Episode 651 - Strong characters of any gender and DD awards stuff

Sep 3, 2023

We're chatting about a couple of things today: the DD 2023 Awards which are in their completion faze now, and “strong” characters of any gender.

Topics and Show Notes

The DD awards are finding up now and presentations will be happening so it's a good time now to be able to see who actually won and to be able to get a look at some really good comics you might not have seen before.

The latter topic was inspired by something Tantz wrote about. There's a trend of people trying really hard to make “strong” female“ characters and in the process botching it because they're focusing on the wrong things. They try to combat a sexist trend of weak female characters in the the process ironically commit a worse sexist mistake… ”Strong“ characters are the same no matter the gender because it's never gender traits that make them weak or strong. If you know what makes a strong character that skill is equally useful for male, female, trans, or genderless characters.

Some people mistakenly think that so called ”male“ traits make a character strong: physical strength, anger, power, leadership, height, muscles, meanness etc not realising that none of these are male traits, they're JUST traits. The masculinity or femininity we assign them is all cultural. By combining a lot of these traits you often just end up making an unlikable dickhead. Character strength has more to do with how well realised the character is, how well they fit into their world, the effect they have on other characters, weather they're ”active“ or ”passive“ in a story.

It's a complex subject and we go much deeper into it during the cast! How do you write ”strong" characters?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Boxdog - A contemplative, reflective, serious piano driven intro leads into a happy, pleasant pop-song, first as drums and a bass take over, then the process completes as lead duties are handed off to an electric guitar and the tune fully opens up!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Some inspiration from Tantz's newspost:
Writing Strong Characters of Any Gender - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/aug/25/writing-strong-characters-of-any-gender/

The 2023 DD Awards - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Drunk_Duck_Awards_2023/

Featured comic:
Oblique -
- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/aug/29/featured-comic-oblique/

Featured music:
Boxdog -
- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Boxdog/ - By Boxdog, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/


VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Special thanks to -
- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Soushiyo/
-For the addition of the new “other gender” part of our sign up forms.

Episode 476 - Tell me about your childhood

Apr 26, 2020

3 likes, 2 comments

How does where you grew up influence your comicing? This idea interested me, so I posted about it on the DD forums and asked other people. I didn't really know about it myself: how did my childhood environment influence my later comicing? The conclusion I came to was that since my childhood experience was so alien to the worlds depicted in the media I enjoyed so much most of my comicing and creation was based on imagination out of necessity: Historical fantasy set in mountainous, cold, hazy Europe, vs my own experience of a new country without much history, with sunny weather, clear skies and a beachy lifestyle in Australia.

Episode 439 - weather flavour enhancer!

Aug 12, 2019

2 likes, 0 comments

Tantz's clever idea was that the weather isn't just a backdrop… it's an important prop in it's own right. Weather can be used to drive a plot: the wind snatches a hat and makes a person chase it, which causes them to meet another character. It can be an antagonist: people fighting a storm for example or running form a tornado. It can signal and enhance emotions: rain for a sad funeral or sun for happy for a happy event. Growing shadows can signal an ominous turn of events, wind billowing out a cloak signals a dramatic character! You can just use it for fancy visual effects if you like, snow and rain are great fun to draw, and stormy skies are the best! We chat about all things weather and give examples of how we've used it ourselves.

Episode 401 - Stan Lee, a stupid comedian, and the new prudes

Nov 19, 2018

3 likes, 4 comments

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.

Episode 260 - D.U.C.K. Radio1

Feb 29, 2016

6 likes, 4 comments

Welcome to D.U.C.K. Radio! Get ready for your DJs: Smooth Ramone, Hard rock Jimmy Storm (BRINING THE THUNDER!!!), Weatherman Rhet Blanket, Conspiracy theorist Smiley Fraudson, and hilarious* Maple and The Syrup (*they're not funny). This is the first part of Radio DUCK, we're bringing you ALL of the fantastic themes Gunwallace has composed for many great webcomics. You got a small, tiny, insignificant taste little taste of it in Quackcast 258, now be prepared to take the FULL blast! 29 of Gunwallace's classic themes in this cast and two more casts to go to get the rest so stay tuned. Gunwallace radio - All great music all the time!

Episode 171 - Let's do the timecast again!

Jun 16, 2014

5 likes, 4 comments

Hello! This is Banes from the future. I've come back to warn you of a grim, grim fate that awaits us all. Please go back in time and contribute to the Quackcast on the subject of time travel. Last time, you didn't contribute and it DESTROYED THE DAMNED WORLD! We can't allow this to happen again. This Dystopia is a true horror. All the toilets operate backwards. A nightmare! We asked people what they thought of the mind-bending story device of time travel, what variations of time travel stories they liked, what variations they disliked, or weather they dislike Time travel altogether (some people do). We also wanted to know their favourite time travel stories (or experiences, if they happened to be a real time traveller), what movies, books, comics, songs, or whatevers about time travel did they like, dislike, and why? We had some good contributions on this fave story theme and it also gave us a chance to chat about some of the great time travel stories in pop-culture that abound!


Forgot Password
©2011 WOWIO, Inc. All Rights Reserved Mastodon