Episode 695 - Pop Culture
Jul 7, 2024
Pop Culture, and the way it's always changing… We fall in love with pop culture but it's constantly changing and new pop culture is always being created, which means that as time goes on less and less people will care about the same pop culture as you. And what you were into will become niche and obscure, even though at the time you fell in love with it, it was massively mainstream and all over the place! There are exceptions to this with things that are SUPER popular like Star Wars, DC and Marvel comic characters, Star Trek, and Doctor Who, who's new versions facilitate a life support for the old stuff or sometimes even a revival of it, but they also have an issue where they try and replace their classic stuff with the newer versions.
Topics and Show Notes
The term “Pop culture” stated as a sort of critical description of what was thought of as a low quality, disposable alternative to true culture, but we've long since embraced it and no longer see it as something lessor. Pop culture is simply the universal, current, contemporary culture that we all have access to. The two biggest factors in popculture are time and money: Time, because there's a constant turnover of content, people lose interest in things constantly so we always need new things; and Money, because the more money put into something the bigger it will get in popculture and also the more something can earn (because it's part of a popular concept) the more likely more of those things will be made (i.e superhero movies, Isekai anime etc). Older, previously created popculture still continues to exist but rapidly loses popularity and availability the older it gets. By its nature there is an extreme bias towards the new.
Here we're talking about how massively popular and universal things become niche and unknown. It can revive because mining older popculture to make new popculture is very lucrative and easy, but it's never the same when it does. Even perennially popular things like Star Trek, Marvel and DC constantly change with each new iteration. Companies like Disney re-release their older IPs in their original forms but the purpose of that is to maintain the popularity of their brand (and now the streaming service) to help market their newer stuff. Pop-culture is a ravenous beast that must consonantly be fed with the new and money.
What are some Pop-culture things you love but no one else does anymore?
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by The Scourge of Ninepoint - A mournful yet extremely respectful funerary sounding tune ramps up quickly into a furiously paced call to action and a desperate race against time!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Snake in the office - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/jul/02/featured-comic-snake-in-the-office/
Featured music:
The Scourge of Ninepoint - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Scourge_of_Ninepoint/ - by BonesMcKay, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 694 - Consistency
Jul 1, 2024
Is your work consistent? It's hard to maintain consistency but it does pay off: consistency in art work, style, character, writing, humour, updates and every other factor. To aid consistency in commercial works they come up with a “bible” which has drawings of character from all angles, all their colour swatches, their outfits, accessories, weapons, vehicles, floor plans of buildings, etc, as well as descriptions of their characters and the story style. That sort of thing is a huge help and especially useful when you have teams of people working on the project and need to hand over to other people.
Episode 693 - Betray!
Jun 24, 2024
Betrayal is not a fave theme of mine in any media. I really dislike it, but it's so popular! We've talked about this one before but no one really remembers Quackcast 427 so we're having another crack at it! We talk about all the different aspects: political, love, country, loyalty etc and really have fun with it!
Episode 692 - Benevolent racism and other isms!
Jun 17, 2024
Benevolent racism, sexism, ableism, and whatever other “isim” is an interesting aspect of those otherwise negative things. It's not as obvious in its negativity, it's well-meaning and yet quite misguided. So what is it? The term “Benevolent” makes it seem nice and harmless and that IS how people mean it, but that's because they're a bit clueless and ignorant. Benevolent sexism, ableism, and racism is basically using a “positive” stereotype to characterise someone based on their ethnicity, gender rather than as a real person etc, like “all black people have natural rhythm”, or “women are more sensitive and in touch with nature”, or “blind people have all their other senses massively heightened”.
Episode 691 - Thirst Trap
Jun 10, 2024
Thirst trap is the topic of today's Quackcast! What is a thirst trap? It's basically someone presenting themselves as very sexy in order to get attention for some sort of reason, rather than just happening to look attractive. So it's usually used for some sort of advertising purpose, to sell their OnlyFans, to get a date, or more conventional advertising. Today we're talking about it it terms of comics :)
Episode 690 - Mister V, Dozer Manifesto
Jun 3, 2024
Mister V, aka Arborcides is our guest today, doing an interview with us about his huge project “Dozer Manifesto”, now finally completed! You can read the entire thing here on DD. It's about a fellow called Marv Heemeyer, resident of the Colorado town of Granby, and his decent into craziness, resulting in him creating an armour-plated, armed bulldozer, designed to be invulnerable, so he could crush the town and destroy his enemies with impunity. You might have heard of it being call the “killdozer”.
Episode 689 - One Big Passion and Influence
May 27, 2024
What was one significant inspiring piece of pop-culture that a massive influence over your creative endeavours? All of us have had many, many different influences over the years but that's certainly NOT what we're interested in here, what we're talking about is that one thing you can remember that had a huge effect on you, why, how, and when.
Episode 688 - Artistic Evolution
May 20, 2024
How and why does your creativity change over time? It “evolves”. Evolution is often wrongly thought of as a process that leads to a goal, like the idea that humans are the pinnacle of evolution, or that we will “evolve” into something better and “more superior”, or that there is a “next level” of evolution… All of that is just silly comic-book nonsense and terrible sci-fi. Evolution has no goal or direction, it's simply how we describe change that occurs over time. Creatures don't get “better” due to evolution, rather environmental pressures influence changes that make creatures fit in and cope with those specific pressures better. And many factors influence evolution, not just environmental pressures.
