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 ...

The first time I learned about the gentle sea cows of Florida’ everglades was through a Sierra computer game called EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus. Sierra was actively doing its part to help better the world through creating a series of games that brought to light the dangerous effects of ...

The rent is due, Atom Man! There is no time to sleep all day while a big robot destroys half of downtown, time to get ready and fight a metal Cyclops. Later in the evening, the news features an explosion at Centra-Tech, a power research facility, and its CEO Simon ...

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 ...

Photo: Venus and Adonis by Peter Paul Rubens

There are few days more appropriate than today to write about Love as a topic. Aphrodite herself, the goddess of love, fell in love with the beautiful Adonis, before his ill-fated day when he encountered the wild boars.

Love comes in many ...

A teacher once told me a story about an in-law who worked in the animation studio for a very popular children’s cartoon. The studio used hand-drawn animation for the first season and transitioned to more computer animation for season two and season three. The job entailed drawing the main ...

I wandered into one of those gaming shops that specialized in acrylic hobby paint, paintbrushes, and miniature figurine kits while locally window shopping for the holiday. The interaction went like this:

Me: “Hello, do you know of any fantasy table-top role playing games happening in the area?”

Clerk: I am ...

An out of the blue phone call is the catalyst that sends Agnes walking across the city in the middle of the night to check-in on Lulu, a long-lost friend from the past. This impromptu visit involves singing, hot baths, drinking Tiger Tea, catching up on meals, and hanging out ...

It is a Bunny, it is a Plane…wait, is that a superhero in a Rabbit suit? Welcome to Rabbit’s world where she takes on the day-to-day life as a member of the “Reach for the Stars” gymnastics team on a temporary leave as a full-time sketchbook illustrator after ...

This is a story about a lovely girl who works retail named “Friend” and a Giant Bee named “Humphrey”, and their daily conversations on worldly observations. It is not a love story (or at least, it was not initially), but anything goes in a world of bees and honey. This ...