Hey everyone - didja miss me? One final thank you to Kroatz, KimLuster and Ironscarf who wrote three amazing guest posts for me while I was finishing up my coursework and exams. You guys really took it up a notch! Virtual hugs and high fives all around!
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Starlight Vega - Visual Novel ...

Guest Post by Ironscarf - How To Scupper Your Life
HippieVan at 12:00AM, April 17, 2015
It is midsummer, somewhere in the British Midlands and sometime in the mid seventies. It is almost midnight. In a suburban semi-detached house, a teenage girl and her young brother are awaiting the return of their parents. A young man of impressionable age waits with them as they bathe in ...
Guest Post by KimLuster - Mind March
HippieVan at 12:00AM, April 10, 2015
(The following perspective piece may be more representative of a deranged mind than of a model that will actual work – attempt to replicate at your own risk)
A while back there was a discussion here on the Duck about what gives us renewed inspiration for our art, about the sorts ...
Guest Post by Kroatz - How I'll Spend my Weekend
HippieVan at 12:00AM, April 3, 2015
I’m going to wake up, I’m quite sure of that. I’ve woken up many times before, and I currently have no real interest in changing that habit. So, first I am going to sleep, have some dangerous and weird adventures that I will either forget or repress ...
Monthly art contests? Input needed!
HippieVan at 12:00AM, March 27, 2015
First of all - I'm going to be taking about three weeks off so that I can finish my course work for this year. (Anyone want to write a historiography paper for me? Please? No? Okay.) It would be great to have some guest newsposts to fill my Friday newspost ...
Mary Sue Contest Submissions
HippieVan at 12:00AM, March 20, 2015
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 ...
Forum Restructure and Fashion Free-For-All
HippieVan at 12:00AM, March 13, 2015
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 ...
Avoiding the Mary Sue (+ a contest!)
HippieVan at 12:00AM, March 6, 2015
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 ...
Celebrating Black History Month - The First Black Superhero
HippieVan at 12:00AM, Feb. 27, 2015
In 1966, in the midst of the American Civil Rights Movement, Marvel Comics introduced the first black superhero - Black Panther.
Black Panther, real name T'Challa, was the King of vibranium-rich Wakanda, a fictional African country (the first African-American superhero would be Marvel's Falcon). A special herb and his ...
Comics for Anti-Comic People
HippieVan at 12:00AM, Feb. 20, 2015
I'm a bit of a comic book proselytizer. When people tell me they don't like comics, I usually take that as a personal challenge. (I have the same reaction when people tell me they don't like cats, but that's another story for another time.) Generally I ...