There's generally a tennet about character building for a villain in a story or webcomic that urges the creator to humanize them by giving them a backstory that “fleshes them out”. Often, “humanization” of a villain is taken to mean that they come across as more sympathetic or appealing ...

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I've rarely been jealous of anyone. Certainly moreso when I was younger. Other people would sometimes (well, often) seem to have more going on in some area of life. There were plenty of folks who I'd look at and imagine having their intelligence. Or their confidence ...

This is an article I’m writing after midnight while being drunk on mixed drinks of brännvin and julmust. It’s November. I need booze to cope with the Scandinavian winter gloom that hits your soul like a hammer this time of the year (It’s a thing up here ...

And we’re back with Fantastic Bestiary number 6. Being the number 6 in this series of articles I thought I’d bring up a mythic creature of a particularly devilish kind of aestethic. And as this week’s featured comic, featured by our beloved Ozoneocean, happened to be about ...

I talked last Sunday about science engaging with the supernatural in fiction and the worldbuilding stuff that can be generated from that. In this article I’m going to talk about the opposite end of that spectrum. The supernatural engaging with science. This is where I bring up Alchemy. Now ...

When he created the Twilight Zone, Rod Serling was motivated by the desire to tell more meaningful stories. In his writing career up to then, his work had been heavily censored.

Serling realized that by setting his stories in fantastical situations, in alternate or futuristic versions of Earth, that he ...

Silent types can be very alluring. They don't really engage with other people, they are content to be on their own, they have developed their own special, unique manner of wading through life independently, which makes them interesting. They are their own kind of strong, even if they are ...

I've talked a lot about motivations in my articles. And how could I not? My scientific field aside, what makes us behave in certain manners or way is a question that has occupied entire schools of thought in psychology, philosophy, political science, even AI and (bio)chemistry.

There are ...

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The process of adaptation is quite interesting. Stories go through all sorts of changes when they're transferred from one medium to another. A lot of the ...

When Superman returned to the big screen ten years ago or so in “Superman Returns”, the movie was intended to be a direct sequel to the two original movies with Christopher Reeve. I was surprised at how mopey and depressing the movie felt.

Which is to say, the movie felt ...