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Villainy is a profession loaded with tropes. From the evil speech to the climactic duel against the hero, villainous behavior has been tweaked and refined through the ages. Unfortunately, some of these tropes make the villain look incompetent. They invoke eye-rolling from the audience and destroy tension in the … read more »
Many popular heroes have faced a dark version of themselves. This trope creates thrill in a video game battle or novelty in a TV episode about an alternate reality. However, some stories go beyond that, using a hero’s dark reflection to add meaning and depth to the work. By comparing the hero to … read more »
Everyone loves a villain. Sometimes we love villains so much we want them to be heroes. But how best to redeem them? Should they even be redeemed? Join us this week for a discussion on what goes into flipping a character from team bad to … read more »
A few weeks ago I wrote about flawed mechanics that shouldn’t be in roleplaying games, and a day or so later, Jonny sent me this email: Dear Mythcreants, I loved Oren’s article “Five Roleplaying Mechanics That Must Go.” I couldn’t help but feel, however, that … read more »
Storytellers spend so much time focusing on plot, characters, and setting, that it’s easy to forget those are just means to an end. For most storytellers, the primary goal is getting your audience to finish your story, think highly of it, and recommend it to others … read more »
The name related jokes must flow! Read more »
We all love our furry (or not furry) companions, but how should they be used in stories? What separates animal companions from traditional side characters? Is R2-D2 an animal companion? We answer these bold questions and more on this episode of the podcast – plus we … read more »
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, is the shared universe for the screen adaptations of Marvel’s comic book properties. It started with Iron Man and includes all of the Marvel movies since then, as well as TV shows like Daredevil and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Notably, it … read more »
We scifi authors love to write stories about abandoning Earth and colonizing space. We also love to write scientifically plausible stories. This is a problem, because most stories about evacuating our home planet are wildly implausible. Most planetary evacuation scenarios don’t work for two main reasons. The … read more »
Sometimes a sentence is very long, and it keeps going and going with commas in places that a period could be and extra clauses that don’t necessarily need to be there. Other times a sentence is short. Which is better? As is so often the … read more »