Manic Monday: I Want to see Gamora's Boob Window and Thor Shirtless. Who's with Me?

Over on Tor.com's blog, Alex Brown's post "Guardians of the Galaxy, We Need to Talk,"  pointed out various issues she had with the summer blockbuster film. I consider myself  a feminist and frequently agree with articles that point out the (still) rampant sexism of Hollywood movies (as well as T.V. shows, advertising, and pretty much anything spat out at us from the L.A. screen industry). But as I pondered her post (and the copious comments to it), I found myself disagreeing with much of what she said. My post will focus on just one of the issues raised and that is of the outfits superheroes wear.

This is what Alex Brown said:

"Listen up, superhero creators. There are 3 big no's in creating costumes for female characters: no boob plates, no high heels, and no boob or belly windows. There’s no reason for Gamora or Nebula to wear something as impractical as 3 inch wedge heels. And no, Drax and Star-Lord being shirtless doesn’t count as a male objectification. They’re propped up as an admirable, desireable male physique, whereas Nebula and Gamora’s skin-tight, revealing outfits sexualize them. If Star-Lord doesn’t need heels or a costume that defies gravity, then neither do Gamora or Nebula." (Alex Brown on Tor.com's blog, 8/13/14)

In case you have not seen Guardians and/or wish to see Zoe Saldana in a "boob window" outfit, here it is:

Alex's has some points. Breast plates and "boob windows" are ubiquitous in comics and movies featuring female superheros. I've seen numerous articles written by women bashing male movie makers for putting female superheros in high heels and skimpy outfits. Women argue that female heroes should wear cloths that are comfortable. Clothes that make sense for all the action and fighting that the character does in the movie.

A good point. But this point seems to assume that male superheroes are wearing outfits that are "comfortable" and sensible and that do not accentuate their sexuality. Let's review male superhero gear. Do they, in fact, wear sensible clothes appropriate for all their running, punching, jumping and superhero work? And do they wear clothes that "sexualize" them?

Let's start with Superman. Check out Christopher Reeves rocking' the 80's version of The Man of Steel.

Does this outfit say 'I'm ready for fist-fights and flying'? First of all, as we all know, the cape is impractical.

We all know how dangerous they can be. So why do flying super heroes wear them? Because they look friction' cool, that's why.

And then there are Superman's tight knickers and knee-length plastic bootie things. He doesn't exactly look like he's ready to thrown down with the bad guys. But the outfit does do one thing: Show off Reeve's junk (which I'm kind of thinking is the point).

And because the old Reeves costume wasn't testosterone pumped enough, they had to create an even more manly edition for the new millennium.

Does this outfit not accentuate his manly features just as much as Gamora's outfit highlights her womanly features? Not a lot left to the imagination here.

Okay, what about Iron Man? Surely a suit made to enable to man to fly, fire weapons and generally kick booty would be robust and machine-like, right? Something like this maybe:

Prototype Iron Man Suit Commissioned by U.S. Military

Granted, it's primitive but probably more in line with a realistic military iron man suit than this:

Even when forged in metal, male heroes are molded into the shape of an Adonis. Their chests are large, their abs smooth and taut, and their manly bits ... Well even Iron Man's junk is accentuated.

Last but certainly not least, let's take a look at Thor.

Okay, you can stop looking at him now.

How did Thor strutting with his shirt off, displaying his rock-hard abs and teasing us with his low-slung jeans revealing his muscular groin further the plot? Could it be that it was there just to give female movie-goers a bit of eye candy?

Yes, of course it was. And while I saw this movie in the theatre I was wishing for a remote control so I could rewind that bit and play it over and over. (Thanks to the above gif, now I can watch it over and over ;-)

Both Chris Hemsworth and Anthony Hopkins are clad in demigod worth costumes in Thor, The Dark World

Costume designers routinely "sexualize" the costumes for superheroes, both male and female. Why?

Because it's sexy. 

And we want our superheroes to be sexy, whether male or female. I want to see Zoe's beautiful body and Thor's manly one. That's part of the attraction. Their virility and sexiness separate them from us and we like it that way. I don't want to go to a movie and see some middle-aged, pear-shaped mom whose boobs need an anti-gravity booster to keep from sagging to her navel dressed in sensible shoes. If I want to see that I'll look in the mirror!

It'd be like going to see an super hero action flick and watching Amy Farrah Fowler trotting across the screen in her cardigan doing judo kicks.

Okay, it would be funny. But not exactly the image of a super hero.

What about Jim Parsons in skin tight spandex?

Give it up, Sheldon. It's clearly padding.

Or how about Jack Black flashing the eye candy for the ladies?

I didn't think so.

Super heroes are mythic. Someone larger than life. They are a reflection perhaps of how we'd like to look and be (i.e. hot and heroic) rather than a mirror of what we actually are (i.e. too-large around the middle and bold only in virtual realities).

If women told the truth, my guess is that most of them would prefer to look like Gamora, green skin and all, than like themselves. And if we had her body, many of us would dress like that too. But the truth is, over 90% of us don't have anywhere near the body that Zoe Saldana has and we don't rock Lycra (some of us would get banned from dropping our kids off at pre-school if we dared dress in Lycra from head-to-toe like some super heroes).

When I go to the movies, for a little while maybe I get to imagine myself as Gamora (or more likely I imagine myself as Rocket because he's a friggin' talking raccoon with cool weapons). And in my fantasy world, I prefer to look way hotter than I actually am because, you see, that's the fun of pretend time.

I'm guessing that men are much the same way. Yes, Gamora (and Pepper Potts and Black Widow, etc.) look hot to appeal to guys. But the guys look hot to appeal to guys too (and to appeal to women as well). Because my guess is that guys cast themselves in the role of Thor (or Superman or Iron Man, etc.) and why would they aspire to a dude that looks more like them than like a demigod?

I think the success of the Marvel Universe movies is the plain old fun they are. And part of that fun is escape from our everyday looking-more-like-Amy-than-Zoe life and married to a man that's more Jack Black than Chris Hemsworth.

I'll leave you to ponder these thoughts as Chris takes his shirt off again ... 

 And again.

Do you think I'm on to something? Or do you think these movies objectify women (and/or men)?

And if you were a character from the Marvel Universe, which would you be?

Sci Fi Friday: Alien Structures on Mars and a Man on the Moon?!

For this SciFi Friday, a bit of fun with moon shadows (cue up Van Morrison). 

Remember the face on Mars?

Face on Mars, 1976

The internet swarmed with stories of an alien race having built the structure.

NASA denied that the image was what it appeared to be. They said it was a trick of light and shadows. They have proffered this more recent photo taken by the Mars Global Surveyor camera in April, 2001. 

Of course it would be nice to see it pulled back from the terrain a bit so we can compare surrounding landscape. I looked for one that was equivalent to the top photo but couldn't find one. If any of you find it, can you leave a link in the comments below?

So we have alleged faces, pyramids and cities on Mars. Now there's a literal man on the moon! Or maybe it's an alien.

What do you think? Is this a shadow playing tricks on our mind? Is it a complete fabrication/hoax? Or is it possible that there's a being on the moon that just happened to get caught on film by a satellite?

Writer Wednesday: Time to Fight or Take Flight with Chele Cooke

Welcome to Writer Wednesday! I am pleased to welcome back author Chele Cooke. I'm happy to share with you her new release, Fight or Flight. It's the follow up to Dead and Buryd (the Out of Orbit series). If you haven't already read Dead and Buryd, pick it up now! It's FREE on Amazon from July 25 to August 8. And grab Fight or Flight while you're there.

To whet your appetite, here is an excerpt from Fight or Flight. Enjoy!

Fight or Flight by Chele Cooke
Book 2 of the Out of Orbit Series

From Chapter 2: Promises and Protection

“Dhiren,” Georgianna began. “How did you… I mean, why did you agree to work for them?”

A soft sigh left his lips and he leaned forwards, resting his arms across his knees. He glanced at Georgianna before turning his attention back onto his boots.

“I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“But you’re… You could have defended yourself,” she argued. “You don’t need their protection like…”

“Like me” almost slipped from her lips, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Dhiren tilted his head to the side and carefully stretched out his jaw, a click sounding from one of the joints.

“I did from the Adveni,” he admitted. “When I was captured, I knew that it would only be so long before I was given the rope. Vajra approached me. He said he would keep me from being executed if I worked for them.”

He gave a dismissive shrug.

He was older than her, perhaps by five or six years. She had often wondered about him, curious about what he’d done to get put into the compound, but she had never dared ask. 

He’d never been anything but kind and cheerful to her, but the opinions of the other inmates had often weighed on her mind.

She’d heard stories when she used to come into the compound on her medic visits, but it was only when she arrived as an inmate herself that the other inmates really began to talk. They told her everything she wanted to know. There were different stories, but the one she heard most often was that the brothers had been captured after the massacre of an Adveni transport almost six years before. Ta-Dao, the elder brother, and Vajra, the younger, had been informed that they would never leave the compound unless they were being put into the ground.

Funnily, there were no common rumours about Dhiren’s incarceration. Every person who spoke about it gave a different story, varying from the questionable to the downright insane. His story, according to most, was far more exciting than the brothers because he never talked about it. Georgianna wondered if anyone had bothered to ask him.

“What… What did you do?”

Dhiren’s eyes narrowed and he tugged at each of his sleeves in turn, covering up a little more skin. She wondered whether she had stepped too far. If she was wrong about people being afraid to ask him about his crime, he might not look at her the same way again. He didn’t speak to many of the other inmates and from what Georgianna had seen, he didn’t even speak to the brothers unless he had to. He watched her for a few moments, a calculating expression on his square face.

“Murder. Three Adveni.”

In an instant, the cautious look in his eyes was gone and he smiled proudly, almost childishly—a teenager boasting of his first hunting kill.

“That they caught me for.”

*     *    *

Oh, I love that last line. And I want to know more about Dhiren. How about you?

Links to Fight or Flight

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LZTQV30

Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/fight-or-flight-8

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/456775

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21545342-fight-or-flight

And read Chele's bio and check out her social media links after the Giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Chele Cooke is an English-born writer based in London. Starting out writing fan fiction, she soon moved onto her own fiction, releasing her first novel, ‘Dead and Buryd’, in 2013, the sequel ‘Fight or Flight’ following less than a year later.

She is currently working on The Out of Orbit series, a number of short stories, a circus based sci-fi, and a paranormal serial currently released weekly on Wattpad.

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Writer Wednesday: Marketing Results for Kindle Countdown Promotion

The Akasha Chronicles, by Natalie Wright

For this Writer Wednesday, I want to share with you the results for my recent five-day Kindle Countdown promotion. If you're like me, you don't have unlimited funds to spend on advertising. Most of us need to spend our marketing dollars wisely. So many sites make big promises and grand claims. But which book promotion sites work? What's worth the money?

I don't have definitive answers to these questions, and what works/doesn't work for me may work/not work for you. But I'll share what I've learned from a recent promo in the hopes that it will help you when deciding how to handle your next promotion. NOTE: I'm sharing my real numbers. Some of you may sell this many or more books regularly without a promotion. If so, kudos to you! But I'm guessing (based on statistics) that many of you reading this post will find that your sales are similar to mine. I'm also guessing that whatever your level of sales, you can extrapolate my results to estimate what your own experience may be by using these same services.

In this post I'll focus on my experience with the Kindle Countdown deal option available to KDP Select authors. My Akasha Chronicles boxed set is exclusive to Amazon so I have run my Countdown deals promos with this book. It's typically priced at $6.99 (already a great bargain for three books!), so discounting it to 99 cents is a serious discount.

I ran my first countdown deal in April. At that time I sold about sixty books in a five-day promo period. That was decent and more than I typically sell in a whole month (my sales are averaging about 20-30 books a month this year on Amazon without running promotions). At that time, I paid for a Kindle Nation Daily ad - I chose the KF-KND option. Based on my experience from April, I decided two things. First, it is better to have multiple 99 cent days rather than only a day then raise the price in increments. Second, the KF-KND option on Kindle Nation Daily wasn't a very good option (the add cost me $99 and raised less than $30).

For my recent Kindle Countdown deal, I decided to price the book at 99 cents for five straight days. I took a gamble and set the deal days to run over the July 4th holiday. I know that people buy, buy, buy books during the week from Christmas to New Year, but I had no idea if people would be interested in/paying attention to book deals over July 4th. But my experience with it, as I'll detail below, was pretty good and I'd promo again during that period of time in the future.

I went back to Kindle Nation Daily (KND) and paid for an ad to run on July 2. I chose the KDD option this time (check out their site to compare the options). The result? I had 91 sales that day and reached the top 20 on the Young Adult Fantasy/Science Fiction charts and broke into the top 2000 overall. Though the numbers were good, keep in mind that because the book was priced at 99 cents, I made about 57 cents per book, so the ad did not pay for itself. BUT, it boosted sales over the next two days during which I had no ads/promos running. So total sales from July 2-July 4 was 123 books and total earnings was $71. I came close to paying for the KND ad. It's possible that KND ad may result in more sales for books in a different genre, such as thriller/horror or romance (very popular genres for Kindle books). Overall I was happy with the results of the ad and it got my promo off to a good start. Bottom Line: I can recommend KND generally and the KDD option has worked best, for me, of any of the other options I've paid for in the past.

I also tried two new promo sites during may last Kindle Countdown deal. I'm not sure how I learned about Book Basset, but I checked it out and thought it looked like a good option. I paid $21.99 for a one-day featured author spot that occurred on July 5th. Result? I sold 53 books that day and earned about $30, so this add not only paid for itself but made me a little scratch. Bottom Line: I HIGHLY recommend Book Basset as an affordable option for promoting your free books or countdown deals. I will definitely use this one again.

The other promotion I paid for was Just Kindle Books. The fee was only $15 so I figured "Why not?" My promo ran on July 6. I sold 10 books that day. The results were not stellar, but I sold more books that day than the next two days of the deal without any promos. Bottom Line: Just Kindle Books is a cost-effective way to promote free books and countdown deals.

All in all, I am pleased with the results of my most recent Countdown Deal. I sold close to 200 books worldwide in five days. I stayed in the top 100 on the YA Fantasy/Sci Fi chart that entire period. The net financial result is that made $1.39 in excess of costs! So financially let's call it a break even. In the world of book marketing and promotion, a break even for promoting a steeply discounted book is a pretty good result. I'll take it.

But more important than the financial result, I got good exposure (and hopefully gained new fans of my work). As Hugh Howey and others have said, this is a marathon and not a sprint. We need to look more to the long-term than day-to-day results. So discounting a book and getting exposure is a good thing and one that is not easily quantified. (But seeing yourself hit the top of a chart is just plain fun!)

I plan to do another Kindle Countdown deal in the week between Christmas and New Year. I'll likely try a few new things again as well as go back to what worked this time. I'll keep you posted.

How about you? Have you done Kindle Countdown deals? What has worked for you to promote your deal? What hasn't worked well?

Sci Fi Friday: Newtonian Rap, Neil deGrasse Tyson and a Giveaway!

On Fridays I usually post a story culled from the news about technology that sounds sci fi but isn't. But today I have to pass along this bit of sciencey silliness. Each time I watch this it makes me chortle. I especially like the Neil deGrasse Tyson assist toward the end. Enjoy!

So who do you think won? If I reach ten comments on this post, I'll give away a digital copy of one of my book's to one of the commenters (picked randomly). So if you want to win a book, include your e-mail address in your comment so I can e-mail the winner :-)

Writer Wednesday: 3 Masters Speak About Show, Don't Tell

In search of inspiration for today's Writer Wednesday post, I opened my "Little Black Book of Writers' Wisdom" and don't you know it opened to a page of quotes that artfully and succinctly address the matter at the heart of excellent writing.

Show, don't tell.

I first heard the phrase at my first writer's conference back in the summer of 2009. I admit that I hadn't a clue what the phrase meant. And though I heard it repeatedly over the years, it seemed that people had a difficult time explaining what it meant.

Now that I've completed three novels and penned a fourth in draft, I've come to understand the phrase "show, don't tell." That's not to say that I never slip into telling. It's just less frequent now and on revision I *most of the time* catch it.

Showing not telling is such a vital requirement to writing a story well that I've chosen three quotes today to get the conversation going. First, from Anton Chekhov, a lovely example that explains the phrase perfectly:

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." - Anton Chekhov

Have you ever heard a more perfect example of show? The "glint of light on broken glass." So many of us writers would have a tendency to say, "The moon was shining." Flat, passive and a tell, not a show. A more adept writer may say, "The moon shone on the glass." Better, but still fairly simple and uninteresting.

With attention to craft, a master such as Chekhov comes up with "the glint" on "broken glass." In just a few words, he shows us so much. The choice of words matter. Showing matters. And it's the difference between a novice and a master of craft. Do this in every sentence for an entire novel and you'll writer a novel that readers are excited to read.

But wait, here's another one to hit the point home.

"Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream." - Mark Twain

Sometimes we talk about "on camera" and "off camera." Novice writers often "tell" us what happened "off camera" rather than bringing it "on camera" and showing the reader the action. I'm guilty of that. And it's a writing style that can quickly bore the shit out of the reader rather than engage the reader.

Anyone call "tell" stories (even your Uncle Fred who rambles on and on at family get-togethers). Anyone cal tell, but it takes practice, failure, re-writing, writing, and more practice to learn how to "show" a story (and if everyone could do it, then even your Uncle Fred would be a best-selling author). If the action is worth mentioning, considering putting it "on camera" rather than telling the reader what happened off camera.

The last quote today (remember I promised your three) is from E.L. Doctorow:

"Good writing it supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon." - E.L. Doctorow

Take a moment to let that sink in.

". . . the feeling of being rained upon."

What does it feel like to rained upon? And when he speaks of feeling, does he refer solely to the physical sensation of rain upon the body? Or is there an internal emotion that arises upon being rained upon? Take a moment to consider how you can show both a physical feeling and an emotional response of a character in reaction to an event.

Have you even read a poem or a part of a novel that made you feel as if you lived what the character(s) experienced? If you have, chances are that the writer did a great job of showing rather than telling. The writer made you feel the rain. Wasn't it wonderful?

Have you found it difficult to see in your own writing when you tell rather than show? Do you think there are times when it's okay to tell rather than show? Do you have a quote or example of show, don't tell?