It's been said by…someone that a character WANTS something. It's one of the ingredients that makes a compelling character. It's also something that makes a character relatable, even one who's very different from the reader/audience.

Most of us aren't centuries-old robots, but we ...

Photo: (clockwise from upper left) UndertheBlackHat’s gift for cdmalcolm1; usedbook’s gift for UndertheBlackHat; Hushicho’s gift for nightmarelunatic; cdmalcolm1’s gift for theRedDeath; Andreas_Helixfinger’s gift for lothar; and theRedDeath’s gift for sleeping_gorilla.


There are less than four weeks until the time of gift-giving. The time to ...

Doppelgangers were thought to be an omen of death or bad fortune. If you see a being that looks like you, doom awaits!

The name has evolved to mean a lookalike, usually supernatural or unexplained. There are many stories that feature Doppelgangers, whether ghostly, clones, mirrors come-to-life, robot duplicates, or ...

So I just watched the latest Trope Talk by Overly Sharkastic Productions on Youtube (high recommend if you aren't already subscribed). The focus was on Doomed Heroes, and there's not much I'd be able to add to that comprehensive essay. Go watch it.

What it did inspire ...

Hello everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck.

Last week I invited creators to send pages and panels they are proud of for me to look at and potentially write about. The response was good, and I am glad to say ...

Poem Nr. 12 (For halloween): Death Wishes


All that remains is cradling the grave.
Rocking the burial ground that is left to decay.
And still, I say, still your heart’s mourning beat.
For even in defeat, dawn comes to greet some more.
Never wish death, for death wishes you ...

It's almost Halloween!

…and it isn't part of my culture. It's only recently started to become a “novelty thing” in Greece, and we totally don't quite get it the way people who actually celebrate it likely do. So I don't want to talk about Halloween ...

This is gonna be a bit of an obscure pop cultural Fantastic Bestiary rundown, but heck with it, it’s my article series and I’m doing it anyway. I’m gonna talk about the Galerians today. To start off, Galerians is a tank-control style survival horror video game for ...

So hitting a girl (or a woman) is extremely tropey. Regardless of how progressive your story is, a man hitting a woman runs a high risk of being considered lowly or less than heroic. That's because generally, women are considered weaker than men, thus an easy target. A woman ...

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Source material is something that we can love and respect, but it's just as often disregarded, degenerated, and denigrated, especially these days where it seems like ...