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!
Topics and Show Notes
Fanfiction has a bad name in many circles for the Mary Sues etc, because the format encourages writing sins more than others: you WANT to insert yourself or your prized character into the fiction that you enjoy, that's perfectly natural. It's also perfectly fine for you to do that, you should ship away with the character pairings you want, just do whatever. That said there are plenty of fan fictions that don't involve any of that by writers who take the work seriously and do a good job at creating extensions to the worlds they're interested in, so we should never think that fan-fiction is just about shipping, there's a lot more to it than that!
Years ago I found a great fan-fic of Robotech online, I didn't even know it WAS a fanfic, I had no idea what fanfiction was. I enjoyed it so much I when through it and edited all the mistakes and made fan art for it! -Not the art pictured, that was just my general fanart for Daria and Robotech… Have you ever done any yourself or read a really good one?
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Belle Starr - Relaxed rockets. Lift off into this “end credits” theme for Belle Starr. Gunwallace has already done a main theme so this will be the coda for that great comic. This is a cool, relaxing, chill out piece, Cafe Del Mar meets NASA.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Genejoke's newspost on the subject - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/sep/01/is-making-fan-comics-a-bad-idea/
Forum thread on fanfiction - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/178494/
Featured comic:
Era of Iridore - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/sep/01/featured-comic-era-of-iridore/
Featured music:
Belle Starr - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Belle_Starr/, by Jeff Salty, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 483 - Burnt out
Jun 15, 2020
Emma Clare posted about avoiding burnout on Friday and we thought we'd steal that subject to chat about it. Burnout is something that can affect all of us, most especially when you're stuck at home with lots of time to create, funnily enough. When there's a lot of pressure on you to create it often makes you STOP creating. But there are a lot of ways to void burn out and when it actually does happen to you there are a lot of ways to come back from it and rekindle those exhausted flames of creation. How do YOU come back after being burnt out? What was your longest burnout?
Episode 471 - Fantasy
Mar 23, 2020
Today we're having a chat about fantasy fiction! Mainly books and the fantasy writing that inspired us and that we love! Faves like Tolkien, Fritz Leiber and Piers Anthony! Just to define, we're talking swords, elves, armour, dragons etc, in a “medieval” context, generally European. As a subset there's native, Arabian, Asian, Mayan etc, also high fantasy, low fantasy, sword and sorcery, historical fantasy and even mythology…. And then techno fantasy, contemporary fantasy, steampunk, fantasy cyberpunk and so on… but we mainly stick to the mainstream stuff and only just touch on the weird little variations for now.
Episode 465 - Planning Vs pantsing!
Feb 10, 2020
There are a couple of approaches when it comes to making a big creative project: planing it all out or working things out as you go i.e. flying by the seat of your pants. Well in reality it's a spectrum and those are the two extremes. Most of us work somewhere between those two, sometimes with more or less planning etc… I've tried a lot of different mixtures myself!
Episode 440 - Character tropes VS characterisation
Aug 19, 2019
Today we compare and contrast two ways of making characters: starting with a pure archetype and building it with tropes, or creating a character organically through circumstance and interaction with other characters.
Episode 438 - You just don't get it
Aug 5, 2019
Sometimes your audience just doesn't pick up on the clever symbolism, the hints, the metaphor, the underlying themes and all the artistic cleverness in writing and art that you've filled your work up with!
Episode 429 - Bad ends, not bad fans
Jun 2, 2019
This Quackcast was inspired by the fan reaction to Game of Thrones, a series that I haven't watched but Tantz and Banes have! Specifically it's about poorly written endings and gas-lighting fans rather than admitting to faults.
Episode 406 - Amateur Vs Pros Merry Christmas DD!
Dec 23, 2018
Merry Christmas one and all! And all that stuff. This year our release date falls exactly on the 25th! It was a busy year for us, lots happened. But in this Quackcast what we chat about is something rather different: the difference between pros and amateurs, specifically when it comes to comics. There's this common misconception that an amateur is a novice that will produce work of a lower quality, while a professional is an experienced person who knows what they're doing and will always produce things of the highest quality… The REAL story is more complex than that.
