Anyone that has written or read fanfiction knows that the AU is the Alternate Universe: the placement of a given set of characters that come from a specific IP or franchise or book or movie into a completely different setting, timeline, or even genre.

The LOTR cast might be thrown ...

Hello and welcome to Panel by Panel, an analysis of panels from comics right here on The Duck and exploring what they do, how they work, and what we can learn from them.

This week's panel comes from the Ghastley Heights strip “Pamphlets.” This comic is by IronScarf. Let ...

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Spoiler- we don't actually talk much about Yu-Gi-Oh! But I feel it's a good example of a pretty bad story- a so-bad-it's-good story, but ...

Character Motivation

One thing I appreciate in well written stories is the hidden motivations of characters. Well written characters, just like real people, have contradictions to them. Desires and needs that are sometimes in conflict with each other.

Story structure tells us that a character has to WANT something. The ...

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Let's go forward in time to the past so we can get back to the future and kill our grandfather and be our own ancestor while ...

I’m taking a pause from the Fantastic Bestiary this week as I haven’t been my best healthwise lately. Also lately I’ve been distracted by something that has left me with this question poppin’ into my mind, And so this sunday I'm posting this question that perhaps ...

No, this article isn't about the mythological beings. I wouldn't want to steal any single one from Andreas Helixfinger's awesome Sunday article series.

What I want to talk about is the metaphorical unicorn: a character that is too good to be true, too unlikely to be found ...

As Easter has come by to melt away the final vestiges of a long, cold winter (at least up in these parts where I live) it feels like a good time to bring up the mythology of witches. Witches have a central role in the Easter that we celebrate here ...

Consider this typical fantasy story:

There was once a young handsome man who was good with the sword, excellent with everyone in the village he lived with, and loved and cherished by all. However, he was unhappy because the one girl he fell in love with did not love him ...

Insurance investigator, Mr Donahoo, AKA Possum, has been tasked with finding the missing Freddy Reno. The deeper he digs the more complicated the puzzle becomes. Everyone has a stake in Mr Reno and some of those stakes are pretty high! Just what exactly happened to Freddy and why??? This is ...