Set in a time of Feudal Japan, there are two competing clans: the Oni Clan (represented as an ogre or troll in Japanese folklore) and the Fox Clan (a woodland creature). Kisago is assigned to Midori, both members of the Fox Clan, to be her personal escort because he shows ...

Ok yes. Plot armor in general is considered a mistake. With good reason. Enough plot armor and there are no stakes left in your plot, and the audience isn't worried your plot-armored characters may not make it. And if there's no suspense, there's no engagement or the ...

Photo: “Windmills through the Passenger Side Window”. Photo taken by me. (June 2022).

“When June came
The grasses headed out
And turned brown,
And the hills turned brown
Which was not a brown
But a gold and saffron
And red—
An indescribable color.
And from then on until the next ...

It's common knowledge that a solid origin story will make a character. It'll often also make the story being told. Origin stories can be and often are the foundation for characters and plotlines, since motivations, plot points, and even stakes are set in them.

But what makes a ...

So I want to talk about the Dread Persephone!

We are familiar with Persephone as the abducted bride of Hades, the floral, pastel-themed, light-hearted girl that brings about Spring and is the daughter of Demeter, goddess of nature and the harvest.

But is it really who she is?

No. No ...

So Squid Game is a huge hit, and I'm glad I've been a kdrama fan before it was cool, apparently XD (though granted, it's been cool for a good while for a lot of people)

This is not an article about Squid Game, but it offers the ...

So now we got Behaviorism down, we're ready to talk about the Social Cognitive perspective to how human personality develops!

This is one of the major approaches to Theories of Personality, and a perfect example of how psychology theorists build one off the other to develop perspectives and add ...

So we've talked often about how letting a character die in a story is something that should be used very frugally, because once death occurs, it should be permanent. In most settings, death shouldn't be something that is reversible. If not, it will lose its impact, and the ...

We live in a world of routine, predictability, and pedestrian problems. (2020 doesn't count. Much.)

Magic doesn't really seem to exist in our world.

Or does it?

Perhaps we live above a very thin surface, like floating on a tranquil lake, and just underneath it there are ghouls ...

In a world with creatures that resemble cute pocket monsters, there is a small, pink Mew-type animal that loves to give advice at a booth (as suggested by the title “Ask Andante”). Andante lives in a world with very similar creatures that also spend time responding and answering random questions ...