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 ...

For several years I've been doing a comic called Typical Strange here on the Duck. And I'm still doing it, I swear!

The characters are a fairly diverse assortment of different temperaments and personalities, and the adventures they've had and will continue to have will hopefully be ...

I've recently been watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries on Netflix. Phryne Fisher is undoubtedly a wish-fulfillment character – almost unapologetically so. She is sexy, bold, and intelligent. Whenever a new challenge is put before her, she reveals a previously-unmentioned skill that saves the day (see the above image where ...

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Image by Ozoneocean

Content:
After several interesting discussions about Mary Sues, we'd like to talk about characters a little more.
We asked people to let us know their thoughts on what makes a well written character VS a poorly written one. People talked about their favourite and least ...

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Image by VinoMas

Content:
Hello hello hello! This week Ozoneocean and Banes pirate another of HippieVan's much discussed newsposts. When the test for Mary Sue was brought up in our recent writing tests Quackcast it generated some heated talk so HippieVan went a little deeper into it and ...

-Art by Gunwallace

I discovered a sketchbook sitting to the left of the counter during my last visit to my favourite tea lounge. The words “Before I Die…” were scrawled across the black cover, so curiosity got the best of me and I thumbed through the pages. Each page had ...

Hilarious image courtesy of Banes! Might have Fonzie introduce all my newsposts from now on.

I only got two submissions for my contest (thanks a bunch, guys :P) so I figured I would just declare both of these awesome participants my winners!**


Submission 1: from KimLuster (click to see larger ...

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Image by Fashion show participants

Content:
Have you heard the word about the DD Fashion Show Free For All that's currently going on? No? Well now's your chance, so listen up good! Banes and Ozoneocean interview VinoMas aka Travis Michael Moore about the great community project he ...

The DD forums have been pretty unwieldy for ages now - we have WAY more sub-forums than we need. JustNoPoint made an excellent suggestion to consolidate them into a smaller number of broader forums. We've been discussing the change in this thread without any objections so far, so I went ...

This newspost was inspired by this week's Quackcast on testing your writing and knowing your characters. In the comments, KimLuster posted a Mary Sue test and discussed her annoyance in finding that one of her characters scored highly.

So what is a Mary Sue? Everyone sort of knows one ...