Episode 540 - DD crash update and tests of character
Jul 19, 2021
On Friday the 16th the site was down for a while. Nasty, but we fixed that and chatted to our programmer Alexey about starting the update program on DD. The DD Anthology is also out now too, so you can buy a copy and help support the upgrades! Pit and Banes were MIA today but as a special treat you can meet my Russian hatted Ex, Miss-Judged, who's with me and Tantz in this cast. And as a super extra special treat you can see us ALL in our pateron video which is free to ALL this week! In the links bellow.
Topics and Show Notes
We chat about the DD fall, maybe getting JustNoPoint to be our Sys Admin, code updates for DD, the design update, and the DD anthology. Then at about the 18 minute mark we dive into our main topic: “Test of character”. This was based on a newspost by Tantz Aerine. Some examples of things we mention that have a very prominent 'test of character" component are: horror stories, O-Henry stories, Fairytails, and Avatar the last airbender.
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Quantum Festival - Starting on the sub-atomic level we work our way up the energy levels. Mesons, baryons, quarks, hadrons, protons, neutrons, electrons, and photons vibrating, pulsing, combining, exploding. Energy is produced in strange and wonderful ways. The eerie synthesiser sounds illustrate this perfectly, beeping, bumping, clicking and wailing, helping you visualise the quantum weirdness!
Topics and shownotes
Our Patreon vid is available to all! Watch - https://www.patreon.com/posts/dd-patreon-video-53856108
Buy the DD anthology and help us at the same time - https://drunkducksells.gumroad.com/l/EBCcv
Anthology update - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/17/the-duck-reanimated/
Crash report - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/17/annnd-were-back/
Tant's Test of Character newpost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/09/the-test-of-character/
Featured comic:
The Magister Records - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/13/featured-comic-the-magister-records/
Featured Music:
Quantum Festival - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Quantum_Festival/ - by Lokpolymorfa, rated E
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Miss-judged
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- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
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Join the Discord server to chat in real time with other DD comics people - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Episode 533 - Can Mary Sues be likeable?
May 30, 2021
We've done a few Quackcasts about how terrible Mary Sues are… well this is the opposite! Tantz postulated that they can be likable and GOOD for a story and then won us over easily by telling us why during our Patreon video. In the Quackcast Banes and I join in, having been convinced of the idea. We talk about how if the Mary Sue is a likable, good person, genuinely humble or altruistic and helpful then that can mitigate their Mary Sueness. Whereas if they're selfish, take their status for granted, take advantage of others or are just there to be marvelled and worshiped by the astonished onlookers (re: Rey), they can be unpleasant.
Episode 532 - Fixing art to make it less sexy?
May 23, 2021
Tantz made a great newspost about this little trend of “fixing” people's art to make it less sexy, as if there was something wrong with sexy art. I think worst about it though is the implied moral superiority of the “fixer”. They're judging the art as non-realistic and “bad” (because it's sexy), and they set about “fixing” it to gain some sort of social kudos, slimming busts, increasing the girth of the figure, making their pose less provocative etc… I think the exercise would be perfectly fine if the context and the attitude wasn't one of “I judge this art to be BAD because it's sexy, I am fixing it to make it non-sexy and that will make it better! And you will all agree that the original was shit and I have improved it!”.
Episode 531 - Same Stories From Differnt Perspectives
May 17, 2021
The famous film Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa gave its name to the style of a story that has the same scenes told from different perspectives. Many comics and movies have done this, it's a really cool trick to try. Not only can it help you show a different perspective of a scene it can also show your story in a completely different style when you show things through the eyes of a particular character and how they “see” the world. It can even be a great trick for making a sequel- rather than a linear continuation of a story you show a story that happened in parallel to the sequences shown.
Episode 530 - What is SciFi?
May 10, 2021
So what IS SciFi? Well it's a pretty wide umbrella term and contains a lot of different things. In some senses it's just an imaginative fiction story where science replaces magic. SciFi can simply be a sciencey setting where genre stories take place (romance, adventure, nior, horror). It can be a magical fantasy space opera with a futuristic skin (Star Wars), it can be “hard SciFi” where the story is set in the future but the science is completely plausible, it can be written with strong themes that examine philosophical questions and make interesting points about the nature of humanity, and it can be so many more things too. It's a broad church!
Episode 525 - Sexual Tension
Apr 5, 2021
Sexual tension between characters is a great way to augment the conflict that drives a story. The audience really wants that to resolve into a relationship or at least an assignation of some sort… The longer it goes on though, the bigger they want the coming together to be, which can be dangerous for the creator because it's so easy to disappoint. it's usually better to resolve the tension earlier than later, OR keep it going forever but keep it interesting and don't ever sour it or make it turn stale.
Episode 518 - Gina Carano, no more right to bare arms!
Feb 15, 2021
Gina Carano who plays Cara Dune in the excellent Star Wars franchise Mandalorian has been fired, as we all know by now… It's a great series, really one of the best incarnations of Star Wars since the original trilogy, and Cara's character was pretty cool. Though I personally didn't really like her lunk-head costume- Fully dressed characters in SciFi with bare biceps always look stupid to me for some reason. Doesn't matter if they're men, women, anthros etc, it's just ugly, especially when they're wearing armour. UGH! Be that as it may Gina said some pretty silly things on social media, and kept saying them after she got in trouble for it aaaaaand then Disney booted her.
Episode 512 - Fire and Ice Commentary
Jan 3, 2021
Happy 2021 everybody!!!!! For this fun first of year Quackcast We do a commentary and reaction to the Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta classic sword and sorcery animated movie from 1983, Fire and Ice! Tantz and Banes have never, ever seen it before so it was a new experience to them and maybe to YOU as well? Fire and Ice is a simple fantasy story about evil prince Necron who wants to rule over all the lands using his control of a huge glacier. Brave Princess Teegra, Larn (mullet head), and Darkwolf (the Deathdealer), team up to battle to stop him destroying the southern lands. It was done with rotoscoped animation which made the figures look quite realistic. Rotoscoping is basically filming real actors and then taking out the background and painting over their bodies and turning them into cartoons. It's an analogue old fashion way of doing motion capture, like they do in modern 3D CGI animation.
