In the frozen forests of old Russia the mother of a small peasant family dies, leaving her husband and her two children, a boy and a girl. The father sends his daughter off to a big town for a finer more refined life than he can give her… it doesn ...

Imagine a city inhabited by squirrels. No, not the ordinary squirrels that you would find in an ordinary city. This is a city where squirrels wear hats, wear glasses, smoke cigarettes, play with puppets, and even attend University.

Delia is an educated squirrel lady who has yet to find the ...

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Art by Ozoneocean

State your business!
Venerable Drunkducker Ayesinback suggested we have an open electronic meetup of DD people, so that's exactly what we did! We all met up in a long Skype session that lasted 10 hours- various DDers dropped in and out over that time and ...

-conceptual bridge design by kawaiidaigakusei

"Tell me why all the best laid plans fall apart in your hands. And my good intentions never end, the way I meant.“ -James Blunt ”Best Laid Plans“

My desktop computer has a lot of saved files that have accumulated over the years. Every once ...

Reflection Characters

When I was doing a little reading on the “Mentor” character type, I learned about something called “Reflection Characters”. It was an eye opener; I'd never heard of this before, though I could instantly see how it made sense in storytelling, and dozens of examples came to ...

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Art by Ozoneocean

What makes the “meat” of a story? What makes you fall in love with it, keep coming back for more watches or reads or whatever? I contend it has nothing to do with conflict or culminations or climaxes, those are merely generic structural plottings that are ...

Jean Arp, "Untitled (College with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance)". 1917

"In Europe and America, grey is the color most associated with boredom, solitude and emptiness. It is associated with rainy days and winter.“ -Wikipedia ”Grey: Boredom“

”Grey is my favorite color“ -Counting Crows ”Mr. Jones“

I ...

In many parts of the world, this Sunday is Mother's Day. So I thought we'd take a look at some of my favourite Mothers in fiction.

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii25/Banes500/moms.png

How many of these Moms and their shows/movies/comics can you identify ...

Deep in a frozen icy waste, a story of dark treachery and vicious slaughter is unfolding. A returning elven caravan is beset by a massive hoard of vicious snow dwelling Shuntacks. The twilight world is rent by the sound of battle and the spilling of hot blood. This is a ...

I like to follow the rules.

I grew up in a world where green means “Go” and red means “Stop” (while yellow sometimes means “Drive As Fast As You Can”). Usually if there is a rule written somewhere, I probably abide by it. The benefit of following rules is that ...