Episode 501 - Horrorcast
Oct 19, 2020
We are the Pretty Things That Live in the House! We all dressed up for a Halloween themed cast today! You can see our weird looks in our Patreon video ($5 and up subscribers). Pitface was a yellowfaced corn vampire with amazing teeth (very midwest), Banes was an old, oooooold terrifying baldy vampire, Tantz was a beautiful, big eyed doctor vampire, and I was an 18th century Vamp (Lestat/Varny), with a face messy with the blood of my victims! And I had in rubber fangs held in by chewing gum, just like a REAL vampire, because the denture glue didn't hold in my good fangs… it just filled my mouth with disgusting glue that stuck all over my teeth XD
Topics and Show Notes
We had a loose discussion this week about the amazing tradition that is Halloween, and it being a very cool North American export. They say it has European roots and things, but that's not what Halloween really is, North America turned it into something amazing and that's how we all know it. People think of it as vaguely pagan or maybe demonic, but the truth is that it comes from an extremely Christian culture. It's a sort of transgressive, fun celebration in the vein of Carnival where people use it as an excuse to play on a darker side that they'd normally avoid as well as have fun and get into costumes. Ironically, only a very Christian, puritan culture could produce such a festival.
We also chat about our favourite horror movies, ones we've recently seen, what works in horror and what doesn't! For example, I think that the movie Hereditary is a wonderful unintentional laugh riot for so many reasons, while Pitface has a very different view. We talk about how clowns are related to trickster traditions and can be scary, nasty things in culture well before John Wayne Gacy and later IT. Our converstation wonders but we try and keep it focussed on horror and scary stuff! We even chat about 200AD comics, which have long included many horror elements. Indeed the horror film “Hardware” was plagiarised from a 2000AD comic called SHOK.
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Space Pirates of the Black Quarter - Space techno future! Dinging pulses launch us into a star speckled hyperspace. We’re lulled by the gentle techno rhythm, till a glaring buzz comes along to disturb us, a warning of what’s the come… The lulling rhythm soothes us once more till we’re shocked by a sudden burst of acceleration and a return of the fuzzing buzz!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Quackcast 500 video from last week with a whole lot of DDers! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8dic_cB0mU
Featured comic:
Matriarch - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/oct/13/featured-comic-matriarch/
Featured music:
Space Pirates of the Black Quarter - - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Space_Pirates_of_the_Black_Quarter/, dpat57, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Episode 495 - A fan of fanfiction?
Sep 7, 2020
Fanfiction is a massive subject, there are so many aspects to it, from the bad stuff with the Mary Sues, rampant shipping, author inserts and wish fulfilment etc to homages and great works that extend the story and characters beyond what they were in the original and add interesting and fun aspects to fan favourites. There are many good reasons to do fanfiction: It's fun, you're inspired and want to use that inspiration, all the characteristics of the story are readymade so you don't have to do world building or character development, the work has a built in audience so you're going to have readers no matter what and hopefully some feedback, it can help make you more popular as a creator because of the fans of the original work, and you get to experiment because you can't sell the work or do anything serious with it so you may as well have fun and enjoy it!
Episode 488 - DD Anthology details!
Jul 20, 2020
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 481 - Fun with history?
May 31, 2020
Today we're chatting about using historical stuff in your story and knowing how to use it right! Sometimes it's good to change stuff and sometimes it's not. The thing is that you should ONLY change it if you know what you're doing and why you're doing it. A good example is A Knight's Tale- It has a historical setting and there are a lot of deliberate historical anachronisms in it, and they're all very obvious, they do not pretend to be anything but what they are.
Episode 480 - In Style!
May 25, 2020
Styles are a very individual thing. Emma Clare did a great newspost on them last week featuring a pic of Sailor Moon that she drew in her own style. The cover image here features my own version. Pit, Tantz, Banes and I had a good long chat about all the different aspects of style and how you develop them.
Episode 479 - Big ideas in fiction
May 18, 2020
My original idea for this Quackcast was: “Genre fiction is the best place to explore ideas, straight fiction doesn't do it as well” What I meant was that diverting from straight reality in fiction makes it easier to conceptualise, simplify and explain complicated ideas to a general audience for a whole number of reasons. There was some disagreement between Tantz and I because I expressed myself poorly so she'd thought that I was saying it was much easier to write SciFi and fantasy (Genre fiction), and it was easier to write about big ideas, while straight fiction wasn't good for that- Which is fair enough! My initial statement is so badly worded that's a valid interpretation! Fortunately Banes and Pit were on hand to smooth things out and explain things properly. Pit mediated between us and Banes conceptualised my concept FAR, far better than I did! Unfortunately you don't get much of that disagreement on the Quackcast. You DO get a bit of it on the PATREON only video however ^_^
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 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.
