Episode 473 - Genre vs Setting
Apr 5, 2020
In this Quackcast we talk about the differences between genre and setting and what genre really is. For instance: Fantasy and SciFi aren't genres, they're settings… Mostly. It's complicated but they both pretty much USED to be genres, now they're mainly just settings for genre stories to take place in. What does that mean? Well, Fantasy wasn't even considered a genre back in the day, not really till after the success of Tolkien. Later on a lot of writers began using that same style and consumers really wanted it, so it became a “genre”. It was only later on when it graduated out of that to become a setting that has genre stories set within it.
Topics and Show Notes
Scifi was much the same. We backdate the “genre” to Mary Shelly, Jules Verne, HG Wells etc, but that's actually a little silly. SciFi was invented back in the 1920s by publisher Hugo Gernsback as a niche marketing term for his pulp magazines. He bundled together a whole bunch of futuristic stories and works of speculative fiction to sell under that name and created a market for it. That created the genre that people started to write within and to. Now however SciFi is really just a setting that has genre stories within it: detective fiction, nior, action, romance, Western, apocalypse, etc.
This happens when the genre becomes so diverse and ubiquitous that the commonality between stories within it becomes less important than the differences- i.e. the fact that a story is a romance is more significant than the fact it's set in the future, we really don't care too much about the future setting. While in the past it's that future setting which would have been the main selling point.
Think of it in terms of anime, if you have a good familiarity with it. Years ago people thought of anime as a monolithic “genre”, with all the cartoons roughly sharing a lot of themes and styles. This was mainly because only a small amount of it got exported to the west. Now however a massive amount is available and it's very easy to see how different it is. Now “Anime” really only indicates where the cartoon came from, not what kind of product you're going to get.
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Just wanna do porn webcomics - A dark room, the air is warm and close. Sweat, passion, heat… the only sound is heavy breathing… as the webcomicer furiously draws the latest issue of their racy webcomic! A lot of moans, vocal distortion and sexy synth music in this one.
Topics and shownotes
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Links
Banes Newspost, webcomics and genre - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/mar/31/webcomics-and-genre/
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Featured comic:
O Sarilho - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/mar/31/featured-comic-o-sarilho/
Featured music:
Just wanna do porn webcomics - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com /Just_Wanna_Do_Porn_Webcomics/, by Arspitzer, rated A.
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/
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 462 - Jessica Schab, Studio animation, Guru, sceptic, leader
Jan 20, 2020
Today we have a special guest! Jessica Schab. Jessica works for Mainframe entertainment in Canada, one of THE premier digital animation companies! Before things like Pixar they were THE CGI animation people! Behind the Video for Dire Straights' Money for Nothing video back in the 80s, Transformers Beastwars, Octonaughts, Babrie, and my personal fave: Reboot!
Episode 461 - Top Comic making 5 tips!
Jan 13, 2020
Today Banes and I chat about our top tips for doing a great comic page: What is most important? I mainly focus on art and Banes is talking about page design and writing tips. Bellow are our top 5s for ways to make better comics! We expand on these and explain them in the Quackcast.
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 452 - Storytelling styles change!
Nov 11, 2019
Storytelling styles change over time for various reasons: fashion, audience expectations, competition for audience attention due to increased choice and availability of media, technological limitations and abilities, and culture. We chat about the reasons for the changes and how styles have changed.
Episode 437 - Old Warhorse
Jul 29, 2019
Today we cover the interesting trope of the “old warrior”. This was based upon a newspost Banes came up with last week. He was thinking of Captain Picard in the latest Star Trek series and he also brought up Luke Skywalker from the latest Star Wars movie. The “Old Warrior” makes a really cool protagonist, in this Quackcast we try and discover why that is…
Episode 427 - Betrayal
May 20, 2019
Betrayal is an interesting thing to use in fiction. You can have betrayal of your nation, your organisation, friends, lovers, religion, beliefs, self. In stories it can be used to add a nasty twist or completely change the flow of events and alter the balance of power in a dramatic way! It can be devastating in relationships. The story of Judas betraying Christ for 30 pieces of silver is one of the most famous betrayal stories and became so iconic that the phrase “30 pieces of silver” or just the word “Judas” became synonymous with the act. Of course the inspiration for the best treachery and betrayal comes from real life and the names of the betrayers often echo down through history. IFrom Rome we have Brutus, in the USA the name “Benedict Arnold” has a similar meaning to “Judas”, the 20th century gave us the term “quisling” after the Norwegian political leader Vidkun Quisling who sold his country out to the Nazis.
