Pets are intimate companions that get us through the day. Cats, dogs, rabbits, rats, snakes, fish, you name it- they help us in their own way. And yet not many characters in fiction or comics tend to have them. I for one don't include animals at all in my ...

Pets in Comics
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, May 14, 2022The Unicorn
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, April 30, 2022
No, this article isn't about the mythological beings. I wouldn't want to steal any single one from Andreas Helixfinger's awesome Sunday article series.
What I want to talk about is the metaphorical unicorn: a character that is too good to be true, too unlikely to be found ...
I want to talk about boobs
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, April 2, 2022
There is generally a debate about how women's chests should be drawn. On and off I'll come across whole essays about how drawing women with large boobs is shorthand for sexualization and objectification. There's a lot of talk about how flat chested ladies or those of the ...
Francis Picabia and the Art of the Signature
kawaiidaigakusei at 12:00AM, Feb. 21, 2022
Photo: “Untitled Signature” by Francis Picabia
The year was 1915, when a thirty-six-year-old Francis Picabia showed up to the New York Dada scene. His alibi to leave Europe was a story about his travels to Cuba in order to purchase molasses, a story he cleverly forgot once he arrived in ...
The Fae
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Jan. 22, 2022
Usually when we think about fairies, the mind goes to tiny beautiful girls with butterfly wings and a ton of sparkles. At their most threatening, we got the token fiesty Tinkerbell.
Or do we?
For me, the world of the fae and fairies is a fascinatingly surreal, dangerous, occult world ...
The Problem With Kid Dialogue
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Dec. 4, 2021
Often when there are children in a cast of characters, especially in sitcoms or certain types of movies, audiences groan because they tend to be immensely annoying. They are a very special type of uncanny valley in the way they are written to talk and react. Usually, we get one ...
The Significance of Hairstyle
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Nov. 13, 2021
Hair is very important- the way we wear it is a form of self expression, a canvas for artistic exploration, and shorthand for who we are or want to be. This significance carries over even more in fiction and especially visual arts like webcomics, cartoons, and movies.
How a character ...
It's the Peak of the Spooky Season!
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Oct. 30, 2021
So I want to talk about the Dread Persephone!
We are familiar with Persephone as the abducted bride of Hades, the floral, pastel-themed, light-hearted girl that brings about Spring and is the daughter of Demeter, goddess of nature and the harvest.
But is it really who she is?
No. No ...
Rooting for the bad guy
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Sept. 11, 2021
Normally in stories there is the hero vs the villain or the protagonist vs the antagonist. As the audience, we generally expect to root for the hero or the protagonist and hope for the villain's or antagonist's comeuppance.
But there come those times when we find ourselves rooting ...
Know Thy Bias
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Aug. 21, 2021
We like to consider ourselves open-minded, free of inflexible thinking and open to ideas. And we probably are- in certain areas. In others, we are not.
This is one of the few statements I still feel justified making in the absolute. Every person has biases. It's one of the ...