It may just be my impression, but usually when a story is set in a dystopian setting, the dystopia is played straight. However, when the characters encounter or start off in a utopian setting, they almost always will end up realizing that the utopia is actually a mirage, and in ...

Now, the good Professor always follows up his “Good News, Everyone” with decidedly bad news. But for this week, that can wait. And I was going to spend the first part of this newspost looking at some of the more depressing stories about books from around the world, but end ...

It's Resurrection Saturday today! What better occasion then than this to talk about the resurrection trope?

Usually, cancelling out a character's death is not a good thing to do in a story. It undermines the weight of the stakes involved and/or the sacrifice or seriousness of the ...

I generally avoid using current events in my articles about webcomics, but this time I can't help it. Signalgate has been living rent free in my mind ever since the editor in chief of the Atlantic broke the story.

There are many reasons for that, most of them not ...

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Parody and satire are a certain kind of humour. They're VERY easy to do because you just base them off real, already existing things, then you twist it a bit to add humour and ...

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I love those characters who bitch and moan and want to do things differently, although they don't usually take up the leadership role themselves, they just THINK they should be leader instead, but they ...

Photo: “A Page of the Tuesday Funnies Used to Wrap a Mason Jar at the Thrift Store”. The San Diego Union-Tribune. (February 2025)

Gleaning for vintage supplies at the local thrift store, I made out with an assortment of cream coloured typewriter papers weathered by age from card stock cotton ...

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-Art by The Doodler-

Today we have on a super special guest, The Doodler! This is another on our technical series about art making and this time we're talking about lighting. Tantz suggested we ...

Photo: “-Spring- Ch.6: Page 66”. Imago, Nebraska story and art created by InkyMoondrop. (March 2025)

InkyMoondrop writes:

“Hi!


I know the 400th page just got announced, but Chapter 6 of Imago, Nebraska is also coming to a sexually heated up finale, with its last pages publishing on the 11th ...

So you might have a character that's generally very calm or stoic. They may appear weak, or just not intimidating. They may be the right gender, class, age, or any other parameter for their peers to assume they are easy pickings and thus a great target for harassment. Initially ...