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What makes bad guy intimidating? Tantz Aerine made a great newspost about the question, carefully outlining various key bad-guy properties like confidence, composure, efficiency, and amorality. Banes, Pitface, Tantz and I stomp ALL over that, traipsing about like drunken, muddy rugby players, as we blather on about our opinions ...

So there's a lot of talk and discussion on how to approach the creation of your webcomic (or novel, or short story) regarding planning out your plot, the degrees of planning out, and the option of flying by the seat of your pants.

I have done both, both in ...

Every hero goes up against a villain. Every protagonist against an antagonist. This is the main clash that drives your story, any story, forward be it slice of life or epic drama.

One of the elements that can make this driving force compelling, that will make the clash interesting and ...

Yesterday, Mks_Monsters asked me to talk about an experience of hers, which I have seen being shared with a range of creators belonging to certain social groups (female, LGBTQ, POC, etc) if their occasional tweets on the matter are to be believed: That support for them on the basis of ...

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In today's Quackcast we talk about a couple of subjects: Doing things at the last minute VS doing them slowly, over time. Sometimes you get that wonderful last minute energy caused by a deadline, your work can be inspired, or at least fresh and full of vibrancy. Other ...

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Sexy badguys: power vs confidence vs sexiness. That's what we chat about here. Why do we have sexy bad guys? Are all bad guys and girls sexy? What makes them sexy? Is power truly sexy in fiction or is it confidence? There are so many aspects to this ...

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This is the Quackcast where I get things wrong! Haha, I DO love to imagine that I know everything but fortunately Tantz and Pit are there to correct me! For this Quackcast I was thinking about the way we assign villains when there's a religious theme or anything ...

My Life as an American Hero is a tale of revenge, sisterhood, national security and superpowers! Sylvia, Luna, and Rachel are sisters and rivals, but when tragedy strikes their parents they know they'll have to set their rivalries aside to team up and go after the bad guys. This ...

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In this Quast we talk about immortality, which is a common trope in literature. Who seeks immortality in stories? It's usually bad guys, and it usually has some sort of extreme price,catch or dark side, so much so that people actually believe that if immortality WAS real ...

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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 ...