Episode 636 - The Cusscast
May 22, 2023
We're talking about swearing! Swearing in comics, types of swearing, the use of swearing, causing offense, taking offense, swearing used as a term of endearment, and some history behind various types of swearing. We barely even scratch the surface! We don't swear in the Quackcast if we can help it so we're talking around and about the language without using it, though we DO swear in our Patreon vid, which is free to all patrons, even the $1 level.
Topics and Show Notes
Swearing can indicate a lack of maturity, it can indicate social class, it can express things like anger, fear, triumph, pain, surprise, joy, excitement, and even awe. We use it to cause a fight, to indicate how much we love a friend (very much in Australia), it's extreme language basically, it's a very blunt, simple tool in the language toolbox. If you REALLY want to cut a person deep and make them feel small then swearing is a pretty soft and floppy tool, unless you're 12 or an idiot you don't use it for that purpose.
There are so many different kinds of swearwords in all different languages. We have the common ones in English based on various taboos involving bodily excretions, sex, genitalia, and masturbation, that are quite popular all over the world due to the dominance of the language. There are more culturally specific ones about race, ethnicity, class, religion, sexuality, and sexual practices that are more individual. Not to mention the cultural based swears or pejoratives that go in and out of fashion, like “boomer” or ‘incell“ that carry a lot of rhetorical power.
Swear words go in and out of fashion- what could have been viscous in the past can be seen as almost a quaint joke today. Or what was once a harmless mundane term in the past can be seen as vile today; don’t say Poh Bear in China because their leader finds it a mortally offensive insult! Or the weird history of the terms ”arse“ and ”ass“ and how in the early 20th century ”ass“ completely switched its meaning with ”arse“. In American English ”ass“ was used as a safe, non-swearing punny, sneaky reference to ”arse“ because they're homonyms: one calling someone a donkey and the other a bottom, but for some weird reason the safe alternative just appropriated the entire meaning it was sneakily alluding to… Which was bad for language in general because it reduced the ways you can use the term as well causing a lot of modern people to misunderstand the use of ”ass" in historical literature.
How do you use swearing in your comic or reality? Do you have a favourite term or phrase that's your go-to? Do you avoid swearing and have a whole armoury of replacement words?
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Mercury Virus - Light, retro keyboards, sounding very Moogy… jazzy and quiet. They’re offset by heavier notes from an electric bass guitar, loosely thrumbing and strumming along, promising danger, action and violence, while the keys are just doing business as usual.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Captain Gold and the Robotrons - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/may/16/featured-comic-captain-gold-and-the-robotrons/
Featured music:
Mercury Virus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Mercury_Virus/ - by Mercuryviruscomic, rated E.
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
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
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Episode 623 - Arrogance vs humility
Feb 20, 2023
Arrogance is a fun subject. Related to cockiness, hubris, assertiveness, self confidence and pride. It's a fantastic trait for a villain and it's really fun to write. Heroes are often arrogant too when they need to learn a lesson in order to become a better person, it's super common in stories. We're all a bit arrogant ourselves about our skills, our knowledge, where we come from, what we look like etc. It's a universal trait! It often strikes when we think we know better or know it all on a subject: the human tendency to over-reach and to speak for others.
Episode 581 - David's always right
May 2, 2022
David's always right - Introducing Hpkomic! Hpkomic has been with DD since the earliest days, he's a comic artist, writer, English teacher, and podcaster. He even participated in the second comicbook challenge that Platinum held way back in the day when they controlled DD, and came second! He was part of many community events, like the Drunk Duck Civil War (the DD answer to the comic book Marvel Civil War) and DD VS Comic Genesis, which was the DC Vs Marvel of Webcomics! In fact he has the oldest post on this version of the DD forums! After the site was fully deleted at the end of 2005, he was the first person back who commented with an offer of help to get things back online again. Bonus points if you can find it.
Episode 556 - That's What She Said!
Nov 8, 2021
The other day Tantz Aerine wrote a newspost about an article critical of Squid Game. The crux of things was that the Squid Game creator had said their message was anti-capitalist, while this critic was saying that the author's message with the Squid Game was an anti communist critique and not a very good one at that. The issue here is that isn't how you do criticism. At all. You can give an interesting reading of something and tell us why YOU think it's anti-Communist, or tell us how it looks through the lens of post-colonialism or new wave feminism etc, but you can't say that is what the author is saying or what the work means, especially if the author explicitly says WHAT they are saying. This may seem like a small distinction but it's actually very, very important. Bad criticism often tells us what the creator is saying. Don't do that. Don't be that person.
Episode 548 - Foreign Influence
Sep 8, 2021
Translating cultural concepts so they can be understood in a different country can be really tricky, most people never bother. Often the audience is just left to guess what's behind certain concepts and idioms. As an Australian, growing up as a little kid we were bombarded by media from everywhere, but mainly Britain, the USA, Canada and New Zealand. There was so much about American media that was utterly alien to us and we were just left to puzzle it out, especially American high school concepts: The level of seriousness with which they regard team sports in schools, cheerleaders, jocks, jockstraps, school kids driving cars, homecoming, pep rallies, summer camp, proms, tick or treating, thanksgiving… We just had to make sense of those things ourselves. Some we could work out from context but others I never really understood and never really will.
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 409 - Meaning, Intention, and symbolism
Jan 14, 2019
The topic we discussed in this Quackcast was looking for symbolism, meaning and intention in comics: The English literature approach! Deeper meanings and all that. It's fun to do actually and sometimes you really can hit upon the intentions of the creator, uncover NEW meanings, or just do it to entertain yourself. We used our own comics for an example and talked about things beyond the superficial for a change. For example: Banes' comic Typical Strange is a sitcom set in a video rental store, staffed by a group of characters that make up the cast. Why is it set in a place that is clearly decades out of date and relevance? A video rental place is an anachronism in this time. Is it saying that the characters themselves are stuck in time? It's a sitcom comic so situations often reset or rewind back to the status Quo, so that interpretation would seem to fit… Of course that wasn't Banes' deliberate intention but it's fun to think about that way.
Episode 360 - How did you start in webcomics?
Feb 4, 2018
In this Quackcast I thought we'd chat about Emma Clare's great and thoughtful topic of webcomic origin stories: Basically, what was happening to make you start your webcomic on DD, all that stuff in your life back when you first began posting… Emma's newsposts are a great read and they made us all think back to how we began. Pit, Tantz and I have a long talk about our comicing origins. What were YOU doing when you started webcomics? What made you begin? This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to NanoCritters. It's a minimalist white expanse, dotted with mysterious little marks of sound. What do they mean, what do they represent, is it code? Read NanoCritters to find out! Also included in the Quackcast are extracts from a lovely Starwars themed rap that Tantz's Greek students performed in English.
