Episode 304 - eeeeeevil!
Jan 2, 2017
What defines evil in fiction? I say the simplest one is bad guys are selfish, good guys are selfless. That is massively over simplistic but it's a good easy template for basic hero's and villains. Basic ones I was just doing a quick thought experiment to work out an easy way to define “good” and “evil” characters in fiction. The more selfless someone is the more “good” they are: the more they think of others, want to help people, put the needs of the masses first, the more willing they are to reach across to their enemies etc. The more selfish a person is the more “evil” they are: if they don't consider the needs or feelings of others, help out their own small group and let others suffer, help themselves first. Of course there are many other more advanced aspects, especially if you consider the relative nature of these things: the idea that everyone thinks they're the good guy from their own perspective, being cruel to be kind, being too authoritarian and heavy handed in the use of power, NOT using power when you should, helping in a way that only SEEMS destructive and selfish, trying to help but causing destruction and chaos in the process, which brings us to the dreaded “unintended consequences”. BUT, the selfless/selfish equation is a nice simple starting point to build from. In the Quackcast we discuss these aspects as well as more advanced notions about what makes a good evil character, what makes a bad one, humanising evil, and weakening you evil character by humanising them too much. Gunwallace's musical theme was for The Cull: Dark, haunting, and compelling- Eastern European Jewish, country and rock, reminds me of Tracy Bonham’s later work.
Topics and Show Notes
Featured comic:
RIGHTEOUS - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2016/dec/27/featured-comic-righteous/
Topics
Adventure time - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1305826/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Chronicle (hero back stories) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706593/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Pitface - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
kawaiidaigakusei - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Featured music:
The Cull - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Cull/ by Singring, rated M.
This is a brutal story about violence, tribalism, and redemption… I think :)
Episode 303 - Christmascast
Dec 26, 2016
It's Christmas time again… well at least it was two days ago when we recorded he cast. Today's Quackcast is a rambling christmas discussion of various things that take our fancy like the Secret Santa gift thread (linked down bellow), and the amazing art by amazing artists within it! Tantz, Pit, and Banes joined me sitting around a hot Australian sun in the outback with the traditional Christmas kangaroos hopping around and the traditional Christmas kookaburras laughing overhead! What did YOU do for Christmas this year? Gunwallace's musical theme was for E X T I N C T - A dark, bleakly epic SciFi soundtrack with a touch of James Bond in the strong baseline.
Episode 302 - the agendacast
Dec 19, 2016
Today we talk about works of pop-culture that have an obvious political agenda, so obvious that t not only gets in the way of the entertainment but also dictates to the audience without letting them have a chance to come to their own conclusions: forcing you to see things only one way. Even when we agree with the agenda being presented it can still strike a sour chord, often more-so since they're preaching to the choir and usually just throwing a badly simplified version of the philosophy at you, which can feel insulting. So that's what we chat about. Those views can come from ANY political persuasion, the right the left, communism, fascism, socialism, libertarianism whatever. No one has a monopoly on ideologues. We became overtly political towards the end… Sorry for that. HAHAHA. Do we practise what we preach? HELLS NO! I have to apologise again for the terrible sound quality of my voice recording. I thought I'd fixed the settings from last week, but I was wrong. I HAVE now though. Gunwallace's musical theme was for Grunk - cocktail bar samba played on a church organ. The music of heaven! Cheesy heaven. You can imagine fat angels in hawaiian shirts swanning about drunkenly and spilling their margaritas.
Episode 301 - Let it snow!
Dec 12, 2016
Banes and Pitface live in a parallel world to me where this time of year involves water falling from the sky in the form of fluffy white crystals. When it hits the ground it piles up on top of itself into huge white piles! Freaky, I know, but they tell me this actually happens. For me December is a time for heatwaves and the beach. So Banes and Pit enlighten me and all you out there on the beauty of snow. The idea for this Quackcast was based on a newspost by Banes. He talked about the use of snow in comic stories as a plot device. We talk a bit about that here, along with all the different visual aspects of it and how you can use it in imagery. I apologise for the sound quality here, something strange happened with my microphone settings. Gunwallace's musical theme was for Man Bun: Heavy, bass driven funk rock, with dark chocolatey, bluesy lyrics. Classic, cool, and hot!
Episode 300 - 3rd DD meetup!
Dec 5, 2016
We finally did it! We got to 300 Quackcasts! We've been doing these non-stop for SIX years! Wow… That's pretty incredible. We couldn't think of anything clever do do so we had another DD electronic meetup. The 3rd DD meetup on the 3rd of December on the 300th Quackcast. So the DD family got together, which is what families do around Christmas, well a few of us anyway! In this Quackcast you can listen to an hour of our blather and carrying on and vicariously experience what it was like if you missed it or listen again if you were a part of it. It's always a blast to have the DD community together, we're spread out all the way across the planet so this is really the only practical way for us to come together. We tried doing it with DD hangouts this time instead of Skype, which was interesting but there were way too many hoops to jump through for people to get into it. We could only have 10 people on the call at the time, With Skype we could have 10 people on video chat and others with voice only and chat was so much better… So NEXT time we will go BACK to Skype. Screw you Google hangouts! It was so nice to see people! I tried to stay up for 10 hours from 11am EST (New York time), to 9pm, but I didn't make it. I fell asleep 2 hours short. :( Gunwallace's musical theme was for Lady Unlucky: a minimal white landscape, furnished with electronica, hints of piano and subtle grandeur.
Episode 298 - When death comes
Nov 21, 2016
This Quackcast was based on Tantz Aerine's newspost from two Saturday's ago: Death in comics. We lightly expand t to death in all pop culture in the Quackcast. It's an interesting topic! Not the one we were originally going to do though… We were supposed to all have pizza and interview VinoMas's Princess January, but no one got pizza except me and I gave Vino the wrong time so he didn't show up, hahaha! So that idea… died. Death in comics can be used a whole lot of ways; a promotional technique as in Superman, a way to get rid of superfluous characters, to show gore and a massive body count, to create tragedy and pathos, the create comedy and laughter, and more! We give examples from our own artwork as well as mainstream comics like Maus, Judge Dredd, Superman, When the Wind Blows, nd even great webcomics like Charby the Vampirate. Banes could not show for this Quackcast. He is NOT dead… not yet. Gunwallace is right there back in action and the theme he's given us this week is Ectopiary! It's darkly threatening and vaguely classical, a creeping, scary exploration of dark places.
Episode 294 - Costume cast: Addams family
Oct 11, 2016
For Quackcast 294 we all dressed up as members of the Addams Family! Me as Gomez, Banes as Cousin It, Tantz as Morticia, and Pit Joan D'eath. We had a great time and you'll be able to see us all on video! The theme of this Quackcast was based on a newspost by Banes: Comedy and Horror and the relationship between those two things. It's very close. Both try hard to evoke strong emotions and emotional pay-offs. It can be very easy for most horror to devolve into comedy if things go wrong. Many horror tropes are actually pretty silly (i.e. slow walking zombies), which is why there are so many shows that make fun of them like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Munsters, The Cyptkeeper, and the amazing Addams Family! Horror comedy is a tried and true genre. If you're interested read more about that in Bane's newspost. Gunwallace's music for the week is the same as the feature: Miracles. The sound is dramatic,urgent, exciting, classical, action music- SOMETHING is going to happen if we don’t stop it in time!
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!
