A quick Netflix review and a longer Alexandra Quick update
I reviewed Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man a couple weeks ago and said it didn't really age well. I just watched the 1969 movie on Netflix and... boy, did it not age well.
The movie depicts three of the eighteen short stories from Bradbury's book: "The Veldt," "The Long Rain," and "The Last Night of the World."
Rod Steiger's hammy scene-chewing and the atrocious acting of all the other actors was bad enough (it seemed like the camera lingered on everyone's face just long enough for them read a cue card and change expressions), but science fiction movies from the 60s and 70s all seem to have this trippy aesthetic that makes them laugh out loud funny. Fifties and Eighties sci-fi also bears the cheesy signs of their respective eras, but the late 60s and early 70s was just The Time That Taste Forgot. Everyone wears shiny jumpsuits and plastic boots, living rooms look like the inside of a public restroom, and all the special effects are buzzing synthesizer hums.
Not recommended, not bad enough or funny enough even to be worth MST3King.
Progress on AQATSA
Alex and her friends are all acting kind of pissy. I may have to dial it down a bit in edits. They're fourteen, which IMO is about the most annoying year for teenagers. Alexandra has been consistently maturing faster than Harry did, so she hits her most emo phase in book four instead of book five. (But no CAPSLOCK!Alex, I promise.)
Yes, some tentative shipping is involved. This does not mean "I will now be dropping hints as to who everyone's eternal soul-mate is." Though as I've said before, I already know the ending of the series and I know what the Epilogue looks like, though unlike Rowling I haven't actually written it yet, and won't until I get there. But I'm darker and more cynical than Rowling was.
Somewhat apropos of shipping, but mostly just reviving a discussion that's occurred a few times in the past:
Was Alex in love with Max?
I was more than half-joking when I put Max up as one of the shipping choices for Alex and said "WTF is wrong with you?"
In fact, more than one reader had suggested some sort of relationship between them, and while of course that was never going to happen, it really wasn't such a wild idea. Obviously Alexandra never consciously thought of herself as being attracted to her brother. But yes, it's probably not a stretch to say that Maximilian was her first crush, of sorts.
Now, in the parallel universe where I am JK Rowling and people are writing AQ fan fiction, I'd point out before shippers start saying that my speculation makes Alex/Max practically canon:
1. Max is dead, duh.
2. Even if he weren't dead, Max was gay, duh.
3. Even if he weren't dead and gay, he's her brother, WTF is wrong with you?
Someone was convinced until the end of book three that I was setting up an Alex/Martin ship. That wasn't a bad guess, but -- nope. (I thought I actually dropped quite a few Max/Martin hints in book two, but I admit they were subtle. Max and Martin were very much on the down-low about it.)
Anyway, I am pleased to say....
Ta-dah! 67538 words! I'm on chapter 12. This represents an increase in my pace, but still less productive than I have been when writing previous books. However, I feel like I've gotten over a hump of sorts -- there was a major block to moving into the next part of the story and I feel like I have a more or less clear path until about the halfway point.
For your viewing pleasure, the wordle below of the rough draft today includes the top 600 words (rather than the top 150, as in previous wordles). So, that's pretty much all the words that occur more than a handful of times. (Minus the usual filtering of common stop-words, to which I added "didn," "don," and "ll" because they annoyed me.)
(Click for larger image.)
The movie depicts three of the eighteen short stories from Bradbury's book: "The Veldt," "The Long Rain," and "The Last Night of the World."
Rod Steiger's hammy scene-chewing and the atrocious acting of all the other actors was bad enough (it seemed like the camera lingered on everyone's face just long enough for them read a cue card and change expressions), but science fiction movies from the 60s and 70s all seem to have this trippy aesthetic that makes them laugh out loud funny. Fifties and Eighties sci-fi also bears the cheesy signs of their respective eras, but the late 60s and early 70s was just The Time That Taste Forgot. Everyone wears shiny jumpsuits and plastic boots, living rooms look like the inside of a public restroom, and all the special effects are buzzing synthesizer hums.
Not recommended, not bad enough or funny enough even to be worth MST3King.
Progress on AQATSA
Alex and her friends are all acting kind of pissy. I may have to dial it down a bit in edits. They're fourteen, which IMO is about the most annoying year for teenagers. Alexandra has been consistently maturing faster than Harry did, so she hits her most emo phase in book four instead of book five. (But no CAPSLOCK!Alex, I promise.)
Yes, some tentative shipping is involved. This does not mean "I will now be dropping hints as to who everyone's eternal soul-mate is." Though as I've said before, I already know the ending of the series and I know what the Epilogue looks like, though unlike Rowling I haven't actually written it yet, and won't until I get there. But I'm darker and more cynical than Rowling was.
Somewhat apropos of shipping, but mostly just reviving a discussion that's occurred a few times in the past:
Was Alex in love with Max?
I was more than half-joking when I put Max up as one of the shipping choices for Alex and said "WTF is wrong with you?"
In fact, more than one reader had suggested some sort of relationship between them, and while of course that was never going to happen, it really wasn't such a wild idea. Obviously Alexandra never consciously thought of herself as being attracted to her brother. But yes, it's probably not a stretch to say that Maximilian was her first crush, of sorts.
Now, in the parallel universe where I am JK Rowling and people are writing AQ fan fiction, I'd point out before shippers start saying that my speculation makes Alex/Max practically canon:
1. Max is dead, duh.
2. Even if he weren't dead, Max was gay, duh.
3. Even if he weren't dead and gay, he's her brother, WTF is wrong with you?
Someone was convinced until the end of book three that I was setting up an Alex/Martin ship. That wasn't a bad guess, but -- nope. (I thought I actually dropped quite a few Max/Martin hints in book two, but I admit they were subtle. Max and Martin were very much on the down-low about it.)
Anyway, I am pleased to say....
Ta-dah! 67538 words! I'm on chapter 12. This represents an increase in my pace, but still less productive than I have been when writing previous books. However, I feel like I've gotten over a hump of sorts -- there was a major block to moving into the next part of the story and I feel like I have a more or less clear path until about the halfway point.
For your viewing pleasure, the wordle below of the rough draft today includes the top 600 words (rather than the top 150, as in previous wordles). So, that's pretty much all the words that occur more than a handful of times. (Minus the usual filtering of common stop-words, to which I added "didn," "don," and "ll" because they annoyed me.)
(Click for larger image.)