The Homosexual Was Invented in 1869

From Plato's Symposium to the AIDS crisis: why your period drama keeps getting sexuality wrong, and how to fix it.

Jan 13 • D. S. Black

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How to Be Wrong in Public

Most creators either crumble at criticism or build fortresses against it. Neither produces work that lasts. Here's the skill nobody teaches you.

Jan 6 • D. S. Black

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December 2025

The Canvas and the Cost: What Expedition 33 Understands About Worldbuilding

Expedition 33 won Game of the Year. The discourse has been predictably shallow. Here's what the game is actually about—and why every worldbuilder should…

Dec 23, 2025 • D. S. Black

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The Author's Psychological Labor

On performed empathy, the ego problem, and the craft of writing antagonists worth remembering

Dec 16, 2025 • D. S. Black

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The Cathedral of Silence

Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal has no dialogue. Here's what prose writers and narrative designers can steal from its wordless mastery of show don't tell.

Dec 9, 2025 • D. S. Black

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The Officer and the Beast: Dual Nature as Character Architecture

The transformation isn't the point. The containment is.

Dec 2, 2025 • D. S. Black

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November 2025

Stop Making Your Protagonists Sympathetic

Why the most interesting characters are the ones (other people say) you shouldn't like. Learn why diegetic writing and morally complex protagonists…

Nov 25, 2025 • D. S. Black

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The Civilised Beast: Why Peak Competence Looks Like Violence

On predation, focus, and why your most skilled characters should look feral. Peak competence is predation. I'm naming aesthetic territory that hasn't…

Nov 18, 2025 • D. S. Black

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What My Art Teaches Me About Writing (And Vice Versa)

How to steal problem-solving methods from crafts you don't practice. Intimate moments zoom in—whether you're drawing them or writing them. Most writers…

Nov 11, 2025 • D. S. Black

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How to Make Your Officers Look Like Gods: what happens when you bring Gothic symbolic density to naval fiction

Naval fiction has given us competence. I want to give you apotheosis. What happens when you bring Gothic symbolic density to naval fiction. A craft…

Nov 4, 2025 • D. S. Black

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October 2025

A Dossier on Lt. Marion Gore

He doesn't perform superiority. He simply is superior.

Oct 28, 2025 • D. S. Black

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How to Write Licensed IP: A Technical Breakdown of Character, Subtext, and Constraint

Analyzing my Burnt fanfiction to demonstrate constraint-based narrative design, character fidelity—or: how to make two chefs having a conversation feel…

Oct 26, 2025 • D. S. Black

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