Shmuck Bait is the name, I think coined by one of the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul writers, where a cliffhanger or shocking ending leads the audience to believe something major has changed. For example, the appearance that a major character has died. But when the next episode/issue/book ...

Shmuck Bait
Banes at 12:00AM, Feb. 9, 2023Overworking in webcomics
Emma_Clare at 12:00AM, Feb. 4, 2023
With the ever expanding influence of Webtoons, more and more people are flocking to webcomic sites to read comics. I say read, but really it is “consume”. In this day and age where content is being inhaled at an unprecedented rate, creators are being pushed further to create more. Longer ...
Quackcast 620 - losers are human too
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Jan. 31, 2023 LISTEN on our new player!
Listen on Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/drunkduck-quackcast
Or TuneinRadio - https://tunein.com/podcasts/Books–Literature/Drunkduck-Quackcast-p1150194/
My idea was to talk about social pariah characters, people who it's socially acceptable to laugh at, despise, or even hate. They can be the uncool ...
Altarland, or how I learned to stop tinkering and love the AU
Andreas_Helixfinger at 12:00AM, Jan. 29, 2023
So it is Sunday again and the first month of the new year is nearing its close. I still haven’t finished my work on the short story I’m making for the new DD Anthology, but I am coming back from my updating hiatus next week anyway. During my ...
Character trait: Toxic Positivity, Toxic Acceptance (Part 1)
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Jan. 28, 2023
Usually, antagonists or villains are emo and gloomy, angry and aggressive, suave and sly, or any combination of that. They are not generally associated with positive traits in their personality, or at least positively-associated traits.
And that's a shame, because real life sure does have a lot of variety ...
Quackcast 619 - Artificial culture
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Jan. 24, 2023 LISTEN on our new player!
Listen on Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/drunkduck-quackcast
Or TuneinRadio - https://tunein.com/podcasts/Books–Literature/Drunkduck-Quackcast-p1150194/
Talking about AI again but this time our subject is different: Does it have a negative influence on culture?
AI creative tools in the hands of an ...
The Challenge of Part Three
Banes at 12:00AM, Jan. 19, 2023
And a One and a Two and a–
The third and possibly final volume of the Guardians of the Galaxy films is coming out later this year. Or next year. Or whatever.
I liked the first two a lot, and in an interview snippet, James Gunn mentioned how the third ...
Quackcast 618 - The grass is always Greener
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Jan. 17, 2023 LISTEN on our new player!
Listen on Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/drunkduck-quackcast
Or TuneinRadio - https://tunein.com/podcasts/Books–Literature/Drunkduck-Quackcast-p1150194/
The Saying goes that The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side of the Fence. Envy and jealously are destructive, negative feelings that either lead to ...
Meet the Found Family
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Jan. 14, 2023
Last year (har har har obligatory New Year's Joke done) I'd started talking about Found Family, one of my favorite tropes in pretty much any narrative work, from movies to novels to comics and webcomics. Found family is when a bunch of characters, usually unrelated and mismatched, end ...