Episode 722 - Main characters with main character syndrome
Jan 12, 2025
Main characters with main character syndrome? What is main character syndrome? Well the way we're dealing with it here it's normally a snide criticism you level and someone who seems to think the world revolves around them, like social media “influencers”, selfish self centred people, that sort of thing. Popular figures like Elon Musk and Donald Trump are great examples: they imagine the world should bend to their whim, and normal rules don't apply, like a main character in a fictional story.
Topics and Show Notes
The funny thing is that not many main characters think or act like that. Some do but they're the exceptions. Generally it's comic-relief side characters, villains, or antagonists who have main character syndrome. It's especially true for villains because behaving that way is easily seen as a negative and being selfish like that harms other characters in their world, being a great example of “evil”. Other characters typically notable for it include Queen bees in a highschool setting, also dominant “jocks”, and the love interests in harem anime- each of them think they're the main character, while the actual main character is a characterless blob.
Main character syndrome isn't always a negative thing though! It can be fun or funny, or it can make you more invested in the world. Exceptions where main characters have MCS are the protagonists of noir detective stories. Every main character in Seinfeld had MCS, not initially but that's how the show developed. Cher in Clueless starts off that way but graduates out of it. In superhero comics MCS is definitely something you often see, I think Batman can have it depending on the writer, Deadpool is a good candidate… A fave example of mine is TankGirl, she has it 100% and it works in her favour, she moulds her world to her will.
Do you have a fave example of a fictional character with Main Character Syndrome?
Gunwallace was busy this week so we have a reissue of Gamma Blue Smoldering of Creel - Heavy rocking fire. This is a hammer forging red hot steel on an anvil, rhythmically pounding it into shape, slamming into it with thunderous blows, drawing out the metal into a brutal sword of pure rock!
from Quackcast 680, 26th of March 2024
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Imparting Quietus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/jan/07/featured-comic-imparting-quietus/
Featured music:
Gamma Blue Smoldering of Creel - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Gamma_Blue_Smoldering_of_Creel/ - by Odebear, rated E
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 720 - Happy New Year!
Dec 30, 2024
It's not the new year yet but this is the final Quackcast of 2024 and it's coming out on New Year's Eve! In this Quackcast we do a bit of a year in review. A bit happened this year… DD reached its 22nd year online being one of the oldest sites on the internet and definitely one of the very oldest free comic hosts next to Keenspace which doesn't really exist now. We released another DD anthology comic collection, A Flock of Dreams (linked bellow), in which your Quackcast hosts collaborated on a comic together! We were really proud of that, Key of Dreams, our story was a real work of love, and you can read that in the anthology.
Episode 711 - Lost Boys
Oct 28, 2024
Halloween is on the way and we always do something different for it. This time we're doing a commentary for the 1987 vampire movie The Lost Boys! We even dressed in Lost Boys themed outfits for the Patreon vid which we will make available to ALL Patrons (even free ones), as a treat.
Episode 685 - mantle
Apr 29, 2024
“Passing the mantle” is an interesting phrase. Many claim it comes from a biblical origin; the prophet Elijah was said to have passed his mantle to Elisha when he ascended to heaven, thereby symbolically transferring his authority… but honestly that seems a little silly and elaborate of an origin story, the sort of thing bad bible scholars in America loved to come up with in the 19th century. Mantles of office were commonly worn by kings, statesmen and even lord mayors today and the passing of those symbolises them gaining office and authority. It's a very ordinary, commonplace secular tradition.
Episode 678 - Panel order!
Mar 11, 2024
Banes did a really interesting newspost about panel order and how we read comics- not just left to right or right to left but which panel flows to what and how you get the reader to go in the right direction when something isn't intuitive. We're all comic people and we host a comic site so this was perfect for us to tackle!
Episode 659 - Happy Halloween 2023
Oct 30, 2023
Happy Halloween! The time of spookiness and ghosts. Spooks messed up the cast so the sound quality is really bad I'm afraid, I tried to do what I could to fix it though. This week Banes, I, and Tantz are chatting about Halloween and related subjects like scary movies and things. I personally only like comedy horror, or whacky horror films where things are taken too far so I don't identify with the characters and feel bad because of it. I find I identify with characters in film far too much (if it's realistic), the genre doesn't matter, it can be comedy, horror, murder mystery, romance whatever, so that means if the tone is too tragic and depressing it usually makes me feel extremely down. For that reason a lot of horror doesn't appeal to me unless I can distance myself from the characters somehow. So comedy helps, or if it's super-over-the-top and whacky like The Nun.
Episode 650 - Fake things that only exist in pop-culture
Aug 28, 2023
There are a lot of things that only exist in fiction and really don't have any basis in reality and yet we THINK they do! It's just that fiction has done such a great job of making us believe this stuff and setting it up that it pretty much replaces reality. We focused on spies for our Patreon only video, and how the version we know from popculture in Kingsmen, Mission Impossible, James Bond, Chuck, and many other things is complete fiction.
Episode 637 - Rumours
May 28, 2023
Rumours can be damaging stories deliberately spread to harm people, they can grow organically of their own accord. Salacious rumours replace truth and stick around in history, like the silly stories of Catherine the Great and horses, Nero fiddling while Rome burned, Marie Antoinette saying “let them eat cake”, or the famously wealthy Roman general Crassus dying by having molten gold poured on his head. All rumours and silly stories but they become stronger than real history. Then there's the notorious story of poor Fatty Arbuckle and how he supposedly killed a woman during a sexual act due to his ‘enormous bulk“. A complete and utter fabrication but it destroyed his career and is still believed today.
