Comic books and angry women who don't understand them

Normally I wouldn't bring attention to something like this, but I am so annoyed with this video and many others on this woman's youtube channel. I wish I could just write her a quick comment getting my point across, but she has her comments disabled. I'm talking about this woman:

She clearly doesn't read comic books, but feels ok talking about them because she's seen someone else's youtube video. Oh, and she says Fable 2 is a video game in which you are forced to play as a male getting revenge for the death of a female family member. The funny thing about that is that I have that video game and I play it as a FEMALE character. In this video she talks about all comic books being so awful to woman because a lot of females die in the comics. Well a lot of males die too, and not only that both male and female characters frequently come back from the dead, most of the time stronger. Jean Grey is the perfect example of this, since she comes back as the Dark Phoenix. Gwen Stacey is back as Spider Gwen. This woman also keeps referencing the Killing Joke and Barbara Gordon being shot by the Joker. Yes, she does get shot by the Joker, and she does later become the Oracle (which many people look up to as a strong female character), but she also later gets to walk again and even takes up the mantle of Batgirl again. What about comics where female characters don't die? Does this woman even know there are comic writers who are FEMALE? This woman also claims that many of the male characters who died went down fighting and the female characters did not. Elecktra dies by fighting Bullseye. Just about every female who died in the Walking Dead died fighting, and I know a lot of bad things happened to some of the women in that book, but I believe that the Walking Dead portrays violence very accurately. These are things that actually could happen to people if they were in the same situation. There are many others who have, and yes some woman in comics were killed in very unfair ways, but there are many different genres of comic books and to just group them all into one genre is unfair. One of my dreams is to create a comic book. Sorry for the rant, but it's clear this woman was just looking for something to be angry about. If she happens to stumble upon my blog I would like to advise her to do research next time before posting an angry video.

Goodreads.com

I joined goodreads.com years ago. I liked finding new books on there, and I even won two of the giveaways. Now I can't even get on the site. It might be my computer, but everytime I try to get on a sign in box for facebook appears. The site doesn't sign me in, and the box keeps popping up over and over again. It's ashame that I can't get on goodreads. I think the site is such a great tool for both readers and authors.

Not the best at expressing myself

It's not a big surprise that I'm horrible at expressing myself. I had a whole relationship where both my boyfriend and myself didn't think the other party liked us. I liked him, but I'm fairly sure he didn't like me all that much. What does this have to do with anything? Well, this translates to my blog as well. Like I've written before, I'm not very good at blogging. I keep a journal and write my personal feelings/thoughts in there, but that's different from a public blog about writing. I know how to express myself in writing, and that's pretty much the only place I know how to express myself. Actually, I know how to let my characters express themselves, I'm still not to sure about myself. While I am good at essay style writing, I'm not so good at blogging. Sometimes what I mean gets lost in what I am trying to express. Writing a blog isn't the same as writing an essay. I don't take the time to read over and rewrite if I want to. Once I press the publish button it goes public. It's live on the internet, even if no one decides to read it (which seems like the case in this blog). I think a few things were lost in translation during one of my last posts. I wrote about my thoughts about the business angle of Amanda Hocking. I don't really have thoughts on her personally, as I have never met her. I think her success story is wonderful, and I always like to see a writer doing well. The part of my post where things may have been mistranslated was when I was talking about her story being more about her fans than her. It's her fans who made her what she is. I think it's amazing that a group of people could make someone so successful. I know she's been posting a lot less lately, and that's understandable. Everyone needs a break, and there are things people need to keep to themselves. I actually wish some celebs would take a break, but anyway, it seems like her break means less sales for her. I don't know much about the business side of amazon (yet), but it looks like she's selling less. There are less reviews on her newer books. That could just be because the books are newer and people are waiting for a price drop before purchasing, or it could mean that her fans are moving on, or at least not as interested. That's pretty much what I meant to say. I'm trying to learn a little bit about the business side of self publishing before I release my own self published novel into the world. Her story is a rare success story that I enjoyed reading.

Blogging is a great tool that I don't know how to use.

I'm sure this translates through the current state of my blog, but I don't know how to blog. I don't know anything about layouts or what content I should include. I have no idea how much I should share. It's hard for me to share information with people I know offline, which makes it even harder to share with people I've never met. Not that anyone is reading this blog. I'd be surprised if anyone looked past the boring layout at all. Most of the traffic I get is probably from people browsing through blogs. This is all my fault. I could devote more time to researching layouts and what content I should include. Blogging is a great tool and can help me reach lots of readers, if I include the right content.

Do people shop the same way they review books?

Maybe I've been in retail for too long, but I think there's a link between the way people shop and the way they review books. I've recently been reading book reviews of authors who are self-published (like I plan to be). I wanted to know what I should expect when the time comes to release my book into the world. Every review I've read, the good, the bad, and the ugly, have all been like customers I've had. There's the customers that don't want to be bothered, they probably won't review at all. The customers who look at the item from every angle: the reviewers who pick the book apart. The customer who happily asks for suggestions: the reviewer who reads and comments on other people's reviews. I think the customers/reviewers who are open to suggestions are my favorites and that's probably the category I fall under when I shop or review. I'm always looking for something new to read so if you have any suggestions just leave a comment. There's the customer who knows what they want and often leave happy: the reviewer who reads the same types of books or authors all the time. Then there's my least favorite, the customer who finds a blemish and wants something free. This type of customer is equal to a review who isn't reviewing the actual book, but instead something like the font size or formatting. They don't actually review the book, but they do give it a negative amount of stars. I hate seeing that type of review for anyone's book, but I know I'm bound to get a few of those myself. Despite that, I'm still looking forward to starting my journey and living my dreams.

Could have happened to me, glad it didn't

I've wondered if I should write this post for awhile now. It's been a few days since I've stumbled upon an article in the rolling stone (online) about a girl who almost had her life ruined by the internet. Now I know I made this blog to promote my writing, but no one's going to care about my writing if they don't know me as a person. The reason I cared so much about this article is because I could have gone down the same road if I hadn't had good parents who loved me. The girl in the article turned to myspace for companionship because she was home schooled and didn't have many friends. I can relate. I've been a nerd my whole life, and didn't really fit in with anyone in high school. I had friends, but they were the ones who called themselves goth/emo/punk/whatever other alt label there was. Although I listened to the same music, I have never considered myself any of those things. Some of my friends had a falling out with me, so I turned to myspace. I didn't know much about computers, so I suppose that's why I got so addicted to the little social networking site. I remember going to the library during my lunch breaks to check what was going on. I got excited when cute guys added me. I would spend hours and hours online not doing anything productive. My friend list grew to over 500, and with all those friends came a lot of drama. People started picking fights with me, guys started flirting and demanding that I meet them. The idea of meeting someone from online scares me, even now that I'm an adult. I told myself that it was worth it, but it never is. I got death threats, sent disgusting pictures, and had some idiot edit a picture of me into a clown. It bothered me, but I thought it was worth it for the friends I'd made. I felt like myspace was my connection to the world. My parents found out about everything that was going on and made me delete everything. They were scared for me to go anywhere in public because they thought someone would recognize me from online and hurt me. At first I was upset. I even gave up writing because of what happened, but now I'm glad. Things could have gotten so much worse for me. I don't know why that girl's parents didn't pull the plug, but they should have. Now I only add people that I know on facebook, and I only made a twitter to promote my upcoming ebook.