in the last six months.
Nor am I looking for a "huge deal" with a publisher. I prefer to control my own works, and even though I'm far from a natural marketer, I've gained a following, my books are being found by readers, and I no longer have to go through the tiresome process of submission (just the painful process of editing and feedback!). I've even had a book listed as a finalist in the Aurealis Awards (Australia's SFF book awards).
Self-publishing is not an us v them situation. Nor is it an endless grind of self-promotion (I post once a week on my blog and run the occasional giveaway and that's about it). Sure you start out obscure without the boost a publishing house will give you. But if you have a good book, and run a couple of giveaways, then people will read it, and tell their friends.
It's great to have options.
Andrea K Host
I'd be interested to see what split Open Road is offering authors. Given that any author can get any of their backlist books (which they have rights to) up as an ebook for a relatively small amount of money, I'm rather cautious of these companies springing up to make themselves part of that action.
I've been trying to name (off the top of my head) _any_ movies which have all-female main casts. I guess it depends on one's definition of 'main'. "Steel Magnolias", perhaps?
Although I agree that in modern adaptations of more historical matter I would like film-makers to consider strengthening already present female roles, I do disagree with the premise of "if the movie doesn't have a female as a main character, women do not have any reason to watch it". Because if you reverse that you open the way for "if there are only women in this movie, men will not go to see it".
While, certainly, you can choose not to watch this movie - and I applaud you for raising this point here because single-gender main casts are definitely a point which needs to be discussed - in this instance (knowing the source material) I would rather an all-male main cast than seeing a female wedged into already existing plots purely for the sake of being female.
In this particular instance, I won't be bothered if there's no female _main_ characters. It would require a complete insert of a female character just to be female, which would be problematic in itself. [There is one female main character in the TinTin series, but I can see that she's unlikely to fit in this particular movie.]
I'm actually more bothered where there's an ensemble cast which is all male except for a single female, who functions as "the girl" or "the love interest" and has no personality outside that.
If there's no female characters at all, visible anywhere in the world of this movie then that's just...bizarre.
This was a triumph...
Blood+
Enough said.
Enough said.
Makes me wonder how many dandelions they went through before they got a useable shot.
Trailer lacks the promised giant bears riding horses. :(
It appears to me that the things in the diary occur between "The Wedding of River Song" and "Silence in the Library". The times we have seen River previous to "Hitler" have been post-archaeology degree and thus post-Lake Silencio River.
Exactly. River's timeline destroys this story.
- Stolen baby.
- Raised in orphanage in spacesuit which brainwashes her to want to kill the Doctor.
- Escapes at around 8-10-ish?
- Regenerates on the street.
- Inserts herself into her parents timeline as Mels. [No explanation of how she did that, who was posing as her parents, etc.]
- Grows up as Mels, being a troublesome friend.
- "Let's Kill Hitler" episode, where she zips in as the Doctor arrives, 'forces' him to go find Hitler. The Doctor shows no sign of having encountered Mels before.
- Mels gets herself shot and regenerates into Alex Kingston. Apparently so she can kill the Doctor with special lipstick. No explanation of where she gets special lipstick.
- Succeeds in poisoning the Doctor, but then he whispers something in her ear and she suddenly decides not to kill him, saves him and runs off, mentally 'reborn' as River Song.
- Goes to study at space university to be a space archaeologist so she can find the Doctor.
- Graduates, only to be kidnapped again by Madam Kovarian, who stuffs her back in the spacesuit, sticks her under a lake. The spacesuit walks out of the lake and shoots the Doctor without being under her control.
- But River pulls a double-switch, and rewrites the universe somehow using a paradox which mushes all of time together into dinosaur steampunk. River repeatedly calls the Doctor "my love", etc, as if they have this huge history together. River at this time has been shown to have only met the Doctor (1) as a baby (2) an infant as a spacesuit (3) at the time of Mel's transformation to River and (4) when she shoots him. Where's all this "my love, my love, I will destroy the universe for you" junk coming from?
And the purpose of all this? So the Doctor can pretend to die, to reduce his legend. A time traveller who has been to the end of the universe (several times).
This has been such a bad story arc. And since the answer to the question appears to be the Doctor's name, I have little hope of it getting much better.
- Stolen baby.
- Raised in orphanage in spacesuit which brainwashes her to want to kill the Doctor.
- Escapes at around 8-10-ish?
- Regenerates on the street.
- Inserts herself into her parents timeline as Mels. [No explanation of how she did that, who was posing as her parents, etc.]
- Grows up as Mels, being a troublesome friend.
- "Let's Kill Hitler" episode, where she zips in as the Doctor arrives, 'forces' him to go find Hitler. The Doctor shows no sign of having encountered Mels before.
- Mels gets herself shot and regenerates into Alex Kingston. Apparently so she can kill the Doctor with special lipstick. No explanation of where she gets special lipstick.
- Succeeds in poisoning the Doctor, but then he whispers something in her ear and she suddenly decides not to kill him, saves him and runs off, mentally 'reborn' as River Song.
- Goes to study at space university to be a space archaeologist so she can find the Doctor.
- Graduates, only to be kidnapped again by Madam Kovarian, who stuffs her back in the spacesuit, sticks her under a lake. The spacesuit walks out of the lake and shoots the Doctor without being under her control.
- But River pulls a double-switch, and rewrites the universe somehow using a paradox which mushes all of time together into dinosaur steampunk. River repeatedly calls the Doctor "my love", etc, as if they have this huge history together. River at this time has been shown to have only met the Doctor (1) as a baby (2) an infant as a spacesuit (3) at the time of Mel's transformation to River and (4) when she shoots him. Where's all this "my love, my love, I will destroy the universe for you" junk coming from?
And the purpose of all this? So the Doctor can pretend to die, to reduce his legend. A time traveller who has been to the end of the universe (several times).
This has been such a bad story arc. And since the answer to the question appears to be the Doctor's name, I have little hope of it getting much better.
Not to mention that the only question that this episode actually answered was "How does the Doctor get out of being killed". We were all sure that it was River. We all guessed that he was using a substitute (though most people thought it was a Flesh copy).
All spectacle and pace and little in the way of sense.
All spectacle and pace and little in the way of sense.
The death scene in "Mission to Mars" was what turned a bad movie into a ridiculously idiotic movie.
Regardless of what River is like (love the actress and the idea, but sometimes falls down in execution), I just can't stand that Amy and Rory appear okay that their baby goes through a hellish infancy and no longer seem to be trying to rescue her as a baby. "My baby's childhood tortures are acceptable because once she gets over being a psychotic brainwashed assassin, she gets to be River Song." Really?
Heh - I have a book (Stray) where the protagonist literally does have a computer in her head, can record everything she sees and play it back - but it never occurred to me to give her the ability to zoom in! Damn, missed opportunity! :)
But she's not "truly safe". Their baby was raised in a horrific orphanage, then spent her young childhood on the streets.
Since we've just had an episode where an adult Amy was murdered (sorry, 'ceased to exist') to spare her living some hard years alone, how in the world can Amy and Rory possibly consider it okay for their infant daughter to be raised in that way? The solution to having one's baby stolen is to go retrieve the baby AS a baby. Not allow that child to be raised and brainwashed by an alien army intent on using her as a weapon.
Melody becomes "psychopathic" because they fail to rescue her as a baby and she is brainwashed.
Since we've just had an episode where an adult Amy was murdered (sorry, 'ceased to exist') to spare her living some hard years alone, how in the world can Amy and Rory possibly consider it okay for their infant daughter to be raised in that way? The solution to having one's baby stolen is to go retrieve the baby AS a baby. Not allow that child to be raised and brainwashed by an alien army intent on using her as a weapon.
Melody becomes "psychopathic" because they fail to rescue her as a baby and she is brainwashed.
