Episode 642 - Gatekeeping
Jul 3, 2023
Gatekeeping can be a pretty dickish practice… but not in every case. Generally we see it as a social pop culture trend where older established fans of something will try and put down new people and discourage them from joining a fandom. This can stifle a fan community and really kill discourse, not to mention shutting out new members and new perspectives which is actually what a fan community needs in order to flourish and grow.
Topics and Show Notes
Where gatekeeping isn't a bad thing are fields where people need to submit to standards to join. ie, becoming a doctor, or plumber or electrician for example. Or where there's a limited scope: i.e. you shouldn't join a discussion based on Homer's Odyssey unless you've at least read it. Gatekeeping is more justifiable in any field that requires some reasonably objective expertise in a subject… but then lines do begin to blur and people often have a tendency to be arseholes about things.
Gatekeeping is a natural tendency that we're pretty much all guilty of perpetrating from time to time. The more you get to know about a subject or get into a fandom the more you'll be drawn to gatekeep it… Or you'll find you know so much you don't really care anymore and then you become to opposite of a gatekeeper. :)
What are you a gatekeeper about? At the end of this Quackcast we indulge in gatekeeping over Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Sell Outs - In the words of Gunwallace: Here's my somewhat lame attempt to do a ‘ska’ theme with ukulele, drums, keys, bass, and horns, as per the characters in the comic. Probably a bit tame compared with the comic, but it sort of works. - I like his description best.This tune has a light, after-hours party feel to it. Wearing your hawaii shirt and sipping margaritas on the deck in the evening.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Inspired by Tantz's Gatekeeping art newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jun/23/gatekeeping-art/
Featured comic:
Tales of Omnizari - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jun/27/featured-comic-tales-of-omnizari/
Featured music:
Sell Outs - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Sell_Outs/ - by Terralopod, rated T.
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 627 - Character consistency and speech bubbles!
Mar 20, 2023
Today its another technical comics making focused cast, suggested by Tantz Aerine! We cover our notions about how to maintain character consistency and consistency in general, plus a bit on speech bubbles and the text in them. I was SOOPER tired towards the end though so I wasn't all there mentally but the guys carried it through admirably.
Episode 610 - Beauty!
Nov 21, 2022
“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 595 - Oversold to the Moon!
Aug 8, 2022
How do you describe your work to sell it to people? Writing blurbs is a real skill! You generally have to avoid doing these four things: Underselling, Overselling, Selling the wrong story, or Revealing too much. It's quite a tricky balance to master. I've been writing feature blurbs for comics here on DD for many years now (about 16), so I've developed a technique but even I haven't mastered it!
Episode 571 - Myths of fiction
Feb 21, 2022
There are so many really silly cliché myths from fiction that we all just tend to accept. They're objectively stupid but they get repeated so often that we don't bat an eye when we see them and we can even start to believe them in reality. I thought it'd be fun to dig into them in a Quackcast. I made a thread in the forum for people to contribute to. Unfortunately we didn't get to many in the Quackcast but there's always time to do another!
Episode 538 - Fashion and Trends in Webcomics
Jul 4, 2021
We chat about the styles and trends in webcomics and what causes them, whether it's people copying stuff they like, working with the limitations of the technology they're using or other reasons.
Episode 537 - Historicity
Jun 28, 2021
We have a chat about historicity in this Quackcast. What IS historicity? It's historical authenticity basically but a nicer way of saying it! It's pretty important for a lot of reasons to make the best effort you can with historical authenticity- it increases immersion of the audience, gives you a better understanding of the story and the world you're looking at (because things will make sense), and leads you to better understanding of your own history and where we came from. BUT, that doesn't mean you always have to be strict. As long as you as a creator properly understand historical context then you've got a lot more leeway to play without creating something stupid. Playing fast and loose with history is ok as long as you know what you're doing, not just being a moron and faking it (hey, many of us are guilty of that). Historical fantasy, myth, classics, fiction, biography etc are all different classes of story where it's more or less forgiveable to mess around.
Episode 475 - Tropeagedden! overuse of fashionable tropes...
Apr 20, 2020
Certain tropes or stylistic ways of telling a story can get really, really popular and trendy very quickly and it seems like they're everywhere! Suddenly many story are all told with the same sort of stylistic flourishes. The first few times it's done that way it's clever and meaningful but after that people just use the same thing without understanding it properly and consequently usually do a really crappy job!
