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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 :)
Years and years ago there ws an explosively popular comic on Drunk Duck called Craving Control. It was very well drawn and featured a sex, very busty women who would eat uncontrollably and get very fat and then slim down again quite suddenly. For some reason this was MASSIVELY interesting to people. The reason I mention it hear though is that their thumbnail pronominally featured a very boobular cleavage shot of the main character. Many of us creators on the site envied the popularity of this comic and chose to copy that thumbnail style. Suddenly there were all sorts of comics on the site being advertised with boob or butt thumbnails. Thirst traps everywhere! It started a fad on the site. People all suddenly re-learned the ancient lesson that “sex sells”.
In our cast we expand this a bit to talk about some of the famous thirst trap comics that often don't deliver on the promise of their covers like Vampirella, along with Witchblade and Red Sonja. This was something that existed even before comics back with the old pulps. Artists like Margeret Brundage were famous for their scantily clad, busty women in compromising situations, which the stories within weren't nearly as racy. The of course we have “bodice-ripper” romance novels featuring women in tight corsets and men with bulging chests…
Have you been guilty or at least tempted to use this tactic to promote your work? I know I have!
Future topic: Benevolent sexism, also benevolent racism.
This week Gunwallace was still unwell so I picked a sexy sounding past one to go along with the the topic today - Pep Squad - These girls are here to get you motivated! You can almost SEE the dance routine in your mind’s eye, and believe me, it’s pretty sexy… They’ve got some moves. The crowd roars as the pep squad performs, bumping, grinding and sliding on the stage. (from Quackcast 409)
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
A Lunatics Tale - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/jun/04/featured-comic-a-lunatics-tale/
Featured music:
Pep Squad - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pep_Squad/ - by Dave Mire, rated E
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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Quackcast 691 - Thirst Trap
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, June 11, 2024
A Lunatics Tale,
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Gunwallace,
Ozoneocean,
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Quackcast 691,
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Thirst Trap,
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Ozoneocean at 8:59PM, June 11, 2024
@fallopiancrusader - hahaha, Maybe. I dunno. It completely delivers on its promises. More that delivers I'd say!
Ozoneocean at 8:56PM, June 11, 2024
Haunted House or carnival effect sounds interesting.
fallopiancrusader at 8:25PM, June 11, 2024
Is “Tusk” an example of a thirst trap? The cover image is of a bikini-clad ogress, and every single page inside is also an image of a bikini-clad ogress. Alas, I am not smart enough to know the answer XD I can’t wait to hear about benevolent sexism and benevolent racism!
PaulEberhardt at 1:51PM, June 11, 2024
I used to call it the "haunted house effect". You know this kind of ride from various fun fairs that have most of their attractions on the outside, while when you paid to get in, you'll likely see something as sophisticated as a white shirt on a string at most. Well, as sex has always sold and always will, of course, it may well be called a doll house effect, too. 😉
UnderTheBlackHat at 8:22AM, June 11, 2024
Yeah, our team will just quietly slip out of the room as we've used both sexy and not so sexy cover images (which are our issue thumbnails) along with a promise of quite a bit of additional smexy on the pages themselves. So yeah, sex sells and everyone knows it. Some places try to use it (like the cover and tease images mentioned) despite the heavy censorship they are trying to work around, hence a lot of the 'false advertising' that was mentioned already. The 'Comics Code' really hurt the medium by reducing it to the bare minimum of its capability. Remember, in those days half the comics we consider Teen or above would never have seen a release to wide audience? Then there were a small but growing series of stories that started to come out that broke the codes hold on comics. There you'll find a lot of tease and swerve stuff or 'hidden context' type writing. Sexy ad image was pretty much the limit of what could be done to avoid the pillary of what we now call 'cancel culture'.
Ozoneocean at 7:36AM, June 11, 2024
The art of the tease is very important!
Ironscarf at 6:43AM, June 11, 2024
My comic probably falls into this category. The reason I tend to imply a lot more than I 'deliver' is down to not wanting to attract an audience who would then be disappointed by an excess of world building, storytelling and character development. I'm sure that happens anyway, it's a difficult balance to strike.
bravo1102 at 2:53AM, June 11, 2024
Bulges and no shirts. Romance novels are notorious with the Fabio images. Hugh Jackman has done quite a few hunky cover shots for his movies.
marcorossi at 1:48AM, June 11, 2024
Also: does this "teasing" thing work only for men? I suspect there is some sort of feminine equivalent for this, but it is not based on male nudity.
marcorossi at 1:46AM, June 11, 2024
I'm personally quite pissed off by the "teasing" that doesn't really deliver. However, there is this problem: suppose I want to draw a story that has some erotic undertones and some actually erotic scenes. If I sell it as a porn proper, I lose all the minors in the public, plus people who actually want to read porn so are let down from all the non porn parts of my story; OTOH if I sell it as family friendly I have to tune down the erotic parts big time; so it is difficult to do something in the middle. To the question of the OP, I never tought of doing "sexy" teasing, also because I have a not realistic style and it wouldn't work very well, but in one of my comics I had a pair of chapters where for various non sexual reasons all female characters were boobs out and thus I was blocked on webtoons.
bravo1102 at 12:44AM, June 11, 2024
And then there's the person who sees all this, takes notes and goes out of their way to actually deliver and not just tease. That's the whole secret behind my salacious and gratuitous content. I saw all kinds of teasing to sell and I decided to actually deliver.