Episode 509 - Saltcast
Dec 13, 2020
Escapist fiction Vs Gritty and real style fiction… Furwerk-Studio made an interesting post about this subject. They were annoyed at people who dismiss escapism as something lessor or inferior to more gritty and realistic work, so we decided to tackle both sides and take some extreme views on the subject, both for and against! A few years ago Simon Peg made some comments related to this very subject and got a bit of backlash (links in the notes). The idea is that escapist stuff keeps us infantile and malleable… It's actually a really old idea anything that isn't realistic is childish and bad for you while things that are heavier and more adult in tone (whether escapist or not), are far more worthy.
Topics and Show Notes
We tackle this in a somewhat less serious fashion, taking extreme points of view for both sides (because that's what you do in the 2000s), and have fun with it.
NEXT WEEK'S QUACKCAST: Stuff we we spend our money on.
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Whispers of the Past - A beautiful, quiet, contemplative noodling, evocative of days gone by, sepia tones, golden afternoon sunshine, and remembrance. It reminds me of something from a late 1960s folk rock group.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Deconstructing Escapisim thread - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/178562/
Simon Peg's controvesial statements on escapisim - https://www.indiewire.com/2015/05/simon-pegg-worries-that-adults-obsessed-with-comics-sci-fi-have-become-infantilized-by-our-own-taste-263869/
Simon Peg's deffence of his comments - http://simonpegg.net/2015/05/19/big-mouth-strikes-again/
Featured comic:
Spazient - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/dec/08/featured-comic-spazient/
Featured music:
Whispers of the Past - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Whispers_of_the_Past/, by Crona J, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 508 - Fan Service
Dec 6, 2020
The Mandalorian on Disney Plus is a very popular series, it's particularly known at the moment because of the “fanservice”, i.e. fan rewards in the second series. a couple of Clone Wars characters are in it now… but we won't spoil that. Tantz, Banes and I chat Fan Service! What IS Fan Service and why is it a thing? When did we first learn about it?
Episode 507 - Say my name again!
Nov 30, 2020
Coming up with character names isn't easy. It can actually be really, really hard! Tantz did a couple helpful Newsposts about it and we decided to spin that into a fun Quackcast about naming and names! The names behind stuff often has interesting stories, the Quackcast itself is no exception. When Wowio told us we had to do a podcast back in the day we tossed around a few names and the one they came up with was “Quackcast”, because of the whole “duck” theme we have going here. I protested because there was a highly regarded skeptical medical podcast with that name already run by Dr Mark Crislip, but I didn't have any real say and so the name stuck! When I DID have the power to change it, it was already way too entrenched.
Episode 506 - The fightcast
Nov 22, 2020
Today we chat about fight scenes! This was spurred by a post in our forums about how bad fight choreography can spoil a film. Our Patron vid was mainly about fights in our comics, while the Quackcast is more about fights in movies. One of the things about REAL fights is that they're usually very fast, ugly, stupid looking, and not very exciting. It's important to remember that boxers and UFC fighters are entertainers and sports people, those people are performing for an audience - their fights are real but they're designed to be showy and exciting, whereas true fighting on the street or in war etc is very different, it's more deadly and more stupid looking.
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
Episode 500 - Celebration!
Oct 12, 2020
Finally we got to the five hundredth Quackcast! Wow! That's so many. We've been doing these for 10 years now. That's a long running podcast! To celebrate we invited our DD members aboard. We had a great fun time, lots of laughs and a really good chat. We even had time to introduce special cotributions from the people who couldn't be live with us. I'm making our exclusive patreon video of this week's cast free for all to view! Just click on the youtube link bellow.
Episode 499 - Life's worth?!
Oct 5, 2020
What is the worth of human life in your stories? This isn't something people often consider, we just tend to have a fairly accurate guess based on our experience of the real world, but sometimes stories get it really wrong and that can harm suspension of disbelief.
Episode 498 - Your culture is MINE now!
Sep 28, 2020
This week we're talking about cultural appropriation, cultural adaption and adoption, also stereotypes and all sorts of related stuff. It was inspired by a newspost from Tantz discussing the recent live action Mulan movie by Disney. Cultural appropriation is when you take an aspect that is sacred or important to one culture and own it yourself: decontextualising it, stripping it off it's meaning, making a cartoon version of it, commodifying it, commercialising or cheapening it in some other way.