So we love our clever villains, our smooth criminals, the conniving sly characters that use their brains to thwart the heroes and be a real menace. Like the riskiest game of chess, the hero has to match that kind of villain in strategy and smarts as well as determination, prowess ...

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Art: Paolo Uccello, The Battle of San Romano

We're talking about WAR here! Trying to leave out politics, though that's really hard with war because ...

I watched an interview with Ira Behr, the writer and showrunner on Star Trek Deep Space Nine. He talked about his days in the DS9 writer's room. It was the 90's, and the early days of the Internet. Even in those days, Star Trek discussion was flourishing online ...

This is gonna be yet another rambling kind of post and a long one at that–so be warned. In the recent month I’ve been doing some soul searching that ties into this personal Christmas shopping spree of sorts that I’ve had recently. To be more specific, I ...

So it came to my attention that J.K. Rowling has taken revenge against her ‘internet trolls’ by writing a new book called The Ink Black Heart. According to reviews (I haven't read the book) the plot of the book reflects the author's experience of mass-condemnation over her ...

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Leaders are not born, they're created… literally in the case of fiction, created by creators of comics, books, movies, and other media! For this Quackcast I ...

On a recent episode of Better Call Saul there was a plot element that caused some discussion/criticism.

Mild spoilers for Better Call Saul ahead.

There's a character on this show, Lalo, who was set up to be almost - almost - more than human. This is not a superhero show ...

So it's fun to rant about tropes I hate but I actually prefer to gush about tropes I love.

And one of them is what I call “the bargain”: it's really a game of wits between a (usually lawful) villain and a hero (or protagonist/antagonist, take your ...

Over the past few months, I’ve been logging onto a drawing hangout where we share our screens as we draw. There is no camera or mic. Just a chat and our screens as we scribble away. At first, I wondered how productive this could be. I figured it would ...

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(Image: By Pitface, abandoned antimissle site in ND)

Taking on more than you can handle - i.e. James Cameron and JJ Abrams are good directors and writers ...