Episode 651 - Strong characters of any gender and DD awards stuff
Sep 3, 2023
We're chatting about a couple of things today: the DD 2023 Awards which are in their completion faze now, and “strong” characters of any gender.
Topics and Show Notes
The DD awards are finding up now and presentations will be happening so it's a good time now to be able to see who actually won and to be able to get a look at some really good comics you might not have seen before.
The latter topic was inspired by something Tantz wrote about. There's a trend of people trying really hard to make “strong” female“ characters and in the process botching it because they're focusing on the wrong things. They try to combat a sexist trend of weak female characters in the the process ironically commit a worse sexist mistake… ”Strong“ characters are the same no matter the gender because it's never gender traits that make them weak or strong. If you know what makes a strong character that skill is equally useful for male, female, trans, or genderless characters.
Some people mistakenly think that so called ”male“ traits make a character strong: physical strength, anger, power, leadership, height, muscles, meanness etc not realising that none of these are male traits, they're JUST traits. The masculinity or femininity we assign them is all cultural. By combining a lot of these traits you often just end up making an unlikable dickhead. Character strength has more to do with how well realised the character is, how well they fit into their world, the effect they have on other characters, weather they're ”active“ or ”passive“ in a story.
It's a complex subject and we go much deeper into it during the cast! How do you write ”strong" characters?
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Boxdog - A contemplative, reflective, serious piano driven intro leads into a happy, pleasant pop-song, first as drums and a bass take over, then the process completes as lead duties are handed off to an electric guitar and the tune fully opens up!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Some inspiration from Tantz's newspost:
Writing Strong Characters of Any Gender - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/aug/25/writing-strong-characters-of-any-gender/
The 2023 DD Awards - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Drunk_Duck_Awards_2023/
Featured comic:
Oblique -
- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/aug/29/featured-comic-oblique/
Featured music:
Boxdog -
- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Boxdog/ - By Boxdog, rated M.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Special thanks to -
- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Soushiyo/
-For the addition of the new “other gender” part of our sign up forms.
Episode 641 - Bodycast
Jun 26, 2023
Injuries, especially to the head can be extremely bad but people are hit over the bonce and knocked out in popculture all the time. In violent sports like boxing or MMA it's often a goal, it's a common thing in games too, the “KO” is a staple. In TV shows, movies and comics it's seen as a kind way to deal with an enemy, people will even do it to their very best friends to protect them from going through with some scary activity, often knocking them out and tying them up and then taking their place or something. Knocking people out has become so memed that the fantasy version has replaced the real version and it's even influenced how we think about it.
Episode 638 - Rookie Mistakes
Jun 5, 2023
Beginners at webcomics make mistakes, rookie mistakes. In fact people tend to make a lot of the same mistakes and we're going to chat about some of those in the Quackcast, but there are certainly a LOT more!
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.
Episode 635 - Warcast
May 14, 2023
We're talking about WAR here! Trying to leave out politics, though that's really hard with war because it's basically ALL politics but on fire. So we're talking mainly about depictions of it or at least aspects of it, in art and the media. Both Tantz Aerine and myself work on war comics, Without Moonlight and Pinky TA respectively (plus Tantz also does Brave Resistance with Pitface), so we have some knowledge of the subject from a creator perspective.
Episode 634 - Boomer-myth
May 8, 2023
Generational tensions are a cultural constant. It's popular to pick on the young and say they're lazy, irresponsible, stupid, changing things in silly ways etc, but it's also just as popular too defend them and debunk myths associated with younger people, we don't have that with older people and I find that a bit sad and disturbing. This cast tackles the myths associated with “boomers”.
Episode 629 - Reevaluation cast
Apr 3, 2023
Have you ever watched a series devotedly then lost touch with it for some reason for a while and then gone back to it a couple of years later and tried to get into again but this time you look at it with a very different perspective? Or maybe you loved a movie when you were young and decided to watch it again as an adult to see if it holds up?
Episode 622 - Whaddaya take me for?
Feb 12, 2023
This is when the writer leads you to think something big has happened in the story, like a character dying or falling in love or winning a big prize or something, only to have the character alive in the next part, or the prize or love never mentioned or addressed- this is “schmuck bait”. The writer gets you invested and excited for something but cops out, leaving the audience frustrated and cynical. This was common in older episodic things where the episodes are intended to be seen in any order, so the writers couldn't have continuing arcs and development across a season. It's also common in bad writing where the writer builds things up a lot for an events but then loses their nerve or just doesn't posses the skills to properly resolve things.
