Episode 501 - Horrorcast
Oct 19, 2020
We are the Pretty Things That Live in the House! We all dressed up for a Halloween themed cast today! You can see our weird looks in our Patreon video ($5 and up subscribers). Pitface was a yellowfaced corn vampire with amazing teeth (very midwest), Banes was an old, oooooold terrifying baldy vampire, Tantz was a beautiful, big eyed doctor vampire, and I was an 18th century Vamp (Lestat/Varny), with a face messy with the blood of my victims! And I had in rubber fangs held in by chewing gum, just like a REAL vampire, because the denture glue didn't hold in my good fangs… it just filled my mouth with disgusting glue that stuck all over my teeth XD
Topics and Show Notes
We had a loose discussion this week about the amazing tradition that is Halloween, and it being a very cool North American export. They say it has European roots and things, but that's not what Halloween really is, North America turned it into something amazing and that's how we all know it. People think of it as vaguely pagan or maybe demonic, but the truth is that it comes from an extremely Christian culture. It's a sort of transgressive, fun celebration in the vein of Carnival where people use it as an excuse to play on a darker side that they'd normally avoid as well as have fun and get into costumes. Ironically, only a very Christian, puritan culture could produce such a festival.
We also chat about our favourite horror movies, ones we've recently seen, what works in horror and what doesn't! For example, I think that the movie Hereditary is a wonderful unintentional laugh riot for so many reasons, while Pitface has a very different view. We talk about how clowns are related to trickster traditions and can be scary, nasty things in culture well before John Wayne Gacy and later IT. Our converstation wonders but we try and keep it focussed on horror and scary stuff! We even chat about 200AD comics, which have long included many horror elements. Indeed the horror film “Hardware” was plagiarised from a 2000AD comic called SHOK.
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Space Pirates of the Black Quarter - Space techno future! Dinging pulses launch us into a star speckled hyperspace. We’re lulled by the gentle techno rhythm, till a glaring buzz comes along to disturb us, a warning of what’s the come… The lulling rhythm soothes us once more till we’re shocked by a sudden burst of acceleration and a return of the fuzzing buzz!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Quackcast 500 video from last week with a whole lot of DDers! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8dic_cB0mU
Featured comic:
Matriarch - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/oct/13/featured-comic-matriarch/
Featured music:
Space Pirates of the Black Quarter - - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Space_Pirates_of_the_Black_Quarter/, dpat57, 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
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 499 - Life's worth?!
Oct 5, 2020
What is the worth of human life in your stories? This isn't something people often consider, we just tend to have a fairly accurate guess based on our experience of the real world, but sometimes stories get it really wrong and that can harm suspension of disbelief.
Episode 497 - It's just kid's stuff
Sep 21, 2020
Today we're talking about the idea that entertainment aimed at kids can only be enjoyed by kids and the reason that adults often don't like kids things is because adults just don't “get” them. I contend that everyone, of all ages should be able to enjoy General or kid rated media and the true reason we don't is not because it “isn't meant for us”, it's because it's simply badly written - specifically, it's not the content that's annoying, it's the structure.
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!
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 459 - 2019 Year in review!
Dec 30, 2019
It's been a great year! DD has continued to grow bit by bit, we've been stable and a great host for many many webcomics. DD is one of the only truly independent community focused webcomic hosting sites left. Most of the rest are commercial hubs that are not community centered. Part of our commitment to the community on DD is showcasing our best webcomics every week, which we've been doing for 17 years now, and I've personally been doing that for about 13.
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 450 - happy Halloween horror franchises
Oct 28, 2019
Tantz is dressed fabulously as a queen and I'm a skull faced monstrosity… I'm also wearing a costume, hahaha! Which you can see in our Patreon video ;) Queen Tantz Bathory and prince of horror Banes join me to talk about Horror movie franchises, what makes them work and what doesn't- as franchises rather than just a stand alone movie. The problems facing a movie series about horror are different from other genres and focus more on formula than just characters the way they do in most other types of film so it's an interesting discussion.