Episode 722 - Main characters with main character syndrome
Jan 12, 2025
Main characters with main character syndrome? What is main character syndrome? Well the way we're dealing with it here it's normally a snide criticism you level and someone who seems to think the world revolves around them, like social media “influencers”, selfish self centred people, that sort of thing. Popular figures like Elon Musk and Donald Trump are great examples: they imagine the world should bend to their whim, and normal rules don't apply, like a main character in a fictional story.
Topics and Show Notes
The funny thing is that not many main characters think or act like that. Some do but they're the exceptions. Generally it's comic-relief side characters, villains, or antagonists who have main character syndrome. It's especially true for villains because behaving that way is easily seen as a negative and being selfish like that harms other characters in their world, being a great example of “evil”. Other characters typically notable for it include Queen bees in a highschool setting, also dominant “jocks”, and the love interests in harem anime- each of them think they're the main character, while the actual main character is a characterless blob.
Main character syndrome isn't always a negative thing though! It can be fun or funny, or it can make you more invested in the world. Exceptions where main characters have MCS are the protagonists of noir detective stories. Every main character in Seinfeld had MCS, not initially but that's how the show developed. Cher in Clueless starts off that way but graduates out of it. In superhero comics MCS is definitely something you often see, I think Batman can have it depending on the writer, Deadpool is a good candidate… A fave example of mine is TankGirl, she has it 100% and it works in her favour, she moulds her world to her will.
Do you have a fave example of a fictional character with Main Character Syndrome?
Gunwallace was busy this week so we have a reissue of Gamma Blue Smoldering of Creel - Heavy rocking fire. This is a hammer forging red hot steel on an anvil, rhythmically pounding it into shape, slamming into it with thunderous blows, drawing out the metal into a brutal sword of pure rock!
from Quackcast 680, 26th of March 2024
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Imparting Quietus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/jan/07/featured-comic-imparting-quietus/
Featured music:
Gamma Blue Smoldering of Creel - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Gamma_Blue_Smoldering_of_Creel/ - by Odebear, rated E
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
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 720 - Happy New Year!
Dec 30, 2024
It's not the new year yet but this is the final Quackcast of 2024 and it's coming out on New Year's Eve! In this Quackcast we do a bit of a year in review. A bit happened this year… DD reached its 22nd year online being one of the oldest sites on the internet and definitely one of the very oldest free comic hosts next to Keenspace which doesn't really exist now. We released another DD anthology comic collection, A Flock of Dreams (linked bellow), in which your Quackcast hosts collaborated on a comic together! We were really proud of that, Key of Dreams, our story was a real work of love, and you can read that in the anthology.
Episode 718 - Dumbarses
Dec 15, 2024
This Quackcast was inspired by world renowned idiot Robert F Kennedy Jnr. We decided to talk about writing dumb characters. I keep calling him John F Kennedy Jnr because I am also an idiot. Some context: he wants to remove approval for the life saving Polio vaccine and allow dangerous unpasteurised milk to be widely sold, among other things. He's a classic idiot. This put us in mind of fictional idiots.
Episode 716 - Identify with characters?
Dec 2, 2024
Is it important to Identify with characters? This question occurred to me as I was watching a rather banal sitcom, Rules of Engagement. I love two of the stars, David Spade and Patrick Warburton, but it's not really that engaging a show, the humour is anodyne and a lot of it is based around traditional gender roles and expectations, but I forced myself to watch it anyway just to see more of the aforementioned stars. The only way I was able to get into it was because I somewhat identified with David Spade's character- being a small blonde guy with long hair and a bit of a perv, haha!
Episode 714 - Future Weapons
Nov 18, 2024
Last week we had an overview of weapons throughout history and how it's a constant game of balance and oneupmanship. Now we're looking at future weapons and Scifi stuff! There's a lot of potential and a lot of interesting ideas you can use in comics and stories. We talk about a few of these and some of our faves, as well as our own inventions.
Episode 712 - Guncast
Nov 4, 2024
This week we're talking the development of weapons, tactics and armour over the millennia. This is a fun little overview of everything from ancient stone weapons, to bronze, to iron, steel, guns, tanks, and jet-fighters and all the interesting stuff in between. Comic stories often involve literal conflict whether set in the past, the present, future, or fantasy and Scifi, so overviews are always good.
Episode 710 - Ducks in in the wind
Oct 21, 2024
The fleeting greatness ducks of in the wind! This is a weird one based on a notion I had: Life and experience isn't typically based on long moments, rather it's all based on very short, lightning quick highlights: a song that lasts 3 minutes is massively striking and important and its impact can reverberate down through the decades, despite only lasting such a short amount of time. Things like comics can take days, weeks or years to make and yet each page is consumed in no more than seconds! But even so, it can have a huge effect.
Episode 708 - Cyberpunk
Oct 7, 2024
Cyberpunk is a cool genre we have never covered exclusively on a Quackcast before. But what IS cyberpunk? It's a subset of SciFi, it's usually near future, involves body modifications, grittiness, street level computer use, techno body modification, and hacking. At least that's the way it started. Formative influences on the cyberpunk genre were the first Tron movie, Bladerunner, and Escape from New York. Tron showed us what cyberspace was, while Bladerunner and Escape from New York gave us gritty near future dystopias with cool tech, modified humans, and most importantly the punk aesthetic which was the gritty street youth fashion of the late 70s and early 80s.
