Episode 295 - Sexcast, sex in non adult comics
Oct 10, 2016
This is the Awkardcast! Another take on the sexcast idea but this time we're looking at sex and sexual situations in strictly NON-adult comics. Sex performs a very different role in non-adult comics… You have a much wider audience with comics at the rating, but there are things you can not show, so of course you use sex for other reasons than the way you do in an adult rated comic. In an adult comic you can show all details of the entire act, all the genitalia in all their glistening, gory, gooey, hairy splendour, going in and out and around here and there and all over the place! Oh my! In Mature comics and bellow though, you simply can't, though you CAN have some non-sexual full frontal nudity in Mature comics and you can show bottoms in Teen rated comics. The ratings are similar to what you have with film ratings. In adult comics, like adult film, sex acts are more of the focus, they can still have a story but the sex acts are supposed to be enjoyed in their own right. In non-adult comics the sex has other purposes- subtle titillation is a part of it, comedy, teasing the viewer, furthering the plot, a culmination of a relationship or the establishment of one, etc- there's generally always another purpose to it, unlike adult comics where there sometimes is but doesn't need to be. And unlike adult film there's not much purpose to softcore non-adult rated porn in comics. That type of censored porn is done in film in order to get a wider audience on media that will otherwise not show porn, but on the net porn it's super easy to come by so there's not much reason to do softcore. There are a lot of challenges entailed in depicting non-adult rated porn! Certain positions don't work in well with the limits on nudity (we talk about this in the cast), but there are tricks you can use; symbolism (popping champagne corks, trains going into tunnels etc), strategic positioning of sheets, clever camera angles, fading out before the act and fading in again after, characters with mussed hair and uneven clothing, using dialogue to refer to what they just did, “off-screen” shenanigans, or shenanigans in the dark etc, it can be a lot of fun! Have a listen to how Tantz, I and Banes tackle the idea. The music by Gunwallace for his week was Firefly cross! A very mystical sound, with traditional, middle eastern style music mixed with dark techno fuzz, this one is intriguing!
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
FRED - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/FRED
Daniel by Sarah M - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Daniel/
The faction by PeiPei - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Faction/
Putrid meat by PitFace - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/PUTRID_MEAT/
Without moonlight by Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Without_Moonlight/
Pinky TA - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pinky_TA/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine
kawaiidaigakusei - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Featured music:
Firefly cross - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Firefly_Cross/ by Dragonsong12, rated E.
Episode 291 - The philosophy and politics of comics
Oct 3, 2016
This week's Quackcast is brought to us by Tantz Ariene! Tantz is a very political creature, seeing as she comes from Athens which is pretty much the birthplace of politics AND philosophy, that's hardly surprising. Clever Tantz in her tantzglasses, dudeman Banes, and me,Ozoneocean all talk about this interesting subject: what are the politics and philosophy involved in YOUR webcomic? Even though we don't realise it, there's ALWAYS politics of some sort in a comic, as well as philosophy. If your writing is pretty clever you might have multiple political view points in your comic and a whole range of different philosophies! Consider something as basic as Peanuts. Those characters have all sorts of political viewpoints! Peppermint Pattie is very forthright in her feminist views, but she's also pretty left wing, Lucy is rather domineering and and right off centre in the way she thinks, Charlie Brown is a bit of a fatalist blank slate for the audience to project themselves onto, Linus is a quiet intellectual… etc, I don't know, it's been years since I've read Peanuts! Gimmee a break! In superhero comics it's the same; most of them are pretty right wing, libertarian, individualist sorts of characters- Batman for example, Iron man, etc. There's a good argument for Superman being somewhat more Socialist since he's an ordinary man with an ordinary job most of the time and works out in the open for the good of all humanity, while Batman is a super rich guy most of the time and when he's doing hero stuff it's usually smaller scale vigilante type stuff against people who threaten his city, or commerce in his city like thieves and the Mafia. Try it yourself! Examining the politics and philosophy of your OWN characters as well as classic ones is pretty interesting. Gunwallace's theme this week is for Krasnosvit, a subtle, careful, fairytale theme, inducing you into the dark forest strangeness of Krasnosvit.
Episode 288 - Evoking too much Emotion
Sep 12, 2016
Drunkduck's beloved HippieVan was influenced by last week's Quackcast on Evoking emotion to come up with a newspost about NOT invoking emotion when you don't mean to: keeping things funny, even IF heavy stuff happens to be going on, which can be tricky. I thought that was pretty interesting so we decided to talk about that on THIS week's Quackcast. We've also got some clever community contributions on the original theme of evoking emotion. So it's a pretty full Quackcast all up. We also have Pitface and Tantz Aerine joining us again! Yaaaaay! Gunwallace's theme this week is for The weird adventures of Armless Amy, it's touching and evocative, as if it’s setting up to reveal a horrible mystery to us.
Episode 279 - Meet the Mutants!
Jul 11, 2016
Our very own heavily mutated Pitface put up a guest post about her fellow mutants, filling in for HippieVan while Hippy is away fighting the mutants in Japan wearing a tie-dyed sailor suit and riding a Volkswagen battle mecha, as you do in Japan… anyway, as a member of the anti-mutant police force, I had to drag in Pit for questioning! And that's what we did for this Quackcast. Banes and I interrogate Pit on the subject of mutants! Mutants are a forgotten race at the moment: Mutants are the zombies of SciFi in a way; a mob of anonymous monstrous minions who exist to menace the heroes and be gunned down in their thousands. But they're also so much more… Unlike zombies, mutants have a lot more personality and humanity, they can also be far more demonic and revolting than any zombie, they can be any shape, size of configuration. Mutants are so much scarier and adaptable than mere zombies, because unlike zombies they're not always degrading and falling apart, no, mutants are evolving constantly, they can get larger, gorier and more terrifying, i.e. The Thing. For mutant pathos witness the Mars mutants in the original Total Recall: There's a man with a baby in his chest and we feel for him and respect him. We have superhero mutants too in the form of the X-men. Can't forget them! But remember also that “mutants” are also a very real thing in this world, unlike zombies, in fact we are ALL mutants in one way or another, not just those special people with a conjoined twin or extra nipples or genitals or whatever, all of us have our own exciting DNA variation! I have a big nose, crooked lower teeth and pasty white skin myself, I'm practically a Morlock. So what is YOUR “mutation”?
Episode 277 - The great DD meet-up number 2!
Jun 27, 2016
Well this was the SECOND big electronic DD meet up! And we had many people joining us and coming in and out over the cause of the ten our time that we were on. We started at 11am New York time (which is 11PM my time) and went till 9pm New York time (9am my time), and let me tell you I was buggered by the end of it. This time we had some new people on and some returnees from last time. It was a good long, party, with much drinking, friendly swearing, and eating. We'd be ecstatic if you joined us for next time! I'm thinking we'll do the next one on the 23rd of July, so sign up for Skype and add Ozoneocean as a contact. We MAY try Google Hangouts but we'll need to experiment with it first. ANYWAY, give this a listen to hear some of the madness… This Quackcast has just a bit over an hour from close to the beginning of the meetup. There is a LOT of swearing so sensitive ears should be prepared… There were two Aussies this time so that's what you get. Gunwallace's theme music this week was COCHLEA and EUSTACHIA - creepy as hell, pretty, intricate, striking, panoramic.
Episode 273 - Promoting Side Characters
May 30, 2016
After last week's massive DD meetup (Next one is on the 18th, BE THERE!), we're back to the core group… me and my side characters, hahaha! Banes, Pitface, and Tantz Aerine join me to discuss the topic of promoting from within the ranks. I did a newspost about this last Thursday (linked bellow), the thrust of which was that when you need new main characters it's so much better and more fun to mine them from earlier in your stories rather than introducing them whole and new minted. This doesn't have to be an unplanned thing though- you can do like Banes or Amelius and have it all designed in advance. What they do is lightly introduce main characters AS side characters initially, knowing they'll be promoted to main status later on, either way it works the same- they fit better in the world of the story, the have more “history” and the audience finds them easier to accept, as we discuss in the Quackcast. Still though, when things aren't so planed, it can be so rewarding when creations grow and find their own voices. This week's theme by Gunwallace is for XTIN , it's weirdly Indian and mournful in a beautiful way that is PERFECT for Xitin!
Episode 271 - Pitface’s tales of ribaldry
May 15, 2016
What makes the “meat” of a story? What makes you fall in love with it, keep coming back for more watches or reads or whatever? I contend it has nothing to do with conflict or culminations or climaxes, those are merely generic structural plottings that are pretty much the same format no matter what story you read- you know they're coming and you know what form they'll take and once they're over it's not really that significant anymore; “re-playability” is low, they're just too tied in with the story structure to have much life away from it in your mind. What keeps me coming back to a story and fall in love with it are the Characters, exploring the world in which they exist, and the development that occurs during the story. Gunwallace provides us a theme to CTV Revamped, the new version of Charby the Vampirate! Good and creepy techno for Charbs!
Episode 269 - Historical Accuracy VS Story Needs
May 2, 2016
Never let historical accuracy get in the way of a good story… at least that's what Bravo proposes. We stole his thought provoking forum post subject for the topic of this Quackcast. This is how Bravo goes on to explain it: “So how do feel about that? Should exact adherence to the historical record be allowed to wreck your wonderful fiction? If so how much dramatic license is too much? What are your favorite examples of how they got it wrong and how they got it right? And what if just a touch more research would have revealed that the historical story was better than what the fiction writers concocted? How tragic is that? And what about the usage of known historical mythology/hoax as in the Da Vinci code?” The frisson between story requirements and known historical record is pretty interesting. In Hollywood the former wins out EVERY single time and usually it doesn't result in a better story anyway, but as we discuss in the Quackcast there are OTHER reasons than simple bad writing choices for not sticking to the real story and trying to hammer everything into the Hero's Journey template.
