In the latest episode of Star Trek Picard, a character talks about his efforts to prolong his own life in a way I won't spoil. He lets go of this idea, and in the message he leaves behind, he says "Evolution is not about preservation - it's about addition ...

So last time, in Part 1 of this discussion of …sunnier villains or antagonists, we had left off talking about how toxic positivity is all about the toxic person's comfort. And that this need to impose a certain behavior, dogma, and/or approach to reality in their environment leads ...

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Adventure is a fun genre! Not as many things get made for it these days but it used to be hugely popular in the past. It's ...

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If something affects or disturbs you so much that you want to respond to it through a story that you write, that can be a pretty powerful ...

The idea that an individual (or many) have managed to escape death has always been alluring to creators. being able to live through history, being a constant in an ever-changing world, never having to die, can have its perks: you have innumerable chances to live the ‘good life’, you can ...

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 ...

A succubus is a very particular kind of demon, sexy and extremely dangerous… And Mary is an exceptionally dangerous demon. Mary wasn't always a succubus, she had a very traumatic transition into becoming one. She was human and alive once, a horrible event changed all that. Now she's ...

Niccea has an Awards Announcement:

Whew! Here we go again. I'm going to get everything moving now. 

I'm going to open up the awards for For Your Consideration pages now. The rules are simple: keep the page rated PG or so and use the theme in your page ...

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Let's talk about total immersion… When consuming media rather than creating it, if you're lucky you become immersed: the struggles and fears of the character ...

There is no story without a theme. Even when written without anything prepared in terms of a message, a story will always give people things to think about and messages drawn from how the story was set up and how it was resolved (if at all).

So I don't ...