So for us Orthodox Christians it's Good Friday today and it'll be Resurrection Day (Good Saturday) by the time you're reading this. In the neighborhood where I live, a new (boisterous and with many members) family has moved in, who brought a live rooster a few days ...

On Cruelty
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, April 15, 2023Character Analysis: TK from Typical Strange
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, March 25, 2023
Ok so here we are! Let’s get down into the weeds with Typical Strange’s TK!
…did that come out wrong? I’m sure TK would have a thing or two to say.
So, first things first. Typical Strange is the lovely creation of Banes. It’s a comedy ...
Tough Love vs. Abuse
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Feb. 18, 2023
Tough love is so cool, eh? It's going to magic the “whining” right out of you, won't it? You just need to stick out through the harshness, and then when you reap the benefits, you'll realize your tough loving benefactor had the right idea. You'll be ...
Toxic Positivity, Toxic Acceptance (Part 2)
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Feb. 11, 2023
So last time, in Part 1 of this discussion of …sunnier villains or antagonists, we had left off talking about how toxic positivity is all about the toxic person's comfort. And that this need to impose a certain behavior, dogma, and/or approach to reality in their environment leads ...
Character trait: Toxic Positivity, Toxic Acceptance (Part 1)
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Jan. 28, 2023
Usually, antagonists or villains are emo and gloomy, angry and aggressive, suave and sly, or any combination of that. They are not generally associated with positive traits in their personality, or at least positively-associated traits.
And that's a shame, because real life sure does have a lot of variety ...
Tropes I Hate: Slap n' Kiss
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Feb. 26, 2022
I revert to talking about tropes I hate, because I don't want to talk about things happening around us but I still want to talk about something I despise.
Tropes I hate it is!
The horrible slap n' kiss or “slap slap kiss” trope.
Especially prevalent in lakorns (Thai ...
The Message in Stories
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Jan. 15, 2022
There is no story without a theme. Even when written without anything prepared in terms of a message, a story will always give people things to think about and messages drawn from how the story was set up and how it was resolved (if at all).
So I don't ...
Children's Stories
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Sept. 18, 2021
When I was growing up in the 80s, stories that were marketed as ‘children’s' were occasionally brutal.
Characters got maimed or killed, tortured or traumatized, met with horrid ends in worlds that were anything but rosy. And this was a pattern that wasn't limited to, say, English literature ...
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 ...