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Post by nolan on Jun 22, 2006 20:20:48 GMT -5
Teen and Tween age girls have proven to be a powerful force for the entertainment industry, but, they have been almost entirely ignored in terms of American comic book projects aimed at them (though there are a number of manga projects aimed at this age range).
For this prompt, you are to create a comic book project aimed at girls aged between 8-12 (tweens) or 13-19 (teens).
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Post by jayvee on Jun 22, 2006 23:21:22 GMT -5
Are you there, God? It's me, Cinderella.
Princesses and fairies!
Magic romances!
Cute tiaras!
How far off base am I here?
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Post by nolan on Jun 22, 2006 23:42:59 GMT -5
OMG, I laughed so loud at that dude.
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Post by jayvee on Jun 23, 2006 8:12:28 GMT -5
*takes a bow*
Throw a pony in, stir and you've got a tween girl book.
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Post by nolan on Jun 23, 2006 13:01:00 GMT -5
Dude, its ridiculously stereotypical and yet hilarious.
Seriously though, I think that there's a serious need for sequential material aimed at the markets of teen and tween girls. They are a powerful demographic in terms of purchasing power.
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slim
New Member
Posts: 3
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Post by slim on Jun 25, 2006 14:29:22 GMT -5
How about a 13-year old girl with severe multiple personality problems? Most kids her age don't know what or who they wanna be like. Aguilera? Kournikova? Lohan? Osbourne? This teener gets 'possessed' by a dozen of the most powerful spirits of the Pangaean Age, and each wants to take over.
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Post by nolan on Jun 25, 2006 14:53:01 GMT -5
How about a 13-year old girl with severe multiple personality problems? Most kids her age don't know what or who they wanna be like. Aguilera? Kournikova? Lohan? Osbourne? This teener gets 'possessed' by a dozen of the most powerful spirits of the Pangaean Age, and each wants to take over. Thats a cool idea. I really like it. But I'd like to see a little more to it because I think it needs some kind of complication.
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Post by jayvee on Jun 25, 2006 23:25:01 GMT -5
The girl being trapped inside and fighting to get her body back with a bunch of cute companions seems complication enough.
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Post by nolan on Jun 26, 2006 0:50:46 GMT -5
I don't know...
How about like one of the personalities likes one guy, she lieks another and one of the personalities is gay and likes a girl. Or something like that.
After all, the age kids are coming out keeps going down. When I was in middle school (94-97, yeah I'm old) there was only one openly gay kid. Of course I went to a school that wasn't really a place for diversity, there were maybe 6 non-white kids in my grade.
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Post by jayvee on Jun 26, 2006 8:41:46 GMT -5
If you're writing for a younger age group, they're not going to want to hear the words "gay" and "straight." Besides, concepts like that raise the age bracket. Instead, one of the personalities should just be a "boy," while all the others are "girls." I'm aware that is somewhat RANMA 1/2 but it works better than including the idea of sexual identity. And the boy could be the antagonist, too, because obviously, little girls would never do something as mean as steal another girl's body.
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Post by nolan on Jun 26, 2006 10:02:42 GMT -5
If you're writing for a younger age group, they're not going to want to hear the words "gay" and "straight." Besides, concepts like that raise the age bracket. Instead, one of the personalities should just be a "boy," while all the others are "girls." I'm aware that is somewhat RANMA 1/2 but it works better than including the idea of sexual identity. And the boy could be the antagonist, too, because obviously, little girls would never do something as mean as steal another girl's body. www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1589/is_2005_Feb_1/ai_n9487797Children are coming out at earlier and earlier ages. The average age has gone down from like 18 to like 14-16, so well within the years of middle school. And the sexual identity need not be shown with sexual behaviour. I have to completely disagree with you that it would age the book too much. In fact, I think it would go a long way in terms fo making the book more accessible to readers of that age group, who actually know people who are gay (or have at least told a few people about it).
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Post by jayvee on Jun 26, 2006 17:48:43 GMT -5
I thought we were talking about 11-12 year olds. The "tweeners."
Makes a big difference when we're discussing writing for an age bracket.
If it's 13-16 year olds you're writing for, I don't see a problem.
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Post by nolan on Jun 26, 2006 19:22:49 GMT -5
I thought we were talking about 11-12 year olds. The "tweeners." Makes a big difference when we're discussing writing for an age bracket. If it's 13-16 year olds you're writing for, I don't see a problem. jayvee, I put teen and tween together jsut because both demographics are so underserved in terms of comic projects. Age-wise, i was basically saying 11-18 or so. But there is a big difference between a project for 11 year olds and 16-18 year olds. Despite being a bit out of the age range, the social science that I've seen does suggest that a move like thsi would be entirely appropriate for that age range.
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Post by jayvee on Jun 26, 2006 22:53:45 GMT -5
I'm going to maintain that it's not appropriate for 11- to 12-year-olds. Maybe even 13's.
It wouldn't be such an issue for 14- to 18's.
You're walking into a PR nightmare if you market something like that to 11- to 12's.
It's not a safe business move.
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Post by nolan on Jun 26, 2006 23:28:42 GMT -5
Dude, our magazine has never been about safe business moves.
And, honestly, I don't necessarily think its an unsafe one. Its coming forward and showing kids that there are things like that out there and the people who do comics understand them, tehy don't have to go through this alone.
I wish that there had been a book like that when I was struggling with my time-related identity issues.
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