The DD Awards pre-events are already happening!

Whether you want to participate in the Awards themselves or not, consider contributing by submitting a trophy design.

Each year the DD Awards Trophy has a different design created by a DDer and voted for by the community. Each year is a chance ...

On the last “Mind Tricks” discussion, we talked about false memories, where a characters' true nature is hidden from them because of memory loss or artificial memories.

The Phantom Life is similar, certainly in the two examples that I thought of initially…but the stories play out
in a different ...

Welcome to…
The DD Fashion Spotlight!
Number 25.

Hpkomic is sharing the load with Friday newsposts, so we alternate each week. My turn this week!

Kumiko, Maria, and Elda are all dressed as maids, in a very typically manga style. This is solidly a manga trope which comes from a ...

So it's fun to rant about tropes I hate but I actually prefer to gush about tropes I love.

And one of them is what I call “the bargain”: it's really a game of wits between a (usually lawful) villain and a hero (or protagonist/antagonist, take your ...

People experience the pace of a story in different ways according to different story mediums.

When I bought some collections of the old newspaper strip “Li'l Abner”, I was interested to see how many strips would have a panel of recap from the story so far. It was funny ...

Photo: “Rhino and Zebra Playing Chess”. Illustration from The Eleventh Hour by Graeme Base. (1988)

My uncle could see nine moves ahead in chess. Nine moves. I could never understand how one could predict the future moves of an opponent by sheer chance. A predictable opponent makes predictable moves, yet ...

A small gang of imprisoned tough guys are “offered” the chance to do some advanced military training… It turns out that a little earlier while they were meeting in a park to discuss their dastardly plans when an alien starship abducted them and they may or may not have rampaged ...

Unless you're winging it 100%, chances are that you have an ending in mind for your story. Perhaps you even have the entire ending scene plotted out in your mind, the layouts ready, even some of the lines or expressions your characters will say and have.

You might have ...

Ah, public transportation. A favorite bastion for random encounters with strangers from various walks of life.

In the early days of riding, a chance encounter on public transit would usually be drowned out using a variety of props: stereo-headphones; a pair of sunglasses; face mask; eye mask; inflatable neck pillow ...

It's Christmas Day today!

What are the chances! It's the first time my day to post in the blog is so perfectly timed for well wishes! So first off, I'd like to wish you all a happy Christmas Day, and if you don't observe it, a ...