Episode 475 - Tropeagedden! overuse of fashionable tropes...
Apr 20, 2020
Certain tropes or stylistic ways of telling a story can get really, really popular and trendy very quickly and it seems like they're everywhere! Suddenly many story are all told with the same sort of stylistic flourishes. The first few times it's done that way it's clever and meaningful but after that people just use the same thing without understanding it properly and consequently usually do a really crappy job!
Topics and Show Notes
My biggest bugbear currently is the stories that are split across multiple timelines: So we show concurrent storylines but one or a few of them are actually set in the past and they're interspersed with a storyline from the present as if all events are happening at the SAME time. The Witcher handled that very badly because it had no context clues about where you were at the “time”. The Medici series is another example. In that they DO give you context clues however because the characters actually look different but it's still annoying because they switch back and fourth far too regularly.
When this style of fast temporal storyline switching was first introduced in novels (in the 80s) it was reasonably clever and interesting because it was new at the time. But it is something that has to be handled carefully in order to work well. It doesn't lend itself to overuse! Unless there's a good reason and you REALLY know what you're doing, either tell your story in a linear fashion or give us extended scenes that take a full chapter/episode to complete
Banes made a post about love triangles. That's another trope that can be terrible if overused but great if used with a bit of tact and skill. Other examples are subverted character types (evil angels/good demons), subverted humanised villains (good Maleficent), bad heroes (rapist knight in shining armour)- these things are ONLY interesting because they're a twist on a standard trope and a variation from the norm, but when they BECOME the norm there's no reason for them to exist: they self invalidate.
What are some you've noticed?
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Space Daddy Adventures - A big dose of early 70s prog concept mixed with 1960s beat poetry. It reminds me of the music of the British prog band Jade Warrior from their eponymous 1971 album. Breathy flute, percussion, and a spare, jungle sound with creepy British vocals… Slip into your tight black polo-neck and black beret, sip on an espresso and flick your fingers in appreciation of this coooool retro piece!
Topics and shownotes
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Links
Banes' newspost about love triangles - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/apr/15/we-three/
DD on Discord! - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Moderated by Boundbun and Tallfroyo - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/BoundBun/
Featured comic:
Cragwater - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/apr/14/featured-comic-cragwater/
Featured music:
Space Daddy Adventures - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Space_Daddy_Adventures/, by Hushicho, rated M.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Episode 470 - What stirred your creative juices?
Mar 15, 2020
For this cast I'd thought we'd go through with our promise of last week and talk about things that have made us have a reaction as a creator. This expands on “The Cartoons that Date us” from last week. So today we're talking the creative media that gave you a reaction: Books, movies, comics, TV shows… Not what specifically inspired the comics you do now, but what drove you to create and why.
Episode 455 - Religion in fiction
Dec 2, 2019
We're talking about how religion is portrayed in fiction and a bit about WHY. This was a surprisingly fascinating topic. I came up with the idea while watching the old 2000s SciFi series Andromeda: one of the alien characters there is sort of a space Buddhist, and I felt like that was a pretty common thing in American TV Scifi, so I wondered about what other kinds of religious tropes exist in contemporary fiction, fantasy and other SciFi worlds.
Episode 451 - Fans who criticise are are good fans
Nov 4, 2019
“Toxic fans” is a bit of a catch cry now and that has seemed to turn into the idea that any fan who is critical of something or doesn't like it isn't a “true fan”, fans must should love everything. I find this a dangerously silly notion and one clearly driven by business interests with only a limited relationship to reality. It's quite similar to the idea that you're “either for us or against us”, the twisted idea of “patriotism” that says you must agree with and love everything your country and your leader does no matter what or you're a traitor.
Episode 448 - King of franchises: Star Wars!
Oct 14, 2019
Continuing on our focus on movie franchises for the month of October, THIS time we focus on the king of them all: STAR WARS! This was a genre defining series, not only for movies but for space opera, “SciFi”, and science fantasy on all media! The original trilogy was quite a milestone. Predictably further instalments weren't quite as well received but it still remains popular even so! Currently it's having a resurgence in popularity once more.
Episode 446 - Interview with Jamais Jochim of Webcomics Reviews and Interviews!
Sep 29, 2019
Today we're getting all META and interviewing the creator of another webcomics podcast! Jamais Jochim is the host of Webcomics Reviews and Interviews! It's a podcast that covers much the same ground as we do, but with more research and less winging it, also more interviews with experts and webcomicers, so he's really worth checking out. Our $5 and up patrons can see video of us chatting with him in the flesh!
Episode 441 - Cooperation = cool
Aug 26, 2019
Cooperation Vs Competition. For decades the mantra was competition is good: it produces progress and makes things better… Well that's actually false. Competition is what you're forced into as a response to limited resources, so you do what you have to to win, which mainly involves losing everything that doesn't serve that specific objective. Competition is massively harmful to progress in general, it ONLY helps you excel in one small area to massive cost. Think of it in terms of an Olympic sprinter: they become the fastest runner in the world, but to what point? Only the artificial structure of a sporting event… they spend years training, exercising, eating right, wasting a huge portion of their lives, creative, and intellectual potential on that one meaningless goal, and IF they achieve it they might get a bit of fame and money and a footnote in history because someone else will inevitably take their spot. More likely though they won't achieve the goal and instead be forgotten.
Episode 434 - Where do your characters exist?
Jul 8, 2019
This time we're chatting about settings and where your characters exist in space… where does all the action happen in your comics and WHY does it happen there? Bane's had the really novel idea of thinking of story settings as action playsets, which are toy settings made based on a TV show or movie where you can play with action figures and act out key moments FROM the TV show or movie: Unlike a dollhouse they only have the key sets where the important things happen.
