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.
Topics and Show Notes
In the last few years this genre has exploded in Anime and Manga, with stories based on the idea of a person being physically transported to the world of a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Role playing Game). Early on we had anime like Hack.Slash, which was pretty crap but no one else was really making that sort of story then. Now with the popularity of Sword Art Online (again, not a very good version of this trope), lots of other stories in this vein popped up, so much so that the trope has become a cliché. This means that there are a lot of good things made using it but a LOT of badly made trash as well and that people will get sick of it, as they do with clichés, meaning we will stop seeing anymore Isekai stories for a good long while.
I still love them though!
Pit and Banes like Slasher horror. This genre became such a tired cliché that it almost died out but was revived by the movies “Scream” and “I know what you did last Summer” which helped light the fire for this phoenix to be reborn. Retro is another big thing in horror now that's starting to become a cliché, the popularity of Stranger Things helped fuel that monster. The massive popularity of the Marvel Universe franchise has resulted in a huge over-population of superhero films and they're becoming a cliché people dislike, many still love them though.
What are some clichés that YOU love?
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Amber Mage - Warm waves of amber light synth. Subtle tribal beat flowing under a beautiful orchestration of violins, blending with sharp, bouncy electronica pulses, creating a tasty melange with a sweet spicy cinnamon flavour
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Backwoods - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/oct/05/featured-comic-backwoods/
Featured music:
Amber Mage - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Amber_Mage/ - by Wildcat Arren, rated M.
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/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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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 544 - Horrorrorrrorrrrr
Aug 16, 2021
We have a special guest today, myEx, Miss_Judged. She's onboard with the whole group of Tantz, Banes, Pit and I because she's super duper into horror like Pit and Banes, AND it just happens to have been Friday the 13th last week. Why horror? Well, this is what I want to know too! Why do people like it and what do they like about it? The reason we're talking about it at all is because of the DD horror anthology comic that is all horror themed and has many great contributions from great DD creators here. Please buy a copy to help fund new improvements to DD!
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 535 - the teachcast
Jun 14, 2021
Webcomicers need to learn to draw and write in order to become webcomicers. There are many other skills and also different ways to make webcomics, BUT most of us draw and or write. Here Tantz and I talk about terrible teachers of these skills and better ways to learn :) (Also, Jason from Friday the 13t is a big fat buttface)
Episode 530 - What is SciFi?
May 10, 2021
So what IS SciFi? Well it's a pretty wide umbrella term and contains a lot of different things. In some senses it's just an imaginative fiction story where science replaces magic. SciFi can simply be a sciencey setting where genre stories take place (romance, adventure, nior, horror). It can be a magical fantasy space opera with a futuristic skin (Star Wars), it can be “hard SciFi” where the story is set in the future but the science is completely plausible, it can be written with strong themes that examine philosophical questions and make interesting points about the nature of humanity, and it can be so many more things too. It's a broad church!
Episode 528 - How tall are your characters?
Apr 26, 2021
Character height is not something we think about too much but it's actually a fairly big deal: in terms of what the height means, what it means contextually, how the character fits into their world, how they relate to others around them, and how it's like to draw them! A character can loom, they can shrink down, they can appear bigger than they are due to force of personality or smaller due to being shy and retiring, Largeness can equal power and strength, stupid docility, threat, potential, or it can be used to highlight the strength of a much smaller character that beats them as in many animes.
Episode 527 - Evil superheroes unneeded
Apr 19, 2021
Evil superheroes are a stupid fad, that's my contention. My opinion. They've been around for a long time but now they're so popular it's becoming a bit of a fad and might turn into its own genre. I suppose Marvel and others have saturated the superhero market so to stay relevant other companies are doing “twists” on that traditional genre, hence the evil superheroes.
