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If something affects or disturbs you so much that you want to respond to it through a story that you write, that can be a pretty powerful form of inspiration! But it depends on how you handle it. For example, Stephan King's acclaimed novel Misery was inspired by nasty interactions he had with fans after he published a fantasy novel. This story was very well received and even turned into a popular movie.
And then there are other ways to handle it… Popular fantasy author JK Rowling felt personally attacked by responses to her public stance on social media that transwomen aren't really women, so she incorporated the episode into a fictional story (a detective series she writes), where a creator had to deal with unfair and extreme criticism. This isn't necessarily a bad thing to do, but the way she handled it was less inspiration and more just a rant about her own experiences only slightly fictionalised. It was so poorly done that it even disappointed fans of her detective series that have no stake in her social media battles.
There are good ways to handle rants like this in fiction and bad ways, and we're going to talk about both! Have you ever used a negative real world expereince as inspiration for a story? I know I have, but I always keep it subtle, unlike some.
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to GOP Nuts - Gunwallace note: “With apologies to Vince Guaraldi” - Why? Because this is such a cool, jazzy “Peanuts” sounding theme and Vince Guaraldi was the master behind the themes for the animated version of Peanuts… which is what the “GOP Nuts” is stylistic parodying in its spoof of the American Republican party!
It’s an easygoing theme driven by the low notes of a piano, a breathy flute, brush tapping on the drums, a cheeky, warbling trumpet, a plucked double bass, and a zoo full of goats!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Tantz's newspost about elegant rants - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/sep/02/venting-your-frustrations-needs-elegance/
Featured comic:
Brittany Hyperstyle - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/sep/13/featured-comic-brittany-hyperstyle/
Featured music:
GOP Nuts - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/GOP_Nuts/ - by Rawdale, rated E.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
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Quackcast 601 - /rant
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Sept. 20, 2022
Banes,
Brittany Hyperstyle,
Drunk duck,
Featured comic,
Featured music,
GOP Nuts,
Gunwallace,
Ozoneocean,
QUACKCAST 601,
/rant,
Tantz Aerine,
Webcomics hosting
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TheJagged at 4:47AM, Sept. 21, 2022
Negative real world experinces used as inspiration? Boy howdy all the time. Starting with every abusive parent figure i create being an allusion to my own up-bringing. It's always veiled thickly into metaphor, but sometimes when i re-read some of the darkest stuff i've written... the memories that inspired it surge back. I'm bascially triggering myself lmao. Other than that, loneliness and a longing for social connection are very common themes in my storytelling, so probably not hard to see where that inspiration stems from. :B The whole point of doing that is to take these negative emotions and turn them into something productive.
Ozoneocean at 1:51AM, Sept. 21, 2022
Haha, the only experience I've had with any of her stuff is the first of the Potter movies I saw a couple of years ago... And of course the whole peripheral potterverse of pop-culture fandom, which is quite crazy- House slitherin, Hufflepuff, Griffindor etc. It'd be interesting to do a thing about why exactly her stuff happened to become SO famous, when none of her ideas are very original of particularly clever. There must have been a whole confluence of fortunate factors... My GUESS is that it had extremely good marketing and a massive "viral" word of mouth thing going on when it took off... Maybe some scholastic book deals which saw it pushed in crucial young adult markets.
hushicho at 4:26PM, Sept. 20, 2022
Fundamentally, the problem is that Rowling was never a very skilled writer, and people always hate having to acknowledge that reality, or that their enjoyment of her best-known series is usually due to association with pleasant social interactions or an escape from an even worse experience in life. But if the massive media conglomerate marketing her mediocre-at-best drivel had been smarter, they would have kept it silly magic school hijinks that they could have spun off forever and nudged Rowling into early retirement, then had house writers crank out dozens of novels under her pen name, and better written. Not-great creators who are constantly desperate to stay relevant will always inevitably misstep, disastrously if they double down on it like she's been doing, and especially if -- again like Rowling -- they weren't that dedicated to any real diversity or equality, despite selling hard on that platform.
Ironscarf at 3:33PM, Sept. 20, 2022
I definitely put some negative experiences and people into Awfully Decent Fellows but turned them into humour, which I find to be much more cathartic and hopefully entertaining. A thinly veiled rant soon gets tiresome if it's sustained for too long.