So this is just a purely rant article on my part.
I'm generally not a huge fan of romance… BUT, if it's done well, I am not a (complete) snow queen. I can melt accordingly and love it in a story. I even have some romance in my ...
A Romance Trope I Hate
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Jan. 11, 2025Character Deep Dive: Vladimir Chekhov
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Dec. 28, 2024
It’s time for another Character Deep Dive, this within the amazing political war thriller The Second Crimean War by the awesome and proliferate The Doodler!
The Second Crimean War is an alternate history webcomic, of a different 1995 where, after the collapse of the USSR, the emerging, independent Ukraine ...
The Christmas Special
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Dec. 21, 2024
There's a difference between a Christmas Special and a Christmas Movie. While the Movie is written around Christmas (or Hannukah or any other Yule-season holiday), the Christmas Special forces the show to be written around Christmas whether it likes it or not.
The hilarity ensues when it falls in ...
Not Because it is Easy, but Because it is Hard
Banes at 12:00AM, Dec. 12, 2024
In our Quackcast about Non-Linear storytelling this week, I had a tangent of a thought about the value of difficult or challenging fiction as opposed to stories that are easier to understand.
An unusual structure to a story can be challenging to understand, but if it's done well, the ...
Exhaustion is a character beat
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Nov. 23, 2024
So I'm exhausted.
A ton of things I'm juggling in real life plus emotional baggage plus stuff I'm doing online plus art = exhausted Tantz.
And because my brain refuses to focus on anything else, I thought I'd talk about how using exhaustion can be a cool ...
I May Not Know Art But i Know What I Like. Except When I Don't
Banes at 12:00AM, Nov. 21, 2024
I've been VERY slowly working on new comics ideas…way too many of them…for several years now. One of the decisions for me is what kind of STYLE the comic should be.
To be clear, I'm not a phenomenal artist, to say the least. So i don ...
Justice vs Revenge and What it Says About the World
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Nov. 16, 2024
Sometimes it may feel that the justice system protects the perpetrator a lot more than it does the victim:
There are many things an accused can use to mitigate their position, there are many reasons to shorted a sentence, they can get out on good behavior, they can generally serve ...
Video, Prose, and Comics
Banes at 12:00AM, Nov. 7, 2024
The telling of stories, in a big way, is about working emotions. A major reason stories have the power they do is that the great ones wring emotions out of us, and take us through some kind of emotional journey.
In a movie or TV show, things are different than ...
Character Deep Dive: Robin Sinclair
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Nov. 2, 2024
Today’s character deep dive is on Robin Sinclair, the main catalyst of everything taking place in the supernatural comedy drama that is Blessed Days by Inky Moondrop!
Blessed Days is the story of a young woman that unexpectedly becomes a mom and must handle raising a child- that’s ...
The Psychology of Monsters
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Oct. 26, 2024
Halloween is just around the corner, so what better thing to do than talk about monsters?
Specifically, what has motivated humanity to create them, talk about them, fear them and love them across time and across culture.
Monsters are generally linked with our sense of fear. Fear is an adaptive ...