Episode 256 - Using and creating weapons in fiction
Feb 1, 2016
Tantz Aerine, Banes and Ozoneocean discuss the topic of using and creating weapons in fiction and some of the pitfalls involved- all the things you can easily do wrong and do better! Stuff like using overly specialised weapons in too general a role, like giant swords where they'd be next to useless, or tricked out assault rifles with way too many things hooked onto them so they're oversized and weight a ton- also copying ideas and tropes about weapons usage without understanding why the exist and in the process making many of the same mistakes as others have in the past.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
XTIN - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/XTIN/
Links:
Quackcast 256 VIDEO - https://youtu.be/4lPSTIwehv8
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Please contribute to help DD - https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/drunk-duck-webcomics-improvement-drive/x/4410947#/
The theme song by Gunwallace this week was for:
The Understanding - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Understanding/ by Call Me Tom, rated M.
- See more at: http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2016/feb/01/quackcast-256-using-and-creating-weapons-in-fiction/
Episode 254 - Sexism in your OWN work?k
Jan 18, 2016
OMFG you sexist PIG! Heh… today we talk about trying to recognise sexism in your OWN work, what to do about it, and WHY. It turns out it can be very hard to do, and if you DO acknowledged it the instinct is to rationalise it away, justify it, or just try and brazen it out in some kind of old fashioned, largely embarrassing, display. I frequently do all three. How do we spot it? Well the Bechdel test isn't that useful, that's better for looking at broad trends not giving specific works a pass/fail - sexy outfits is one thing, if females are dressed minimally or in tight gear in CONTRAST to the males or vice versa - females ONLY having old stereotype roles (maiden/mother/whore archetypes, secretary, nurse, victim, maid etc), though this is context sensitive, i.e. it's more forgiveable if you're doing a historical story or something stylised like a fairytale or a noire story - Gender balance is another thing, it's context sensitive because certain stories will naturally have more of one gender (WW2 submarine crew, Girl's school, a prison story etc), and you don't have to have an exact balance anyway but it's definitely something to THINK about because there is no reason most stories should feature a majority of male characters and a minority of females. WHY should you think about it? Why should you care? Well the audience for almost ALL types of stories, be they action adventure, romance, Scifi, fantasy, historical, even porn, is getting close to 50/50 between men and women these days (maybe it always was?), it really doesn't make sense to alienate or belittle half your audience just because you like to cling to older ways of doing stuff. Gunwallace's theme this week reminds me of a cross between the Knightrider theme and Gunship- it's VERY retro-future. It's the theme to DDSR, a comic with cool custom “sprites”, AKA pixel-art.
Episode 253 - narrative order and the flashback
Jan 11, 2016
Doing stories that start with the climax, then flash back, tell what happened to get there: the old narrative style of switching the first few chapters around to make a more interesting story. Sometimes it works GREAT because it throws you right into the middle of things and you have to work your way back to that point… It works very nicely in The Hangover for example! Often it's used very badly- in anime particularly, where they use it for foreshadowing and a tease to try and get you interested in the rest of the story- but anime story structure is so formulaic that all it really does is give you a cheap spoiler. Other times it doesn't work well is when the writer isn't very good so the viewer loses their way in the plot… If the writer is GOOD though you end up with Pulp Fiction. You'll love Gunwallace's theme here- a super funky jazz track for the comic Nothing Important Happened Today. Enjoy!
Episode 249 - Bad Drawing advice!
Dec 14, 2015
All too often we try to give out GOOD drawing advice and USEFUL tips on how to do art. Well that all changes here: this time professors Ozoneocean, Tantz Aerine, Banes, and Pitface (our throbbing Head of department), come together to tell you the very worst ways to produce artwork, with the help of a few of our contributors. The advice will help you to become the most horrible artist ever. Gunwallace's theme this week is a creepy sounding classical piece for the creepy classic comic Caggage!
Episode 248 - Interview with Dario Di Donato of Barbarian Adventure
Dec 6, 2015
Today we interview Dario Di Donato, the creator of the great webcomic Barbarian Adventure! You may recall that Gunwallace did an amazing theme to Barbarian adventure that we played in Quackcast 244, AND the comic was featured a few weeks ago too! Anyway, this time around, Banes, Pitface and I interview the creator of this fine work and he fills us in on his many classic 1980s pop culture sources of inspiration. Dario brims with a positivity, dedication and enthusiasm that is infectious! And you can listen to Gunwallace's dark punky theme to Monster Soup!
Episode 245 - fiction influencing reality and the myth of the friendzone
Nov 16, 2015
In Quackcast 245 we TRY to talk about my idea that fictional characters, stereotypes, tropes and situations in media have influenced their counterparts in reality, and in a lot of ways helped to create them. Fictional stereotypes and tropes are made out of simplified models of things that happen in reality, usually by pulling together all the most dramatic, big, bold versions and then turning them up to 11 to make a new, more exciting fictional caricature, that NEW image is then spread far and wide and influences people to imitate it- a good example being the modern “cowboy”. This idea was kicked off by Pitface suggesting one of my characters looked like a douchey friendzoned character. I thought about it and realised that a real life version of this character (who's mooning over a girl in a relationship with another guy), WOULD be exactly as she described, also those characters are common to relationship comedies and so often friendzoned… SO that got me thinking: could the current crop of “nice guy” fedora friendzone exponents have based their crazy theories about relationships on images in the media? -since they don't have much relationship to reality yet they so closely match pre-existing tropes in movies and TV shows. Then we expanded the idea to other examples of media representations influencing reality. Pitface, Banes, and Tantz Aerine join me on the Quackcast. Gunwallace does a lovely theme for Entanglement.
Episode 241 - The Vampcast - Costumecast - Part 2
Oct 19, 2015
I vant to suck yer blud… Well Tantz Aerine does anyway. This is the second part of our Vampcast, talking about vampires in comics, lore, movies and popculture in general. We were STILL in costume, watching each other on vid at the time, getting distracted and Ozone was getting drunker and drunker on some very RED wine. Tantz was of course the vamp, Pit was a deathknight fairy princess, Banes was the scary polar werewolf, and Ozone fieldmarshal bigpants! You can see the vids of our exploits I uploaded last week. There exists an elusive 3rd vid, but we were all too drunk and tried by that stage… at least Ozone was. Gunwallace provided us the lovely Alt rock '90s style theme to the SciFi anime comic Throviria!
Episode 240 - The Vampcast - Costumecast
Oct 12, 2015
Happy October, the month of Halloween! For this quackcast we had Tantz Aerine and Pitface along and we did the entire thing full dressed in costume WHILE vidcasting, which was very distracting. We got a few minutes and iffy quality video of the event too. Unfortunately I'm not very skilled with the process yet. We chat about vampires, using the great contributions of the community! Vampires are fun, but what's MORE fun is costumes. Tantz was a librarian vamp, Pit was a deathknight fairy princess, Banes was a werewolf, and Ozone (me) was a costumed idiot. Gunwallace provided us the lovely theme to the vampy comic Danielle Dark!
