Episode 597 - Revelations!
Aug 21, 2022
Today we're talking about a technique in storytelling that we're calling the “revelation”. Inspired by Banes doing an article on the weird trope in movies of having a character discover newspaper stories about the villain that suddenly reveal the true stakes of the story and kick things into high gear. There are other types of revelation in stories though and they're used in different ways.
Topics and Show Notes
The revelation technique can be used in the midpoint of a story as a way of showing the true scope of what the protagonist faces, which signals a corresponding urgency in the story, a rise in tension and an increase in pace - when done well! When done badly, as in the recent Marvel movie Eternals, it has the opposite effect- killing tension and diffusing the energy of the story. A revelation can be used towards the end of a story to show a twist which makes you reevaluate the entire story and look at it in a different way as in Unbreakable or The Usual Suspects. A late revelation can also be used to enrich the story by revealing extra details about a character and sweetening the story after the climax. And then there's the typical Marvel movie way of using super late revelations in the form of Easter eggs which give an audience a sense of anticipation and reward, uncovering secret things about where a story will go next!
A good revelation can add a lot of spice to a story and you're usually pretty safe in its use. The Eternals is a weird exception, where they really messed up this easy technique, TWICE, and cut the power to the story. Watch it and you'll see what I mean! Do you know any stories where a revelation ruined things?
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Hawk and Flo Ice Cream Truck of Doom part 1 - Flicker, flicker, hypervelocity turning and spinning, action and movement. Techno synth keyboard, strings snapping drums moving faster than thought.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Banes' newspaper revelation newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/aug/16/the-horror-newspaper-revelation-scene/
Some of the stuff mentioned in the cast:
The Eternals - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9032400/
The usual suspects - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114814/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
The Guest - https://asianwiki.com/The_Guest_(Korean_Drama)
La Mante - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6467482/
Featured comic:
Them There Hills - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/aug/16/featured-comic-them-there-hills/
Featured music:
Hawk and Flo Ice - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Hawk_and_Flo_Ice_Cream_Truck_of_Doom_part_1/ - by HawkandFloAdventures, rated E.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
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Episode 594 - Grow up! Or don't...
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The Manchild can be a fun character or they can be pathetic. They're a staple of comedies because they're an adult that gets to act immature and childish, without the restraint and responsibilities imposed by adulthood. This can make a great contrast; “The adult man acting like an immature child”, John C Riley and Will Farrel have always done that extremely well, as did Chris Farley back in the 90s. It can be be portrayed as pathetic and sad when the person can't seem to be able grow up or take on any responsibilities. They're often characterised by people with “childish” interests, like the cast of the Big Bang Theory, or with a childlike love of something like sports like Kevin in Kevin can F Himself.
Episode 579 - 2022DD Awards begins!
Apr 18, 2022
The DD Awards have come around again and now it's time for you to join in! To start with there's the red carpet event! Simply draw your characters showing up to the awards ceremony, submit it to Tantz and get on board with the awards! There's a link bellow… The DD Awards are a fantastic community even that we've been running on the site for years and years. It's a great way to get more eyes on your comic and increase your community presence. All you have to do is join in, create comic pages on the awards theme featuring your characters in the various events and things and you're part of it. Like most awards ceremonies it's not really about who's best or most popular or whatever, it's about participation, making your work visible to people, raising your profile, and getting eyes on you! To that end the red carpet event is up first, get in on that and make a start with the awards!
Episode 567 - Fairies, the Darkmatter of the supernatural
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Pit and Tantz join me to talk about about fairies, fae, Faery, Fair folk, Yokai, and all that good stuff. They're like the dark-matter of the supernatural world: they're not really gods, demons, monsters, or ghosts (though sometimes they are al of those sort off…), they generally fill the spaces between. They exist in a lot of cultures all over the place. They can be naughty spirits, elemental creatures, or animalistic, but generally they're quite alien and unknowable. This discussion comes from Tantz's newspost on Saturday.
Episode 561 - You are being manipulated
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This interesting Quackcast topic was influenced by a DDer who has been subsumed by anti-CoVid conspiracy. This inspired me to delve into the reasons for the massive growth in these types of conspiracy and how the current state of the internet contributes to it. I had some theories, but I thought I should do some reading on the subject to see what the real reasons are rather than using guesses to fill the gaps like conspiracy thinkers tend to do. I was quite shocked by what I found.
Episode 556 - That's What She Said!
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The other day Tantz Aerine wrote a newspost about an article critical of Squid Game. The crux of things was that the Squid Game creator had said their message was anti-capitalist, while this critic was saying that the author's message with the Squid Game was an anti communist critique and not a very good one at that. The issue here is that isn't how you do criticism. At all. You can give an interesting reading of something and tell us why YOU think it's anti-Communist, or tell us how it looks through the lens of post-colonialism or new wave feminism etc, but you can't say that is what the author is saying or what the work means, especially if the author explicitly says WHAT they are saying. This may seem like a small distinction but it's actually very, very important. Bad criticism often tells us what the creator is saying. Don't do that. Don't be that person.
Episode 548 - Foreign Influence
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Translating cultural concepts so they can be understood in a different country can be really tricky, most people never bother. Often the audience is just left to guess what's behind certain concepts and idioms. As an Australian, growing up as a little kid we were bombarded by media from everywhere, but mainly Britain, the USA, Canada and New Zealand. There was so much about American media that was utterly alien to us and we were just left to puzzle it out, especially American high school concepts: The level of seriousness with which they regard team sports in schools, cheerleaders, jocks, jockstraps, school kids driving cars, homecoming, pep rallies, summer camp, proms, tick or treating, thanksgiving… We just had to make sense of those things ourselves. Some we could work out from context but others I never really understood and never really will.
Episode 539 - Schemers
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Schemers can be part of some great stories when they're done well! When they're done badly though they're very annoying! Schemers, plotters and planers have become a super annoying trope in anime: at the end of the first or second episode a person will show up in the shadows and say that they're amused how things are all going as predicted and planned…. They'll appear again at the half way mark of the series and again 3 episodes before the end in the run up to their climactic battle with the protagonist. It's a trope and a formula. Sometimes it works, often it doesn't.
