Banes is taking a short break for the Thursday post, so I'll be filling in for a some unspecified number of posts. How many exactly? Well, how long is a piece of string? How long is the coastline of Britain? That was an academic paper ('How Long Is the ...

Last Week we looked at the “Break Into 2”, the transition between the beginning of a story: The “Before” picture of the Protagonist and their world, and the “Upside Down World” of Act 2.

So, a little later in your average story will come the “Break Into 3”. This leaves ...

always someone breakinnn' into twooooo…

AN important part of a story is the good old “Break into Act 2”.

It's not the easiest story structure moment to recognize, but it's one of the early ones I thought about and tried to notice in movies I watched.

Many people ...

Greetings! I hope you've all had an enjoyable holiday season so far, no matter what you're celebrating and regardless of actual ‘holidays’ are part of it for you.

The end of the year is still about a week away, but this will be my last regular Newspost of ...

Why do we fall down, Master Bruce?

So we can get up again.

That was a line from Batman Begins, back in the day, that the movie made sure to put out there multiple times. It was an important theme they wanted to hit in that story. It's an ...

A brutal murder of one of their classmates severely perturbs all the students! People are wondering why it happened, who the murderer was, and who could be next. Was it one of the strange “winged ones”? - angels and demons who live amongst the ordinary humans… The enforcement cops usually keeps ...

Now that's a little TOO scary!

Horror is perfect for metaphor and allegory. In fact, a horror story is often allegorical by default, what with its bizarre landscapes and freaky beasties.

Here are some categories of horror and some thoughts on what they symbolize:

Reality Bites


psycho killer! Qu ...

Dance With the Devil
the attraction and repulsion of horror


There a few things - movies, books, stories and TV shows - that scared me enough as a kid that I still remember them. Some are just moments from a book, show or whatever that wasn't that scary beyond that one ...

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Dragons are cool, aren't they? That's our subject for today, specifically the giant, monstrous beasties of myth, fantasy, and legend. They can be evil, they can be clever, they can be animalistic and wild, they ...

Photo: “End of Summer 2024”. Photograph taken by kawaiidaigakusei. (September 2024)

Ten years before Miyazaki’s latest animated film, The Boy and the Heron (2023), was released last year, The Wind Rises (2013/2014) was announced to be Miyazaki’s final film.

In a Drunk Duck forum post dated February ...