Was missing that personalized touch to my theme~ So, I went back to the basic bundled WordPress TwentyEleven Theme & customized/tweaked it slightly.
Whoo! It’s also got some neat new organization stuff on the side I might try out (like separate post types for Galleries/Images/Quotes and stuff) that resemble Tumbler. We’ll see how that goes. XD
The theme features some original artwork of mine of Benjamin & Éclat from WaM. :)
I’ve decided that I need to update my blog more – to do this I think I’m going to try and start a series or two and hope that keeps me talking to you guys. So I’m thinking the series for Fridays & maybe one later in the week to focus on writing/my comics. Sound good?
We’ll start things off with the first edition of – “Liliy’s A Fangirl” (Fangirl? Friday? Ha ha. So original. *flips hair back*) – Where I talk to you about whatever geeked me out the most this week that you probably saw once or twice on Twitter. xD
Movies
Fright. Night. <– No contest. Fright Night won over all movie fandom for the past couple of weeks. I even have a screen of Jerry (Farrell) on my desktop at work. It has caused much teasing but they can deal with it.
Loved the 1985 version of the film like you wouldn’t believe. The actors were amazing (Roddy McDowall~ We miss you!) and the plot was fun. The 2011 version kept that same fun but modernized the story line to more of a Buffy thing. Both worked well and I’m a fan~
Best part of the series? The Old School Vampire rules. It’s just one of those things that should be in vampire stories. Their stupid, stupid rules that counter balance the fact otherwise they’re mostly all powerful and undefeatable. How else can you have a guy immune to bullets be stabbed with a pencil (wood!)? I’m sorry Edward Cullen – but you wouldn’t last a day if you had to follow the rules. :P
Or maybe you’d finally be bad ass. One of the two.
Books/Comics
The DC New 52 started this week with JL#1 – I like. I liked it a lot. Green Lantern & Batman played off each other well and we start things off with a Superman vs Batman showdown. That’s the way to start a new series.
Can’t wait for the next new series to start Wednesday~
And thanks to a one-day Comixology Sale, I got all of Marvel’s Ultimates 2 for $14 – good deal. Only read through the first part though. Crazy Thor…oh Thor. *hugs him*
Also, still trying to get through Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist. It feels like I’ve been reading this book forever. >_< It’s not that it’s bad, but it goes back and forth between stuff I care about and stuff I don’t, so when I hit the parts I could care less about I tend to put the book down and forget it exists. >.> The parts with Eli & Oscar are good though. XD
Also, Friend gave me her book in progress~ Really good so far~ Need more time in the day to sit down with that. *_*;
Anime
I’ve been pretty lax on anime lately, but CrunchyRoll is helping that. <3 Them. That subscription is totally worth every penny for ad free streaming. I really hope more people support this service & funimation for streaming. Yay Legal options! :D Current favs include:
No. 6 – These episodes won’t come out fast enough and I missed yesterday’s new one…drat. *_* But seriously – Rat & Sion are the cutest things ever and I love it. Also, animation is win.
Otome Youkai Zakuro – Saw this series on an amazing AMV & loved the animation. So, I looked up the series on Crunchy Roll (it’s complete) and loved it. I watched the entire thing in about two sittings. Think Tactics, but with more girls & less shounen-ai everywhere. Very cute fluffy series about three pairings (including a canon twin OT3! XD). It even got me choked up there toward the end of the series with the more serious episodes. A tear may have fallen out.
Blue Exorcist – This series is just cute. >.> Slightly losing interest though with the later stuff. It was more fun when Rin was hiding his powers. XD
Music
“Start a Fire” by Ryan Star.
That is all.
Edit: To Clarify: No research was done, this was just my way of mostly trying to point out money went to a lot of places other than printing. >.> Sorry for the confusion…it’s been a long week.
Thoughts on Business Costs
The following are thoughts based on my personal experiences & through my own understanding. I’m not completely discounting current outcries over how much digital comics cost right now, but I’m also against cutting the price so much that the people distributing the comics can no longer function.
The Issue
There’s been a lot of discussion lately on the cost of digital comics & their distribution services like Comixology.
The argument that has me at ends for the moment, is the one that comics should cost significantly less digitally since there should be significantly less distribution/print costs involved. At first, this sounds accurate, but the more I think about it, the less true that seems. There are still plenty of costs involved with the distribution – probably more so.
Overhead?
I think part of the problem is this mindset that the money from the comic should be split between royalties/the artists & printing/distribution costs.
It gives me this feeling that people forget mainstream comics are businesses that have overhead costs in addition to the Team of people putting the comic together. We’ll cover overhead in just a little bit…
Distribution
Back to that argument about lowering digital prices because there is supposedly no distribution (printing & mailing it to stores) costs. For starters, I’m not sure where people get the idea distribution is a large part of the costs of comic production – but it’s apparently there. Printing & Shipping seem to me like they’d be on the lower end of the cost scale well after salaries & creator pay.
How does this apply to a Digital Distribution service like Comixology?
Businesses, as a whole, cost money to run & maintain – I’m sure folks understand that. What I don’t think they realize is that Digital Distribution platforms are businesses, too, with the same costs and overhead they have to pay to distribute and maintain your product as any other business. Comics distribution is just a tiny part of that process.
When you keep that in mind, the amount of money they charge makes more sense – most of the money isn’t going to the printing of the comic.
Just an Example
I work a 9-5 in a small business. As such, I see a lot of the finance side & do a lot of the supply orders (aka everything overhead covers). Plus, I have to keep track of what I work on because my pay comes out of jobs we complete (so if we’re not working on a specific contracted job, my pay comes out of overhead – which is usually a bad thing).
The following is just a basic run-through of costs minus the actually dollar amounts. Even without the figures, I’m sure you can picture how costs can add up quickly. Even more so when you consider the price of that one comic has to keep both the Comics Publisher & The Digital Distributer in business (they both have these same costs).
Businesses usually have the following costs to consider (yes, even digital distribution services) to run smoothly every month:
Overhead : This is the one I think people forget about the most. These are costs that aren’t directly related to the product but are essential for the business to stay running. Some of the most popular overhead items include:
Employees : The bulk of any business cost usually goes to the employee’s paycheck. In the case of an online business you probably get to pay one or more of the following kind folks trying to earn a living (I’ll admit, these are guesses – I’m sure there’s a few I’m forgetting):
Conclusion
It costs a hell of a lot to run and maintain a business – even an online one. When you think about that (assuming Digital Distributers & the Comics Publisher split the cost of the comic 50/50) – that $0.49 per comic issue doesn’t go as far as you think it should and you start seeing why they want $1/comic.
Digital distribution is a service and a business – and that costs money.
Do I hope we find that happy medium where enough people buy digital comics to lower that price down? Yes. Is it there right now? No, I don’t think so.
So until then, I’ll pay my $1.99 per comic & help support the industry grow in the right direction.
Okay. Here we go. XD Spoilers abound below! I shan’t hold back so read at your own discretion. ^^
Transformers – Little peeved they killed Jazz, but otherwise liked it.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – Loved it. Wrote a whole blog post on it.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
I’m…split on this one. Half of it was good (and I really loved the parts that were good) and the other half was almost unforgivably bad (I say almost b/c I think I liked the good stuff enough to drive off total hatred…)
So we’re going to do a back and forth! :D
Loved Carly. Loved her so much and I’m so happy Spike’s (His name is Spike darn it! Screw ‘Sam’ XD) finally with the right girl & her actress was great. Her telling Megatron off? Joy. Total joy because Carly was always that sort of girl to walk straight up to the autobots and give them a piece of her mind.
Hated Whiney Sam. Sam was a little needy in this one. He wasn’t winning any brownie points.
Loved Lennox. Sorry, he was my favorite military guy and he got a few good scenes. XD
Hated Que/Wheeljack – for a while. But that was when I thought he was Kup (easy mistake with the Wreckers in this movie. XD). My rage is gone now b/c his character choices suddenly make sense. XD So…moving on.
Loved Dutch & Dylan. Those two just kept getting better every second. Dutch was a mixture of funny & kick ass that worked very well and he bounced off Simmons amazingly. Dylan was great for various levels from the slightly caring hitting on your girlfriend Boss to the desperate bad guy. Lots of love.
Hated the death toll. This one isn’t so much an issue. I’ve gotten used to it in these films. But still…Starscream and Megatron? Why? Why would you do that? I was quite upset when Starscream when down. And we’ll tack on a hate for Starscream’s spitting problem. *sighs*
LOVED Leonard Nimoy. He should have revived his role as Galvatron, but I’ll take Sentinel Prime any day. Love that man behind a Transformer. His acting was amazing.
Hated that I was wincing at the Autobots. I know these are a far more violent bunch after the last two movies, but when the Decepticons are taking prisoners before the Autobots things are a tad mixed up. As for Optimus killing Megs and Sentinel at the end….eh. I can sort of see it happening with this version of his character. Didn’t mean I liked it, but eh.
Loved Laserbeak & Barricade’s cameo. Laserbeak b/c he was a glorious little smart-ass (like all cassettes should be) and Barricade just b/c he was there. <3 Barricade.
Hated wondering where the other freaking Autobots were ! I mean, what happened to Arcee and Jolt and the guys from the second movie? They couldn’t even get a cameo drive by?
Loved Bumblebee. He needed more screen time. He’s also still my favorite Transformer from this franchise and probably always will be.
So there you have it. Overall I’ll say I liked it, but there was quite a bit to be disappointed with. Enough good overweighted the bad though to make me be too upset with it. Overall it felt like the folks behind it said “Screw it, let’s have so fun.” and went with it. I can work with that. It’s Transformers.
First off – My kitty likes to sleep in an Amazon shipping box and it’s adorable. Cinder is just cute that way…even if she does love to attack me. See below:
Fear my crappy phone camera in low light.
Second! My CatWoman Mousepad from Zazzle arrived! Yay!!! It is now at home at my work desk replacing my old TRANE one. Check it out:
I’m waiting to see when they notice at work. So far no one’s said anything. XD I love her 40’s outfit. ^^