There is a poem by one of the most interationally famous Greek poets, Konstantinos Kavafis, called Waiting for the Barbarians. I invite you to give it a read (I've linked its translation) but here's the gist in a nutshell: It's about the Romans waiting for the Barbarians ...

One of the main drivers of story is the principle of CONTRAST.

A character in a traditional story arc begins one way and ends up in a very different state of being - the underdog to the victorious hero, or the innocent, unaware victim to the final survivor, or the selfish ...

Photo: “Mies Couch”. Drawn by Plymayer. (January 2025)

I rewatched two-thirds of Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy, skipping over the first film of the series to focus on the latter two. The trilogy consists of Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight each film spaced roughly a decade apart. The ...

Humans can be scary, fascinating, mysterious creatures. Humanity is capable of the most amazing feats of compassion and the most debased acts of cruelty. And not necessarily at opposing ends of the spectrum. The same person can be compassionate in one context and appallingly cruel in another. They may not ...

Villains are tremendously important for a story. They set the framework and standard for a lot of things in an unsaid but definite manner: how far your villain is willing to go sets up audience expectations for how big and how dire the stakes will be in the story.

If ...

Recently I have been revisiting a sitcom that I used to love but, funnily enough, never finished. The last season of the show dropped during a hectic period of my life and by the time I had, well time, to watch it, I had lost the plot. But thanks to ...

the happy family with a tear/slash between them is the perfect visual for yuppie horror stories!

Yuppie Harra

This name for this category of horror is taken from the horror movie podcast, “With Gourley and Rust”, which I've been enjoying lately. I'm not sure if Gourley and ...

On the last “Mind Tricks” discussion, we talked about false memories, where a characters' true nature is hidden from them because of memory loss or artificial memories.

The Phantom Life is similar, certainly in the two examples that I thought of initially…but the stories play out
in a different ...

Photo: Life is Strange 3, bonus episode “Wavelengths”. Square Enix, Deck Nine.

The studios at Square Enix and Deck Nine have delivered a third installment to their Life is Strange series, titled True Colors due to the protagonist’s ability to see auras, that is both sobering and surprisingly critical ...

As Easter has come by to melt away the final vestiges of a long, cold winter (at least up in these parts where I live) it feels like a good time to bring up the mythology of witches. Witches have a central role in the Easter that we celebrate here ...