I finally read Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow, and really enjoyed them. I did find the writing to be much better than Shadow Of The Hedgemon and was especially disappointed to learn just how much of Hedgemon was simply rehashing Ender’s Shadow. This only reinforced my belief that reading series out of order just shouldn’t be done. Though to be honest, I definitely wouldn’t have enjoyed Hedgemon as much if I had read it after the first two.
Regarding Electra’s weak opening numbers…
“Bruce Snyder, Fox’s domestic distribution exec… speculated that superwomen just don’t seem to draw as well as supermen.”
My guess would be that bad movies don’t draw as well as decent movies. I’m now determined to write a movie about a female superhero that is better than Catwoman or Supergirl. Surprisingly, the prospect isn’t that intimidating.
So I was in the Dollar Tree at the mall the other day because I needed an emergency hard writing surface and what did I stumble across but the sequel to the parallel novel to the book I’ve been meaning to read for quite a while. I’m loathe to read or watch pretty much anything out of order but hey, it was a dollar.
I really liked Shadow Of The Hedgemon and I’m not sure why. The whole book was really nothing more than people talking at each other. Of course, they were all brilliant people with fascinating thought processes. At any rate, I’ll be seeking out Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow now, though I feel like I already know most of what happens.
I’ve been a collector of dolls (among other things) for a while, and I’ve noticed an interesting trend in collecting the past few years. For a long time, collecting fashion dolls meant buying very expensive Barbies in pristine boxes and putting them into storage to gain value. But more and more dolls have been released that are meant to be deboxed, even played with. The popularity of Asian ball-jointed dolls, which are meant to be customized with different eyes, wigs, and “face-ups” have also contributed to this.
Looking around now, collectors everywhere are playing. Customizing dolls, giving them names, personalities. Documenting their adventures in “picfics” which are sometimes very funny and well written. It’s gratifying to see so many people reclaiming that special sort of creativity that is often lost at the end of childhood and to know that there are many people who can become artists given the right inspiration.
I feel like at this point I should stop being surprised when _______ TV series appears on DVD. I guess there are some shows that I never imagined there was a big enough market for to justify releasing full season box sets.
I’ve found that while I love having full runs of all of Joss Whedon shows on hand, TV on DVD takes the fun out of catching reruns in syndication. It used to be cool to catch that great episode that you hadn’t seen in several years by chance, but now you remember you have it in much better quality with commentary sitting on your shelf. Not to mention the loss of fandom status from having caught every episode when it aired, if you’re one to care about such things. Keeping up with TV shows has just become to easy these days.
On a semi-related note, I was glad to see that on the Gargoyles Season 1 DVD, Disney included a feature on fan conventions that acknowledged fanfiction and cosplay as not only existing, but keeping fandom alive and strong. Good for them.