Episode 492 - Impermanence of the new digital age
Aug 17, 2020
This Quackcast is about the impermanence of online services and the lie that services are provided for fee and providers have no responsibility to the creators and viewers that use them. Hushicho posted in our forum about Tapas newly restricting nudity in comics which suddenly disenfranchises hundreds of creators who've built up followings on that site with comics that were well within the the Tapas content rules. With that one change these comics have been wiped out, destroying all the hard work by creators to build up their audiences over a long period of time. That can happen with ANY digital service, we are at the mercy of the corporations that provide them.
Topics and Show Notes
One might say that these things are “free” services and that the hosts have a right to do whatever they like, they provide it all for us and we just use it, but that's not actually true. ALL digital services are completely dependent on their users and content creators for their existence. Sites like YouTube would not exist if it wasn't for the users that content creators bring in through their own hard work and money. And those passive audiences themselves are also responsible for YouTube existing because it's them who bring in the ad revenue and use the services google sells through the site, as well as exploiting them by onselling statistics about their online viewing habits and information about their other online behaviors. Even us on DD, who make no money of off our users and collect zero information about people, we STILL rely on content creators and their audiences for out existence because if there were no people to post comics on our site and no one to read them then we'd have no point and we'd shut down.
What we chat about here is the fact that you can't rely on any one service, no matter how big the company (i.e. Facebook, Google, Apple) to respect your content and to always be around. Services aren't as free as they seem and they're more than happy to exploit you and then discard you. So the answer is to diversify and use as many different ones as possible! Don't be loyal to them because they're not loyal to you! I'd say the one exception is Drunk Duck because we really DO care about and respect our members but the the reality is that no online service is completely safe: even though we are one of the longest running comic sites (18 years and counting), there have been times in our distant past where our service was unreliable and we were even down for almost 3 months once. So mirror your work and do not become reliant on subscription services.
The musical feature this week that Gunwallace has given us is theme to Ingenimia Aus - The start reminds me a bit of Cowboy by Bon Jovi, It has an awesome mystical, exotic medieval guitar sound. This one really takes you away to another place and time with its atmospheric synths, hand drum percussion, and delicate guitar sounds. I love it when the rhythm is taken over by tapping on the guitar strings, it’s a very pretty sound.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Join the Discord server to chat in real time with other DD comics people - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Death-knell for Tapas, by Hushicho - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/178480/
Featured comic:
Filaments a KerBop Story - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/aug/11/featured-comic-filaments-a-kerbop-story/
Featured music:
Ingenimia Aus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Ingenimia_Aus/, by DFlimbingo, rated T,
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Pit Face - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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Episode 491 - Getting retro right!
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DD member Furwerk Studios posted in our forum about how annoying it was that movies try and do an 80s retro thing often get things totally wrong and end up looking dumb because of it: Not just superficial looks-wise but stylistically too in terms of the kinds of shots they do, lighting and story structure. I thought that'd make an interesting topic for a cast! Why do people often mess up retro stuff? We're not talking about historical accuracy here, that's slightly different, what we're talking about is setting something in an era and getting the “feel” of that era right. It pays off hugely when it works, but when it doesn't it comes off as superficial, disappointing and ignorant.
Episode 488 - DD Anthology details!
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This week the brilliant Damehelsing (aka Agiebun), comes on to tell us the details of the DD anthology! Last week Boundbun gave us a general overview but now we're having a look at exactly HOW it's going to be done and how YOU can contribute to it. We'll have details and discussion on the DD Discord server as well as in our Twitter and on the forums. Currently there are 5 themes that we're deciding between: Urban fantasy, Noir, Community, Horror and Halloween. We'll have to decide which of those we like best to tie together the whole thing!
Episode 478 - Pity da fool!
May 11, 2020
Fools are an iconic character trope and I wanted to explore them. They're a lot more varied and interesting than is readily apparent. There's a LOT more too a fool than what something like TV tropes suggests, unless you get into the subtypes… And that's what we explored in this free-form discussion. I introduced the idea in the Patreon only video where Tantz, Banes, Pt and I try and get a handle on the idea for the first time, so that's a good behind the scenes insight into what goes on!
Episode 476 - Tell me about your childhood
Apr 26, 2020
How does where you grew up influence your comicing? This idea interested me, so I posted about it on the DD forums and asked other people. I didn't really know about it myself: how did my childhood environment influence my later comicing? The conclusion I came to was that since my childhood experience was so alien to the worlds depicted in the media I enjoyed so much most of my comicing and creation was based on imagination out of necessity: Historical fantasy set in mountainous, cold, hazy Europe, vs my own experience of a new country without much history, with sunny weather, clear skies and a beachy lifestyle in Australia.
Episode 472 - CoVid-19-cast
Mar 30, 2020
In this strange time of global pandemic it'd be crazy NOT to acknowledge what we're all experiencing together, so that's what we're talking about today: How the virus stuff is affecting us. Pitface joins us once again so today the quartet is complete: Pitz, Banes, Oz, and Tantz!
Episode 471 - Fantasy
Mar 23, 2020
Today we're having a chat about fantasy fiction! Mainly books and the fantasy writing that inspired us and that we love! Faves like Tolkien, Fritz Leiber and Piers Anthony! Just to define, we're talking swords, elves, armour, dragons etc, in a “medieval” context, generally European. As a subset there's native, Arabian, Asian, Mayan etc, also high fantasy, low fantasy, sword and sorcery, historical fantasy and even mythology…. And then techno fantasy, contemporary fantasy, steampunk, fantasy cyberpunk and so on… but we mainly stick to the mainstream stuff and only just touch on the weird little variations for now.
Episode 457 - Religion in fiction 2
Dec 16, 2019
2 weeks ago we discussed the topic of religion in fiction: basicaly how we use real world religions to inform the perspectives of our characters and make the worlds more real, how we use religion in fiction, and how we make up religions for our worlds. We had so many great responses to this in the forum and about the Quackcast that we thought it'd be great to feature and chat about them! DD is a community after all and we love our community members to be a part of the Quackcast!
