Episode 489 - Continuity
Jul 26, 2020
It's just Banes, Tantz and me today, chatting about the important topic of continuity! How do you maintain it, what continuity errors have you made, what continuity errors have you noticed in media? What's the difference between character continuity, story continuity and chronological continuity? - Something you notice when you watch or read a series in chronological order that was were NOT produced or meant to be viewed that way.
Topics and Show Notes
A good example of that is the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. If you read those in the series order, say all the Witch books, Wizard books, Guard books etc as concurrent series then the “Discworld” stops making any sense because Pratchett's writing and the character of the world changed radically over the time that he was writing it. The Discworld was a massively different place in his later books from the wild, chaotic, sexy sword and sorcery spoof it started out as… in later novels it becomes a far more serious and ordered, well defined place that's basically a fantasy steampunk version of Dickensian 19th century London, with a taste of Northern England, Greece, Italy and Egypt and other places thrown in for flavour. It covers serious topics in a philosophical and humorous way, a little left wing and a little righteous. In earlier stories the world leans more to spoofs of popular fantasy tropes from Fritz Leiber's famous Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books, Robert E Howard's Conan, Anne McCaffery's Pern, JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and so on.
So that if you read them in any order than which they were published the continuity of the world won't make sense.
Similarly if you watch the Star Wars Prequels before the original trilogy you run into the same sorts of issues… Then of course there are the continuity errors you make as a creator. Usually it's because you took too long to make a page and failed to read forward over the new scripted pages and back over what you'd already done. I run into that all the time! What are your worst continuity mistakes?
Special mention of Marvel's Mark Gruenwald who looked after continuity from them in a big way back in the day (Apparently).
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme entitled “How to Half Ass a Theme to How to Half Ass Porn Webcomics”
For: How to Half Ass Porn Webcomics the Tanza Late Way - This one is a slow started but as soon as it takes off it lets its full groovy glory show, dancing to the sounds of a wiry electric guitar dressed in a batik kaftan and brown corduroy fares, incense smoke swirling around, noxious and enveloping like the sounds of this cool little tune .
Topics and shownotes
Links
Banes Newspost on Continuity - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/jul/22/continuity/
Featured comic:
Goddard and Grey - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/jul/21/featured-comic-goddard-and-grey/
Featured music:
How to Half Ass Porn Webcomics the Tanza Late Way - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/How_to_Half_Ass_Porn_Webcomics_the_Tanza_Late_Way/, 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/
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Episode 480 - In Style!
May 25, 2020
Styles are a very individual thing. Emma Clare did a great newspost on them last week featuring a pic of Sailor Moon that she drew in her own style. The cover image here features my own version. Pit, Tantz, Banes and I had a good long chat about all the different aspects of style and how you develop them.
Episode 479 - Big ideas in fiction
May 18, 2020
My original idea for this Quackcast was: “Genre fiction is the best place to explore ideas, straight fiction doesn't do it as well” What I meant was that diverting from straight reality in fiction makes it easier to conceptualise, simplify and explain complicated ideas to a general audience for a whole number of reasons. There was some disagreement between Tantz and I because I expressed myself poorly so she'd thought that I was saying it was much easier to write SciFi and fantasy (Genre fiction), and it was easier to write about big ideas, while straight fiction wasn't good for that- Which is fair enough! My initial statement is so badly worded that's a valid interpretation! Fortunately Banes and Pit were on hand to smooth things out and explain things properly. Pit mediated between us and Banes conceptualised my concept FAR, far better than I did! Unfortunately you don't get much of that disagreement on the Quackcast. You DO get a bit of it on the PATREON only video however ^_^
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 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 422 - Positive promotion and controversial characters
Apr 15, 2019
The entire gang comes together today for two topics that were taken from recent newsposts: Emma Clare's Positive self promotion, and Tantz Aerine's Handling Controversial Characters. First up we chat about why it's always a great idea to sell yourself positively, NOT be arrogant or douchey, but rather by talking enthusiastically about what you genuinely love about your work and using that REAL and SINCERE enthusiasm to infect others with your love of what you do. Emma was mainly talking about the way you introduce your comics to friends and family but it definitely applies more broadly to self promotion in general: Don't try and get sympathy through self depreciation (oh, it's not very good…), and don't be an arrogant ass (My stuff is AWESOME!), rather you should just be honest about what you love about it (This story was so FUN to write!).
Episode 408 - The imitation game
Jan 6, 2019
Happy new year! This is the first Quackcast recorded in 2019! Pitface is back too, can you believe it? In this Quackcast we chat about Imitation, based on Amelius's newspost from last Sunday. How do you know if someone has copied your work, just been influenced by it or influenced from the same sources as you, or has actually stolen your work wholesale? And what do you DO about it? Is imitation or someone doing the same thing as your “original” idea, always a bad thing?
Episode 401 - Stan Lee, a stupid comedian, and the new prudes
Nov 19, 2018
This is Quackcast 401! Error, error! Pitface and Tantz were absent so Banes and myself were left to go quietly off the rails and expostulate all sorts of radical, half formed, badly articulated thoughts. This is an interesting one! We cover the death of the great Stan Lee, titan of the comics and superhero world. Then we sidestream into talking about comedians trying to be political commentators (re: Bill Maher)… I must apologise for my Ad Hominems. And lastly our focus is on a “new puritanism” in some aspects of pop-culture. It all ties together, if a little awkwardly.