getting to the <3 of the matter
Announced less than a week in advance, a special appearance by The Clone Wars supervising director Dave Filoni made a fitting conclusion to this year’s Star Wars Weekends. He always seems to enjoy putting on a good show for the fans, and this time was no exception.
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Why isn’t the existing Hero’s Journey model already good enough to use for heroine-centered stories? In this post, we address the three main problems we see in Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and its impact on storytelling, and how we hope to design the Heroine’s Journey model differently to avoid them.
Read moreBased on the initial premise set out in its earliest episodes, The Good Wife might not have seemed a likely source for multiple strong female heroines. But few shows on television have as many strong female characters as The Good Wife, especially not characters who serve others like the women of Lockhart Gardner.
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Last weekend’s release of The Hunger Games movie has generated a lot of fan discussion about the differences between the book and the film. Some fans have expressed disappointment, even outrage, at various aspects of the book that were “left out” or “changed” in the movie. Other fans have praised the new material in the movie for expanding the story or increasing its impact compared to the book. And some, like a parent with two children, love them both just as much, but in different ways.
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What sets The Hunger Games apart from the rest of the field, though, is its lead character, Katniss Everdeen, and the skill with which Collins executes a novel trilogy centered around a young female lead. Where so many others have failed, or not even bothered to try, Collins not only creates a Strong Female Heroine, but also makes the story her Heroine’s Journey from impoverished nobody to national symbol. There are far too few stories of this kind in the genre – or anywhere else for that matter – even amid the prolific storytelling boom of recent years. For authors, screenwriters, and others struggling to figure out how to write better female characters and better female-centered stories, The Hunger Games has to be at the very top of the list to read, analyze, and learn from.
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In The Hunger Games novel trilogy, Suzanne Collins created another fantastic example of an heroic story centered around one principal character, without losing touch with the role that teamwork and collaborative success play in human nature. In a very real sense, the trilogy is not the story of the rise and triumph of Katniss Everdeen, but rather the success of Team Katniss.
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Last year the blog introduced the series Seeking Strong Female Heroines. This year we’re adding a complementary series: the Heroine’s Journey.
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As the countdown to The Hunger Games continues, Lionsgate and Scholastic have been rolling out a deliberate marketing strategy to build momentum ahead of the first movie.
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When seeking strong female heroines, a comedy-drama police-procedural television series like ABC’s Castle probably wouldn’t be at the top of most people’s list of places to start. Yet the show’s female lead – homicide detective Kate Beckett, played by Stana Katic – is a great example of a well-designed, successful character who also fits the bill as strong, female, and heroic.
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Is Red Tails a perfect movie? Of course not. Is it a fun, exciting, entertaining action movie with a vein of serious social commentary? Absolutely. Our review has the details.
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