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In this Quackcast I wanted to talk about the magic of authorship: how the creator of a story sets up the whole situation so that they can convince the reader of anything. You can write a story about the smartest man in the world, and the reader will believe ...

Well last week we had chaos and disruption, so reckon it's high time we reestablished some order around here. And to do that ya need rules, right?

Rules. Yeah… Oh boy.

Well fine, we ain't got to call it “rules”; we can think of it as a set ...

Welcome back, gang! Er, can I call y'all “gang”? Is that too informal or too assumptive about your willingness for complicity in my extra curricular activities? Eh, too bad. Once you're in the gang, there's only one way out. Now, while you're letting that sink in ...

In a chat where we were discussing our comics, Pit-Face told me that if Bones from Putrid Meat is Odysseus, then Blitzov from Epic of Blitzov is Gilgamesh. And that very solid analogy of the two characters’ function in her stories, got me thinking about how myth of all sorts ...

Elsewhere, the comic series, is hitting 350 pages on The Duck this week.

At the start of this year it also started working on pages for “Elsewhere's Calendar Girls- A Book of Obscure Holidays”. It is full of strange holiday, weird facts and humor. This will be going on ...

The Hated, part two: Heroes we hate

Last week I blathered on a bit about villain Protagonists. These are evil, or “bad” characters who get to be Protagonists!

But what about more traditional heroes, or supporting characters are written to be the “moral compass” or “voice of reason”, or just ...

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What defines evil in fiction?
I say the simplest one is bad guys are selfish, good guys are selfless.
That is massively over simplistic but it's a good easy template for basic hero's and villains. Basic ones
I was just doing a quick thought experiment to work ...

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Art by Ozoneocean

Today we talk about works of pop-culture that have an obvious political agenda, so obvious that t not only gets in the way of the entertainment but also dictates to the audience without letting them have a chance to come to their own conclusions: forcing you ...

I came across a little blurb the other day about Mary Sues, and fanfiction, and how the writer of a fanfiction is basically writing a fantasy, inserting themselves as the character at the center of attention, immaculate, glittering and perfect. Basically everything you want to smack into a different galaxy ...

Everyone loves a good thriller, a titillating mystery, a tale full of twists and turns (that make sense), something that challenges you to find the answer before you’re given it at the final act.
I’m not sure how many like sitting down to construct them.

Don’t get ...