Headphones and Notebooks

As someone who can generally take or leave Marvel films, I wasn’t entirely fussed about the recently-released Captain Marvel starring Brie Larson. While I have enjoyed quite a few of the standalone Marvel films- and grew up watching X-Men and Spider-Man films- I didn’t really know if I wanted to see it. But when some university friends suggested seeing it as part of our new monthly cinema trips, I found myself eagerly saying yes. I’d seen the trailer, see, and some of the cast interviews and it looked like fun. Plus, I’d seen DC’s Wonder Woman in the cinema when it came out and had found I’d enjoyed that a lot more than I’d expected. While I know better than to compare DC and Marvel, it at least suggested to me that I would perhaps enjoy this film too, because of it having a female lead. It certainly made me more interested in seeing it. I didn’t really know what to expect from the film, as Captain Marvel is a character I have very little knowledge of. At least with charact

It’s that time again. Issue #3 of Boom! Studios’ Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot dropped this week. As you may recall from my previous reviews, the comic series is throwing up a lot of questions regarding both new and returning plots and characters. This issue was no different. Yet another familiar face appeared in this issue as Harmony Kendall made her debut. She seems to ask the same daft questions as she did in the show, and complains about not letting teachers out in public, as she’s subjected to Giles’s guitar playing at the local coffee shop- apparently this time round he’s less fussed about the kids finding out about his hobby. But she also lets slip that she’s had some pretty weird dreams. Is this a coincidence, or will it tie in to Xander’s and Buffy’s recurring dreams? Is it a Hellmouth thing? With Harmony having become a vampire in the show, it will be interesting to find out if she is going to become part of a larger plot in the comics too. My only complaint about Ha

If you are anything like me, you may find the best way to plan a story is to get everything organised in a visually pleasing manner. For me, I do this in a series of visual aids. This means setting out chapter plans, as well as character bios so that I’ve got a quick and easy way to find tidbits of information- birthdays, favourite food, dream job and such- that I might mention in passing and need to reference again in a later chapter. These are all, probably, pretty standard things that a lot of writers do. For my chapter plans, I like to have one document that details every chapter and how long I anticipate those events lasting within the story. This means that a chapter that details a character going for a job interview and also witnessing a crime taking place, followed by the character struggling with that, might have a note beside it telling me that these events are spaced out over a period of ten days. The job interview may happen on day one, while witnessing the crime migh

Ever since issue one arrived last month, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the second issue of Boom! Studios’ rebooted Buffy the Vampire Slayer . As you may recall , I raised queries about Willow’s girlfriend, Cordelia Chase, the appearance of characters like Angel and Oz. Well, issue two made some of those things a little clearer, but not completely. I was initially thrown by the fact the little text boxes were Xander’s thoughts rather than Buffy’s, as I had forgotten that in the wait between issues one and two. Not only that, but I’m starting to worry that something big is going down with Xander, something we didn’t see happen onscreen. This Xander is isolated more than before; he’s an outsider in Buffy’s world because he’s not a Slayer or a Watcher, he’s an outsider in Willow’s world because she has her girlfriend (more on that in a second). We know from the first issue that his family problems have likely been carried over, but this feels like something a little more than that. I’m