Episode 566 - feeling the vibe!
Jan 16, 2022
Let's talk about total immersion… When consuming media rather than creating it, if you're lucky you become immersed: the struggles and fears of the character become your own. You feel for them, you care, their pain, their hunger, even their shivers and sweats, you care about the world in which they live… That can be an amazing feeling and it's pretty much WHY we really enjoy and keep consuming media. Themes, great visuals, intellectual explorations of ideas and concepts are all very well but nothing compels and excites you as much as when you really CARE what's happening. So that's what we're chatting about! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Topics and Show Notes
Tantz and I talk about some of the times when we've felt really immersed in a story and what that felt like. It's amazing how comics, movies, games, radio plays etc can take you away from your present and plonk you into the world they're depicting. Personally I find the less visuals provided by the media the easier it is to be immersed (so books and radio plays), because most of the story has to be built in your head, but you can find immersion with any media. That's why when its over you feel so bereft and marooned: you've been bumped out of that world. It's also why we want sequels so much and are usually always disappointed by how they turn out: we don't really care about another story with the character starting over, what we want is to live in that world with them one more time, and when it's inevitably not the same (because most writers don't understand the real point of a sequel), we're unsatisfied.
This is also the main reason I don't like horror movies: I will become immersed in the story so I feel the pain and fear of the characters, I care about them too much so horror movies depress and sadden me if I let myself become immersed.
What are your experiences with story immersion? Are they good, bad, do you love it or just not care too much?
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Dude in Distress - a classical, slow, dancing promenade… careful steps in satin slippers on mirror polished wood… At full speed we’re launched into relentless movement. Hydraulic, electric servos of enormous power push us ever on, altering the world in unimaginable and extreme ways.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
INTERSTELLAR BATTLE GIRLS LEAGUE of SUPER WARRIORS - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jan/11/featured-comic-interstellar-battle-girls-league-of-super-warriors/
Featured music:
Dude in Distress - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Dude_in_Distress/ - by EssayBee T, 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
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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Episode 565 - Lady Barbarian
Jan 10, 2022
“The Girl Boss in the sausagefest” Pitface and Tantz chat are here to chat with me about the subject or lady Barbarians: What they look like, where they originated, why they originated, what they mean, and the logic behind them. They're often overshadowed by their male counterparts (e.g. Conan), and often dismissed as simply an erotic male fantasy, but they've been around just as long and they've also had just as much of a role to play in the traditional “barbarian” mythos as the male versions. Sure, the sexy versions are abundant, iconic, and visually striking, but they're not the be all and end all!
Episode 556 - That's What She Said!
Nov 8, 2021
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 552 - Tropes we like
Oct 11, 2021
Last time we covered tropes we hated! This time we're talking about clichés we actually like. It's quite a bit trickier because clichés are clichés for a reason (overuse) so it's not easy to like them, except in some cases… For me it's Isekai. That's a Japanese word for “another world”. This is a very old genre, it's basically a story where a person from our normal world goes to a magical world, we see this in ancient fairy stories, Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and many others. until the mid 20th century it was the default way of writing any fantasy story. It has always been around, the Japanese were just the first to come up with a popular name for it.
Episode 550 - Gaming
Sep 27, 2021
We decided to chat about games. Video game and computer games. They're now a huge part of pop-culture entertainment and they've influenced us in many ways creatively throughout our lives. There are many different kinds of games out there, but one of the really cool things about them is that they're able to deliver a kind of interactive narrative experience that takes things further than Film or comics can easily do. Games were also instrumental in the early days of the first big popular wave of webcomics with gamer comics (PVP, Ctrl Alt Dlt, and Penny Arcade) and sprite comics (8 bit fantasy), being some of the most popular.
Episode 543 - Men writing women writing men writing hilariously badly
Aug 9, 2021
Angela frowned in disappointment. Her boobs seemed to grimace in displeasure, nipples pulsing with abject fury. As she walked the heaviness of their bounce echoed her anger. She sat down at her desk, opened the document she had been working on and began to type. She was halfway through her romance novel, “Pirates of pleasure”. Her boobs swelled and seemed to glow, echoing her happy mood as she worked. She typed…
Episode 539 - Schemers
Jul 11, 2021
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.
Episode 538 - Fashion and Trends in Webcomics
Jul 4, 2021
We chat about the styles and trends in webcomics and what causes them, whether it's people copying stuff they like, working with the limitations of the technology they're using or other reasons.
