Holiday Special: Eight Nights of Deus ex Machina 3 & 4: Jurassic Park and Kingdom Hearts II

Happy holidays everyone, and welcome back for nights 3 and 4 of the Eight Nights of Deus ex Machina holiday special celebrating Chanukkah and other winter holidays. In case you missed them, we defined this miracle of a literary device on Night One, and talked about how it appears in Pokemon: The First Movie for Night Two. Let the festivities continue with Dinosaurs and hover bikes...

Pop Culture Based on Novels Part 4: The Brave Little Toaster

In solidarity with those of you taking on the National Novel Writing Month challenge, we’re spending the month taking a look at pop culture narratives based on novels. Last week, we covered the popular TV crime drama, Bones, which came to a satisfying conclusion earlier this year. Today, we're discussing a pop culture work that has been around since my own childhood, one which I never would never have guessed was based on a novel: The Brave Little Toaster...

Alliteration, Consonance, and Assonance: Making Songs and Gunpowder Treason Memorable

Advertisers and creators know this and take advantage of it whenever the opportunity arises. If you can name any of these cartoon characters, you have been influenced by three tricky little devices: alliteration, consonance, and assonance...

Theme Delivery Service

Themes give creative works their personality. You can’t play a video game, read a comic, or watch a show without running into some sort of theme. When romance blossoms in a particular shoujo anime, or a character proves that staying true to yourself works better than faking your personality, you’ve got theme. For a deeper understanding of this literary device, let’s take a look at the 1989 film Kiki’s Delivery Service...