Episode 612 - Comfort food for the brain
Dec 5, 2022
There are times when you need to give your brain a bit of a break, that's when comfort shows come in handy! Movies and TV shows you can watch again and again- you can appreciate them every time and they don't get old. The tension never gets too much for you because you already know what's going to happen. You can just relax and enjoy the familiar story, revelling in the company of characters you know and visiting their world once more. They're great for creating to as well because you don't have to worry about missing anything important.
Topics and Show Notes
I have quite a lot on my list. Often it's older stuff but there are newer things as well. Scott Pilgrim Vs the World, Romney and Michelle's High School Reunion, The Life Aquatic with Steve Siszou, Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, Conan the Barbarian, The Office (US version), Parks and Rec, the Richard Sharpe series, The New Girl, The Duelists, and much more. For Banes it was things like Friday the 13th part 2, Back to the Future 2, Terminator 2 and more.
This is a great season for comfort shows, especially the Christmas themed ones. What are your fave comfort shows and why?
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to This theme is unsettling, creepy, on an angle… off-putting. It's a journey into a strange dimension. The lights are dim and won't turn to full brightness, it's grey and shadows abound, what are the strange sparkles in the darkness? A heavily splintered dark wooden door slams shut. This is a perfect late 80s horror film sountrack! A mix of electronic and orchestral sounds are layered to make this scary, demonic piece.
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
The Return of Jake Sunrise - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/nov/30/featured-comic-the-return-of-jake-sunrise/
Featured music:
House of Other Worlds - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/House_of_Other_Worlds/ - by Hartchamber, rated M.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
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Episode 610 - Beauty!
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“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, so the saying goes but it's absolutely true. There is a layered subjectivity to it based on personal preference, the cultural standards of your community, the ethnic traits of you and your peers, prevailing global fashions in appearance, the dominant archetypes in the media and so on. All these things combine to form our personal subjective ideas of beauty. You can see this yourself if you look at paintings, statues, masks, frescoes and other artifacts that have been produced by all the diverse cultures on earth over thousands of years: there IS no standard, eternal, objective of beauty.
Episode 609 - The Cringe
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Episode 604 - Stylised reality
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Episode 598 - 2D or not 2D!
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Episode 597 - Revelations!
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Today we're talking about a technique in storytelling that we're calling the “revelation”. Inspired by Banes doing an article on the weird trope in movies of having a character discover newspaper stories about the villain that suddenly reveal the true stakes of the story and kick things into high gear. There are other types of revelation in stories though and they're used in different ways.
Episode 596 - Leadership!
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Leaders are not born, they're created… literally in the case of fiction, created by creators of comics, books, movies, and other media! For this Quackcast I was inspired by two things: a video on Leader Characters by the satirical YouTube channel Terrible Writing Advice, and the Disney movie Lightyear, in which the lone wolf classical hero figure learns how to lead.
Episode 594 - Grow up! Or don't...
Jul 31, 2022
The Manchild can be a fun character or they can be pathetic. They're a staple of comedies because they're an adult that gets to act immature and childish, without the restraint and responsibilities imposed by adulthood. This can make a great contrast; “The adult man acting like an immature child”, John C Riley and Will Farrel have always done that extremely well, as did Chris Farley back in the 90s. It can be be portrayed as pathetic and sad when the person can't seem to be able grow up or take on any responsibilities. They're often characterised by people with “childish” interests, like the cast of the Big Bang Theory, or with a childlike love of something like sports like Kevin in Kevin can F Himself.
