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?
Topics and Show Notes
For me it was Neon Genesis Evangelion. At the end of each episode one of the characters would preview the NEXT episode and then finish by promising “more fan service”. It took me a wile to work out they meant shots of underpants and sideboobs and things… The meaning of fan service has come to be expanded a bit now though, bellow are the types we chat about. One thing they all have in common is that they're there to titillate, amuse, or excite fans but they're not essential to the story:
1. Things that have broad appeal; boobs, bums, bare chests etc. eg. Daniel Craig bare chested at the beach in Casino Royale. Could even be a cool shot of mecha or a car.
2. Things that are popular in the fandom being inserted into the story as fan rewards, e.g. John McClane from Die Hard saying his “Yipee-Ki-Yay…” catchphrase in every film.
3. Rewarding diligent fans with callbacks and Easter eggs later on in the work or at the end of it, e.g. the sitcom Community did this all the way through, especially at the end.
4. Memes and in-jokes peripheral to the fandom being added into the story. This is the weakest of all the types of fan service and does most harm to the story. Star Wars The Last Jedi is full of it, e.g. Luke's “laser-sword” line, him pole-vaulting over to milk the boob aliens on the cliffs etc.
The musical feature this week that Gunwallace has given us is theme to Heaven Hunters, Holy reverence in the sepulcher, voices soaring to the heavens, followed by a thunderblast of satanic guitar fire, burning hot with blue and orange flame running free in a cleansing chaos of rock!!
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Heaven Hunters - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/dec/01/featured-comic-heaven-hunters/
Featured Music:
Heaven Hunters - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Heaven_Hunters/ - by TedGravesArt, rated M.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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Episode 503 - Changing attitudes
Nov 1, 2020
An old man tries to explain modern culture to an even older man… Attitudes change! Things don't stay the same, culture moves on and when we try to hang onto old ideas we can look like idiots, and even worse than that we can hold up cultural progress and hurt people. That's what we're trying to talk about…
Episode 502 - Definitive character moments!
Oct 26, 2020
What is the most definitive version of your character? Where does it pop up in your comic? What part of your work most defines your main character and why? What about TV, movie, comic, and story characters?
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 496 - titular titularity!
Sep 14, 2020
Titles are surprisingly important for your comic! We don't often realise that when we first start them, but a title is one of the very first ways people come across your work. You have to sell it to them and give them an idea of what to expect in only a very few words. You can take a lot of different approaches to that, like teasing and intriguing them with a title that suggests something interesting or mysterious, character names are great for that. You can be completely literal and obvious. You can use a pun… you can take an existing popular title and alter it in a slight way… There are so many things you can do!
Episode 495 - A fan of fanfiction?
Sep 7, 2020
Fanfiction is a massive subject, there are so many aspects to it, from the bad stuff with the Mary Sues, rampant shipping, author inserts and wish fulfilment etc to homages and great works that extend the story and characters beyond what they were in the original and add interesting and fun aspects to fan favourites. There are many good reasons to do fanfiction: It's fun, you're inspired and want to use that inspiration, all the characteristics of the story are readymade so you don't have to do world building or character development, the work has a built in audience so you're going to have readers no matter what and hopefully some feedback, it can help make you more popular as a creator because of the fans of the original work, and you get to experiment because you can't sell the work or do anything serious with it so you may as well have fun and enjoy it!
