Listen on Stitcher ​​- https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/drunkduck-quackcast
Or TuneinRadio - https://tunein.com/podcasts/Books–Literature/Drunkduck-Quackcast-p1150194/

huh hu hu hohohohohohohohohohohoh Merry Christmas!

Merry Xmas from everyone here at DD, but most especially Tantz, Banes and me, Ozoneocean! Pitzy is away for a while on family business, it's the time of year and family comes first. Tantz is at home with her pretty Christmas tree in cold Athens, Banes is snug and warm in his place in snowy Canada, and I'm sweating my bum off in Perth Western Australia as the temperature gets close to 44C (110.66F), but I dressed up like an exotic santa anyway hahaha! Which I tried to draw but lost confidence in my skills because it's SOOOO bloody hot and I can't concentrate so I posted screenshotted pics from our Patreon video instead. I AM MELTING!!!!!!
We have no particular topic this time, just a Christmas chat. It's mostly Tantz and I because Banes had to rush off to work, dedicated fellow he is.
How did you spend Christmas?
Was it hot there too? Cold? Did you actually get a white Christmas?
I would LOVE a winter Christmas.

This week Gunwallace gave us no theme, instead he suggested replaying The Rose Killer, a theme to a comic by Nicotine. This theme first apreared in Quackcast 199. It's noir, street, jazz, smokey bar music, VERY atmospheric.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Giovani Vigilanti - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/dec/21/featured-comic-giovani-vigilanti/

Featured music:
The Rose Killer - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Rose_Killer/ - by Nicotine, rated M.

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/

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

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Merry Christmas and whatever you celebrate :)
Interesting topic from Banes! It's his idea that sometimes the literal elements of a story (the plot etc.) are simply too weak to properly support the theme. He gives the example of The Truman show, where the idea is that a person is living a fake life under constant surveillance as the star of one of the most popular real life TV shows ever and he doesn't know anything about it… The themes are the power of the media, commercialism, the American dream, obsession with reality TV etc. Banes felt that although these themes were very strong the practical setup of the world and story weren't quite strong enough to support it.
I remember feeling that way as well when I originally saw it. The universal obsession with the show and the practical challenges of setting up and maintaining that fraud for so long with all those people were all nonsensical. Good theme but they didn't think hard enough about the setting. This is an aspect we don't always think about!

That's distinct from stories with a more symbolic setting like The 7th Seal, or Mullholland Drive because we know they are are not meant to be literal, there are more than enough cues! But when the literal aspects of the story are key to conveying the theme then they need to work. It's a very simple but powerful idea and helps you realise whey a lot of stories with big themes just don't quite gel or sit right: it's not you, it's them.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to c h h t - Seriousness, sadness, blue strobes, faded scenes, isolation, concrete and plain facades. The lights are dim as twilight approaches. Night closes in and streetlights bloom with golden halos. Two strangers meet in the a circle of light glittering on the wet road.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Banes' newspost on themes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/dec/15/above-and-below-the-surface/

Featured comic:
Tiger Tea - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/dec/14/featured-comic-tiger-tea/

Featured music:
c h h t - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/c_h_h_t/ - by Princefishie Lover, rated T.

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/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

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

This interesting Quackcast topic was influenced by a DDer who has been subsumed by anti-CoVid conspiracy. This inspired me to delve into the reasons for the massive growth in these types of conspiracy and how the current state of the internet contributes to it. I had some theories, but I thought I should do some reading on the subject to see what the real reasons are rather than using guesses to fill the gaps like conspiracy thinkers tend to do. I was quite shocked by what I found.

There are really three main parts to the problem: 1. Gate-keeping, personalisation and curation of our online communication and viewing by big tech companies. 2. This curation tends to have the effect of polarising us and making our views more extreme than they are 3. Groups use these factors to manipulate people through the use of bots (in the form of fake users), as well as paid users with several accounts.

Gate keeping:
The majority of our online interaction is through only a few large companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, TikTok, Twitter, Microsoft, Twitter, Amazon etc), they closely track every aspect of our online behavior and use it along with AI to customise and curate our online experience: the Facebook and Twitter feeds, suggested videos in YouTube, “personalised” Google search and so on, the same for the “friends” it suggests to us. None of that is nefarious or evil, it's just impersonal AI skewing what we see to keep us online longer and sell more ads. But this is also why their online services are free and often quite useful. It's actually quite crude and clunky, their AIs are terrible and obvious most of the time, suggested videos, news results, friends, product ads, and search results are just as often terrible as they can be useful.

Polarisation:
The friends, news stories, links, posts in Twitter and Facebook, videos on YouTube and TikTok that appear in our feeds are generally biased to what will get the most interaction and engagement from us; something that makes us angry like politics, or happy like celeb news for example. Researchers investigated this by creating neutral bots on Twitter. Beginning with “liking” the first random things suggested to them by Twitter, they then randomly “liked” subsequent things Twitter suggested to them. Each time Twitter would base what it suggested next on what had been liked, which meant that the neutral bots gradually had more and more extreme versions of whatever was initially randomly liked. If the initial thing had a slightly left leaning bent, in the end the suggestions were extreme and the same for right-wing and so on. In this way social media has a default tendency to radicalise us. This is part of the reason online debate is so polarised.

Manipulation:
The Problem is that it's very easy to manipulate this system and us as a consequence. It's very cheap to set up millions of bots as fake people and give them user accounts. I'm sure you've occasionally seen suspicious accounts that have tried to add you as a friend, people with names and preferences that don't fit their profile photos, these are generally poor people in West Africa and Pakistan who're paid to set up multiple profiles, basically the human version of bots, in an effort to circumvent anti-bot security measures.
The purpose of these fake accounts is manifold. They can be used to skew the kinds of news people see, spread fake rumours, sell products and scams, increase the profiles of certain people etc. This is done by having them all share the same phrases, hash tags, and links, and liking things, that in turn tricks the AIs that curate and personalise your feeds and searches into suggesting what the bots have promoted.

Researches have documented this activity from Russian and Chinese state controlled bot farms, it's also been the tactic of Islamic State (ISIL) to attract and radicalise people, spammers, scammers like Natural News and Mercola who sell fake health products and diet scams, multi level marketers, hackers, angry conspiracy theorists with agendas like the antivaxer crowd, and even just people out to make money from advertising with fake clickbait news stories about celebrities- You've all seen and clicked on those terrible ads at the bottom of news stories run by Zergnet, Taboola, and Outbrain. These always lead to low quality, often fake stories with lists that you click through. They're harmless but time wasting.

If you lacked scruples you could also use those tactics to increase the profile of your webcomic! In fact we can see it in the small scale in the way webcomic hosts like Taps and Webtoons manipulate their audiences: only recommending certain types of comic to them, promoting only those comics on their main page and elsewhere etc, this in turn forces creators to produce comics which look and feel the same way because it seems the only alternative available.

Online VS the real world
It's very important to remember that the online world Vs real world is a false dichotomy. There is ONLY the real-world. The internet is only a form of communication, but it is the dominant and most important form of communication which is why this stuff is so very important and dangerous. It has real world consequences, as seen with CoVid-19 conspiracies, Pizzagate and the invasion of the Capitol building, this idiocy results in mass deaths. Sites like Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok, and Facebook have been great sources of citizen journalism and alternative news, but unfortunately they're now very simple to manipulate and control. Where once they were a great alternative to polarising mainstream media, now that usefulness has been compromised.

Personally I'm all for neutrality and fact checking which is why I financially support the Web Archive, Skeptoid Media, Wikipedia, Snopes, and The Skeptics Guide to the Universe (I bought their book). None of these sites get it right all the time, but they actively try to and they provide valuable resources for the rest of us to try and help keep the world honest and agenda free.


This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to The Ham - a quiet country road… golden sun rays barely caress the shadowed trees through the cold morning mist. An old truck bounces and jounces along on stiff suspension, past brushing branches, roaring through the stillness. Beautifully evocative notes draw us in, then the tune excites with plucked banjo and burning, distorted electric guitar.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Sources:
In Defense of Truth - https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usdoepub/377/
Social Bots and Social Media Manipulation in 2020: The Year in Review - https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.08436
Fake Online News Spreads Through Social Echo Chambers - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fake-online-news-spreads-through-social-echo-chambers/
Artificial Intelligence and Echo Chambers - https://www.counterterrorismgroup.com/post/artificial-intelligence-and-echo-chambers
Neutral bots probe political bias on social media - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25738-6
Skeptoid Media - https://skeptoid.com

Featured comic:
Pep Squad - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/dec/07/featured-comic-pep-squad/

Featured music:
The Ham - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/the_ham/ - by Hansrickheit, rated M.

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/

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

We all know that fiction and reality are separate things, but fiction mirrors reality and we suspend disbelief to ignore the parts that are unrealistic so that we often treat fiction the same way AS reality. But there are many tropes and aspects of fiction that ONLY work in fiction and can't work in reality. I was inspired to examine this idea because of our Fetish-cast with Fallopian Crusader and his idea that certain fetishes can only exist in comics.

An obvious example of this is superheroes and their costumes. Of course there are many stories that try and make more “realistic” versions of superheroes (Kickass etc), but that's beside the point. The vast majority of superhero stories create their OWN reality that we just accept- amazing superpowers, magic, horrific acts, feats of amazing heroism, and super amazing costumes. It's possible to have heroic vigilantes in reality, without powers, but classic superhero costumes just never work, even though marvel has shown better than anyone else that they can work amazingly in live action movies.

A lot of fiction sets us up with unrealistic expectations- raunchy comedies about university life all gave us a very unreal idea of what goes on there (this was parodied in the Simpsons), and romantic comedies and romances give us a terrible idea of how to court a person! If we were to do a lot of these things in reality they'd be regarded as criminal acts; assault, stalking, theft, or just plain creepy, unethical, crazed and horrible.

What were some of the unrealistic expectations you had about reality from fiction? What are some of the things that only work in fiction but don't really exist in reality?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Ferda Boys - The sounds of the crowd ebbing and flowing, Ice hockey sticks clacking, a whistle blows and the action is on! Heavy piano, light drums and soaring distorted guitar burn through this 70s sports power ballad, singing the plays while the match progresses. The music fades and the crowd roars in appreciation as the puck strikes the back of the net!
The sound effects come from https://Zapsplat.com, a royalty free sound library.

Topics and shownotes

Links

FetishCast, Fallopian Crusader tells us about how some fetishes ONLY exist in comics - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/quackcast/episode-557-fetishes-in-comics

Featured comic:
Ferda Boys - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/30/featured-comic-ferda-boys/

Featured music:
Ferda Boys - - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Ferda_Boys/ - by Hockey Webcomics, rated E.

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

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

Today we're chatting about the NEW news feature that we're doing every Friday: The DD Fashion Spotlight. This is a new way to promote comics without all the restrictions of the featured comic system. To be eligible for a normal Wednesday feature a comic has to have at least 15 pages, be currently updating, not in the top ten, have good writing and artwork, not be adult rated, and not have been featured before. That cuts down the playing field quite a lot but it's what we have to do to make it worth a feature.

The fashion spotlight is quite different! All that's required is that the comic has characters with outfits that are interesting enough to talk about, It could be a one page comic that stopped updating 11 years ago, it can be adult rated, it can be in the top ten, it can have had a feature before, it can even have had a fashion spotlight feature before, whatever, as long as there are clothes to talk about it's eligible. I've done two so far.

There were a few reasons behind this new feature… One was the featured comic from a couple of weeks ago about the Halloween Fashion show comic, one was Tantz's newspost about how character's hair styles can be used to convey emotion and things, there was the fact that Emm couldn't do Friday newsposts anymore for a while, and lastly my own love of clothing. I've always been a bit of a collector of clothes, especially antique items. I also do my own sewing, do cosplay, make my own Napoleonic military uniform gear, and I love designing outfits for the characters in m comic. Initially I approached Vino Mas with the idea of running the feature because he's run many fashion events on DD in the past, but he has too may commitments so I thought I'd tackle it myself. I future we may have other reviewers though!

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Tiger Tea - Bass notes lead us on a winding little path… to a vast winding staircase built by a relentless driving synthesised tune that takes us on mysterious journey, up, down, and around, disorienting and enchanting.

Topics and shownotes

Links

DD Fashion Spotlight 1 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/18/friday-fashion-spotlight/
DD Fashion Spotlight 2 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/25/friday-fashion-spotlight-the-intrepid-torpedo/

Featured comic:
Catch22 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/22/featured-comic-catch-22/

Featured music:
Tiger Tea - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Tiger_Tea/ - by PaddyWolfe, rated M.

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/
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

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

Interview with Dwight L Macpherson, creator of The surreal adventures of Edgar Allen Poo, now known as The imaginary voyages of Edgar Allen Poe! Dwight joined DD back in the old days, well over a decade ago. Back then he hosted his comic with us, about Edgar Allen Poe. From the very beginning I could see that both it and its author were destined for bigger and better things and I'm pleased to say that came to pass. Through a lot of hard work, with the efforts and both him and his wife working as a team, Dwight has found success as an independent published author with a number of projects under his belt and more ongoing ones in the pipeline.

I still remember the surreal moment years ago with I saw his Poe book in a bookshop here in Australia in my isolated city of Perth. I had this weird moment where I was taken out of reality and didn't know know where I'd seen it before and then worlds came crashing together! From all the way back in 2006 when I first saw it online on DD to years later when it's there in book form right in front of me, not in the USA somewhere or Europe where most DD stuff lives, but right in front of me at my little suburban bookshop in Perth Western Australia, in the most isolated capital city on the planet. It still seems like a false memory. And now Dwight is back with us on DD and happy to chat and tell us all how he got where he is today, happy to share the secrets of his success.

Dwight's story: It all started in Korea, stationed there as a sergeant, researching pirates for a story which became the comic Dead Men tell no Tails. It was eventually published in Arcana comics with Ben Templesmith as the cover artist (a fellow Perth peson who I've met). A TV producer in California was looking for works to option and picked up Dwight's book. It didn't go anywhere but Rebecca and dwight eventually met, married and became a powerhouse team working on Hocus Pocus Comics togther (HP comics). Dwight is a huge advocate for independant creators and alternative publishing modes, one of those of course being webcomics!

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Miss Sisyphus - Slow, faded monochrome ennui, colour bleeds in gradually, like a stain on paper, filing with life, danger, adventure, futuristic exploration, like a dull and dusty bud, blossoming into a gorgeous flower, full of colour and heady scent.

Topics and shownotes

Links

About Dwight and Hocus Pocus Comics - https://www.hpcomics.net/our-story
More of Dwight's links - https://linktr.ee/Dwightlmacpherson
Dwight's comics on DD - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/edgarallanpoo/
The comic I first knew him for - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Surreal_Adventures_of_Edgar_Allan_Poo/
Pip's Monster House, the current project - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pips_Monster_House_/

Featured comic:
c h h t - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/16/featured-comic-c-h-h-t/

Featured music:
Miss Sisyphus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Miss_Sisyphus/. - by SinisterDuck, rated M.

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

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

Fallopiancrusader joined us as a very special guest to chat about fetishes in comics! It's really interesting and he brings his expertise with adult comics and his wide ranging knowledge of comics in general to bear on the subject. So what are fetishes? Well they're often things that people have sort of a sexual interest in but aren't always associated with sex themselves, they're peripheral to sex. Because of that they're often enjoyed and appreciated in their own right for their own sake! Think of things like body piercings, tight laced corsets, wearing fursuits, spanking, wearing S&M leather and PVC gear, shoe appreciation etc. all things associated with sex that people can also enjoy and appreciate outside of sex.

Comics have a long and surprising history of being associated with fetishism. One obvious thing is that superheroes wear skin-tight outfits that leave little to the imagination, they also often find themselves in perilous situations where they're tied up and gagged (or at least they USED to in the old days), and there are obviously people for who dressing up as superheroes IS a fetish (not cosplayers), but that's not really what we're talking about here so much, apart from two big exceptions: The mainstays of DC Comics Wonder Woman and Superman. Both have an association with fetishism.

Joe Shuster, cocreator of Superman, made money drawing comics where characters would be whipped, tied up and “tortured” in titillating ways. The creator of Wonder Woman was into bondage, which is the reason Wonder Woman has a magic lasso and why she always used to find herself tied up with it. He practiced bondage in his private life with his wife and her female partner. There are also people like Wally Wood who was a great comic artist, commonly credited with Power Girl's impressive bust, his sex comics are extensive and very well drawn!

Something very insightful that FallopianCrusader bought up was that there are various fetishes that can ONLY really be explored through the medium of comics! Things like giantism, miniature people, vore (where characters eat a lot), expansion, furies, Robot sex, horror body modification, giant boobs, huge genitals, Tentacles and more. In fact one of the most popular runaway hit comics on DD (NOT a sex comic) explored both expansion and vore fetishes at the same time, it was called “Craving Control”. In it a woman would be insatiably drawn to consume vast quantities of food and as a consequence her body would expand, her stomach and already big boobs would grow. But very soon she would magically shrink down again back to her old conventionally sexy proportions. People LOVED it, it had massively wide appeal outside of those fetish interests because it was funny and well drawn but it was only created because of fetishes and the fetishes in that from can't really exist in reality.

Some of the other things we chat about: Fritz the cat - Robert Crumb, Air Pirates and the secret Disney sex files, Virtual sex, Body modification, Vampirella, Greg Land, Fan-fiction, Witchblade, Adam Hughes, Richard Corbin big dick characters, Convention VS fetish, Pantsu upskirt, Opia, muscle women, dick women, kicking in the genitals…

This is a safe for work Quackcast and does not go into sexy details, so don't worry in that regard.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Creepy and beautiful synth scene-setting that creates space and volume and then fills it with a meat grinding steamroller of death that slashes and crushes all in its path like a huge armoured monster!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Our Special Guest, Fallopiancrusader - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/fallopiancrusader/

Featured comic:
Halloween Fashion Show - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/09/featured-comic-halloween-fashion-show/

Featured music:
Halloween Fashion Show - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Halloween_Fashion_Show/ - by Sleeping_gorilla, rated E.

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

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

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.

When you have a creative work to look at, you can't tell us what it means or what the author means, only the creator can do that. You CAN tell us what it means to you though. You can tell us about the commonly agreed meanings of various tropes and symbols too as well as their meanings within different cultural frameworks and contexts, but not why the creator used them, that's up to the creator.

The Squid Game is based on the deathmatch trope from anime and manga using all the clichés from that form including poor ordinary people caught up in something dangerous that they don't fully understand, a callous attitude to life, normally innocuous games turned deadly, twists and turns with who's really behind the whole thing, betrayal and so on. We can say that for a certainty because it's provably true. Why did the author co-opt the deathmatch trope? We can't say, but we can theorise they used it because it's popular in Korea and Japan. We can also talk about the history of the deathmatch trope, different examples of it like Running Man, Deathrace 2000, Gantz, Btooom, Danganronpa, Deadman Wonderland, Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, and many more which all follow the same pattern. We can use those examples to talk about why the elements of those tropes exist but we can NOT talk about their use in Squid Game in isolation. That would be like talking about the use of the word “and” in the English language without talking about the use of similar words in other languages and the origins of the word in German.

It's important to remember that things do not exist in a vacuum but also that intent is up to the creator to define, not the critic.

This week Gunwallace ha given us the theme to Secrets Of Uncrom - Secrets, hidden knowledge, secret cult meetings in guttering candlelight, murder most foul, and plots thickening! This atmospheric electronic tune has layer upon layer of interesting and disparate sounds, suggesting mystery, darkness and hidden things.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Tantz's newspost on conflicting with the author intentions - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/oct/22/flipping-off-the-author/

Featured comic:
Sapling - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/02/featured-comic-sapling/

Featured music:
Secrets Of Uncrom - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Secrets_of_Uncrom_The_Balance_of_Life_and_Death_/ - by Secretsofuncrom, rated M.

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

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See our Halloween video on Patreon! It's free to everyone this week, just go here https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck and you can see us dressed up in costume for the cast! We always do these videos before each Quackcast but they're usually only available to Patreon subscribers. You get to see us and a much more candid version of the topic we're talking about.

This week we're talking about group shots and how cool they can be! I love drawing them, having all your characters together in the frame is so cool and fun- you can hint at character relationships, have them doing some sort of fantasy activity or just being awesome and posing together. We also chat about some of our fave group shots in film like the beginning of Reservoir Dogs, and the most prolific source of group images ever: album art!

In the cover of today's Quackcast I've added some of my fave group shots I've done from actual Quackcast covers. What are your fave group shots from film, album art, comics, posters, or your own art?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Superstar Sparky - happy, easy going old fashioned organ notes. Grooving along on a warm summer's day, not a care in the world. Synthesized trumpets step in and raise the level, promising big things, fun, sun, and good times!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Banes' newspost on horror group shots - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/oct/24/the-horror-group-shot/

Featured comic:
Miss Sisyphus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/oct/25/featured-comic-miss-sisyphus/

Featured music:
Superstar Sparky - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Superstar_Sparky/ - by Jamanning7, rated E.

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/

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

This year for Halloween we've decided to do another commentary! It's of the 1980s Zombie movie “Return of the Living Dead”. It's extremely 1980s in style. There are zombies, punks, yuppies, electronic music, toxic waste… It's quite an entertaining, quite comedic, nihilistic cold war zombie film with very good effects for the time that really hold up today. Even the gore is tasteful. I am NOT a fan of horror in any way, Banes and Pit lobbied hard for this movie… but even so it was not a bad film. The zombies are animated by a man made chemical contaminant, which is quite an 80s theme in of itself. They're not contagious like modern zombies, there's no infection or outbreak to contain. The problem here is that they're virtually indestructible because of the chemical that animates their flesh, they're also fully intelligent and fast moving, this makes the zombies far more menacing and scary than any modern shambling brainless decaying infected version.

If you can find the movie online (it's pretty easy) you can watch along with us as we do our commentary on the film!
Have you seen Return of the Living Dead? What did you think of it? How does it stack up today?

This week Gunwallace wasn't able to give us a theme so I'm replaying Scarred Eden: A million futuristic laser violins play a symphony of light and sound, weaving the landscapes of our dreams against the awesomely huge backdrop of a swirling, purple, star filled nebula. It's a very Jean-Michel Jare sounding piece of 80s style electronica so pairs well with this movie.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Rabbit and Corvid - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/oct/19/featured-comic-rabbit-and-corvid/

Featured music:
Scarred Eden - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Scarred_Eden/ - Damehelsing, rated M.

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

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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Last time we covered tropes we hated! This time we're talking about clichés we actually like. It's quite a bit trickier because clichés are clichés for a reason (overuse) so it's not easy to like them, except in some cases…
For me it's Isekai. That's a Japanese word for “another world”. This is a very old genre, it's basically a story where a person from our normal world goes to a magical world, we see this in ancient fairy stories, Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and many others. until the mid 20th century it was the default way of writing any fantasy story. It has always been around, the Japanese were just the first to come up with a popular name for it.

In the last few years this genre has exploded in Anime and Manga, with stories based on the idea of a person being physically transported to the world of a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Role playing Game). Early on we had anime like Hack.Slash, which was pretty crap but no one else was really making that sort of story then. Now with the popularity of Sword Art Online (again, not a very good version of this trope), lots of other stories in this vein popped up, so much so that the trope has become a cliché. This means that there are a lot of good things made using it but a LOT of badly made trash as well and that people will get sick of it, as they do with clichés, meaning we will stop seeing anymore Isekai stories for a good long while.
I still love them though!

Pit and Banes like Slasher horror. This genre became such a tired cliché that it almost died out but was revived by the movies “Scream” and “I know what you did last Summer” which helped light the fire for this phoenix to be reborn. Retro is another big thing in horror now that's starting to become a cliché, the popularity of Stranger Things helped fuel that monster. The massive popularity of the Marvel Universe franchise has resulted in a huge over-population of superhero films and they're becoming a cliché people dislike, many still love them though.

What are some clichés that YOU love?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Amber Mage - Warm waves of amber light synth. Subtle tribal beat flowing under a beautiful orchestration of violins, blending with sharp, bouncy electronica pulses, creating a tasty melange with a sweet spicy cinnamon flavour

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Backwoods - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/oct/05/featured-comic-backwoods/

Featured music:
Amber Mage - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Amber_Mage/ - by Wildcat Arren, rated M.

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

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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Tantz explains why she really hates a bunch of tropes that are super commonly used in things, stuff like very obvious plot armour for the protagonist so that you KNOW nothing can seriously hurt them so you stop caring what happens to them and in the story in general, child-led stories where the adults are all useless and ineffectual because it takes away your suspension of disbelief, and amnesia where a huge bunch of the story is erased so the writers can just repeat stuff over and over. Banes and I join it to talk about stuff we hate too!

One of the tropes I hate is how assassins and great fighters are currently depicted as fighting with a mathematical precision, ala John Wick, Daniel Craig's James Bond, Jason Bourne, the Black Widow, Captain America etc. It's not that it's not realistic because of course it isn't and it's not meant to BE realistic, the problem is that the precise, choreographed, balletic, perfect kung-Fu style of gunfighting is a trope that's used as a shortcut to indicate that the person is a great fighter highly trained: It's a trope, and it's hugely overused and boring. No one ever fights like that, especially not with guns and it's not cool anymore because we've seen it a million times, Give it a rest and show us more natural fighting for a while. The same with wire effects, parkour: They've turned action heroes into anime characters. That's great the first few times but it's at saturation point now and useless.

What are your most hated tropes?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to The War Below Us - A rhythm heavy relaxing piece. A tribal dance sound that sends you floating away on soft clouds lit by golden lights and joy with the faint smell of incense. Too much energy to meditate, but great for concentration!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Tantz' newspost on hatable tropes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/oct/01/tropes-i-hate/

Featured comic:
Secrets of Uncrom The Balance of Life and Death - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/sep/28/featured-comic-secrets-of-uncrom-the-balance-of-life-and-death/

Featured music:
The War Below Us - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_War_Below_Us/ - by PuddingLem0n98, rated T.

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/

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

We decided to chat about games. Video game and computer games. They're now a huge part of pop-culture entertainment and they've influenced us in many ways creatively throughout our lives. There are many different kinds of games out there, but one of the really cool things about them is that they're able to deliver a kind of interactive narrative experience that takes things further than Film or comics can easily do. Games were also instrumental in the early days of the first big popular wave of webcomics with gamer comics (PVP, Ctrl Alt Dlt, and Penny Arcade) and sprite comics (8 bit fantasy), being some of the most popular.

For me, the look of game characters like Lara Croft (Tomb Raider), was a big influence for my comics, and the play style of military games like Battlefield 2 helped me get a good look for my military based comic (Pinky TA). Just the imagery and visual of games these days is inspiring enough, but even back in the day with simple side scrolling platformers, 2D fighters and top down anime style JRPGs the interactive nature of the games could still suck you in and inspire you. I remember I did fan art of the characters from Golden Axe back in the day and I used to draw the weapon loadouts for the JRPGs that I'd play. I don't play games very much at all now because they're far too addictive and I end up wasting hours on them, but even though they're not that creative (well Minecraft is!), they're still a great form of escapism, a good way to deliver a complex story, and a great way to hang out with friends and meet people.

What are your fave games and why? What games were most inspiring to you?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to The Last Aviatrix: The first early morning rays of sun peek over the distant horizon, brightening the sky from grey to blue… The cold silence is shattered by an aeroplane swooping low overhead. Frenetic energy, speed, action, a whirlwind of active momentum and fury as the sounds carry us along at a great rate of knots and then fade away…

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Giant Bee and Friend - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/sep/21/featured-comic-giant-bee-and-friend/

Featured music:
The Last Aviatrix - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Last_Aviatrix/ - by BusterCagle, rated T.

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/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

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

In today's cast we're chatting about LOVE stories! This isn't a subject we get into much but it's a huge genre so we thought we'd tackle it. We thought none of us even WORK in that genre till I belatedly realised that Banes and I sort of DO with Bottomless Waitress hahaha! There's all sorts of love in there… Sorry for the sound quality with this one I've no idea what went wrong.

I'm pretty sure we all know a good love story or at least KNOW love love stories and most of us like them to some small degree, from passionate drams to romantic comedies, it's a wide genre and it real does get in everywhere. Humans, like most animals reproduce sexually and we're a highly social and cultural species so of course we've developed a lot of stuff around the stories of relationships and the imperative to procreate. Love stories of al kinds have been around since people started writing, so it's worth having a little chat about.
Some of the thing we mention here (sorry, we blanked on webcomics): Pretty woman, Cinderella, Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones' Diary, Joe Vs the Volcano, You've got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, and of course- Princess Bride.

We're in 2021 now though and we like to imagine we've expanded the definition of “love” and relationships to things like polyamory, same sex and non-binary etc… but the truth is that these things have always been around just by different names, whether it's free love, androgyny or something else. To that end I mention ne of my fave SciFi books: Drinking Sapphire Wine and Don't Bite the Sun, both by Tanith Lee. It's a couple of SciFi stories written back in the 1970s about a genderless character who lives in a future world where everyone's needs are catered for by automatic, robotic systems, leaving people free to stay as juveniles for as long as they like. People switch bodies, genders and personalities at will. drug taking in encouraged, as is sex, but only if you enter into a formal contract. People have little robots that follow them around, hovering after them with which the can update people on their movements and share their status with all their friends and the rest of the society, gaining or losing popularity as they do. It's a very modern couple of books! And includes relationships between androgynous people.

What are your fave love stories?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Max Jaw - Dark, mean streets. The sound echoes and roars in this dense, hard concrete jungle. It’s unforgiving, raw and cynical. It knows all your secrets and it doesn’t even care, it’s seen it all before… you’re just another anonymous face in the crowd. You won’t be remembered.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Max Jaw - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/sep/14/featured-comic-max-jaw/

Featured music:
Max Jaw - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Max_Jaw/ - by MaxJaw, rated M.

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/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

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

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.

Tantz tells us a bit about how she translates concepts from her Greek WW2 comic Without Moonlight to be understood by an English speaking audience and we all have a chatter about things we see in the media from other cultures that we just don't really get, but mainly from the USA since Tantz, Banes, are not from the US, only Pitface and she wasn't IN this Quackcast!

What are the cultural concepts in media from different countries that you don't get?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Speaking in Tongues - A lonely and delicate piano rises out of the shadows to paint an intricate and pretty picture with sound. Backed by gentle synthesised strings, it swirls and rises like a tiny new vine, weaving its way up towards the light.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
The Last Aviatrix - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/sep/07/featured-comic-the-last-aviatrix/

Featured music:
Speaking in Tongues - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Speaking_In_Tongues/ - by Quinn O Matic, rated M.

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/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

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

There seemed to be a lull for a while after the 1990s and the massive sequel craze of the 80s, but nowadays we're back in full swing again with sequels, reboots and reinvisioning of film and TV franchises.
Banes noticed a distinct pattern of behaviour that occurred around bad or failed franchises: The makers would chose to go against what existing fans liked about the property in the fist place, usually in order to appeal to new fans. When both new fans and old ones dislike what they do, they attack the fans and blame the fans for failure of their version. Then they'll search and find a new franchise to mess up. It's rare that people own up to or admit to failures anymore, it's usually always the fault of the fans for being too “toxic”.

The 2016 Ghostbusters reboot is a great case in point: a film reboot of a hugely popular and successful franchise staring tried and tested popular comedy actors, it turned into a failure. One popular narrative was that it was caused by “toxic” fans and their sexist online campaigns… while those people certainly did exist, a simple viewing of the movie is enough to see the real reasons it failed: They weren't sure what audience it was intended for. The story and storytelling style, the costumes, the sets, effects, lighting, toy-like props, and many of the jokes were specifically aimed at young children, while many of the situations and most of the other jokes were extremely sexual and adult in nature. So what we got was a young kids movie that wasn't for kids- this means adults watching it feel bored or patronised and groan over the childish humour and the kids that could appreciate that content either aren't allowed to watch it, or if they do they're also bombarded with very problematic and gross adult sex jokes: none of this was the fault of the fans.

Compare that to the original 2 films:
They were never intended for a very young audience. Nothing in them was aimed at young children. These were bawdy, young adult comedy fantasy “horror” films. In keeping with the context of the time they had adult humour disguised with double entendres, or hidden with tropes and metaphor. They gained a following from young audiences anyway because the adult content was subtle enough to pass, and the story and style was broad enough that it didn't need to be dumbed down to be understood by younger audiences, in this way they appealed equally to all ages.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Phantasos: Hot, dry desert. Orange sun. warm winds blowing. Shimmering mirages…. Electric arabesque. This is a gloriously distorted riff filled trip into an exotic world of sand and dunes, with beautiful minarets rising out of the distance, sparkling in the harsh light.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Bane's franchise fail newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/aug/18/franchise-follies/

Featured comic:
Follower - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/aug/31/featured-comic-follower/

Featured music:
Phantasos - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Phantasos/ - by Phantasos by Jslongstreet, rated T.

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/

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

Why aren't there more prettyboy bad-ass characters? Pretty girl bad-asses too! This character type is often a hall-mark of Japanese and Korean fiction more than anything else though it DOES show up in Western media occasionally. There is no age-limit to the type, what distinguishes it is that the character is tough and a very good fighter while also being very obviously concerned about their appearance and looking good- they don't just look good and fashionable naturally, they actively work at it.

They're most usually shown as being villains but there are examples of them being heroic too. In Western Media James Bond is on the edge of the trope, The Saint (famously played by Roger Moore) is definitely a pretty boy bad-ass, as is Jason King. There's Vega from Street Fighter 2, Space Dandy, Spike from Cowboy Bebop… As for women, the ladies of Charly's Angles, especially the Cameron Diaz movies are a great example.

The popularity of the trope in Japan could come from a samurai tradition that emphasised a study of “softer” arts along with the more lethal ones, manifesting in flower arranging, poetry writing, painting, calligraphy etc. While many Samurai would look ultra masculine and shaggy, still others were exquisitely groomed, wearing hair ornaments, fine silks and makeup. In the west at times we've had something similar with dandy fencers in the 17th and 18th century, hussars dressed in extravagant uniforms covered in gold or silver braid, furs and rows of shiny buttons. There were the famous Landsknechts, German mercenaries who specialised in using gigantic greatswords and dressed in amazing outfits of slashed, puffy, brightly coloured silk and huge hats bedecked with feathers.

So prettyboy badarse characters are not alien to our culture, they're just not that popular right now. Let's bring them back! What are your fave pretty boy or pretty girl badasses?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to The Anaether - Running over the darkened plane, legs pumping, feet eating up the distance, dust flying, pounding on into the dimness, escaping, leaving everything behind… This electronic tune is scene-setting and atmospheric, suggesting speed and distance with its relentless rhythm.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Tantz's prettyboy badass newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/aug/13/pretty-boy-badass/

Featured comic:
The War Below Us - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/aug/24/featured-comic-the-war-below-us/

Featured music:
The Anaether - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Anaether/ - by Lizbeth490021, 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
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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

We're all fans of something, but when does that happen? When do we transition from just following and liking something into being full on fans and is there even a difference?
I think there definitely IS a difference. I became a fan of Star Wars after watching the first film but I'm not a fan of The Witcher even after watching the entire show. Henry Cavill as Geralt is super amazing but the show itself is just blah to me. I've seen about 200 or so episodes of One Piece but I don't think of myself as a fan. I became a fan of Ghost in the Shell after seeing a poster from the Manga. I became a fan of Farscape after watching reruns of the series over and over.

I think being a fan is about thinking deeper into the thing you enjoy, having it influence your life and creative choices, as well as making you want to enjoy it BEYOND what it is: making fan art, buying toys, posters, looking up trivia about it etc…
It can happen at any stage… when you first read the comic or see a promo pic for it or see a trailer for a TV show or movie or even just a cover picture. Or it can develop slowly over a lot of time and repeat viewings. But it's not a certain thing. I think most people are NOT fans of most things they consume, only certain things ever earn that honour.

Then there are things like being a fan of something but not liking the rest of the fandom, Rick and Morty is famous for that, with many fans being usually taken with the Rick character and wanting to be like him because he's an arsehole as well as a supergenius , and thinking they're also supergeniuses because they're arseholes. Admitting to being a fan of Rick and Morty can get you tarred with the same brush as those people, it can also scare people away of becoming a fan. Being a fan of something doesn't mean you like everything related to that thing, it just means that what you Do like, you really, really like.
There are different ways of being a fan too, my own fanship of Captain America is expressed in my cosplaying the WW2 movie version :)
What are you a fan off and when did that happen?


This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Conscripted - What’s it like to have your body and soul transformed and subsumed into the body of a huge, magical, invincible, giant encased in unbreakable metal armour? You have no free will of your own, no ability to communicate or even think. You are now just a serene slave in the form of a huge golem with awesome powers commanded by another. Gunwallace’s theme for conscripted puts me in the mind of poor Darius from Conscripted who was forced into exactly this situation. This music is a serene, clean surface, a smooth forest pond. Calm and clear, disturbed only by the nearest drops of thought rippling across it and then vanishing. Slowly these increase, the rings crossing and converging, until the serenity is no more.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Conscripted - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/aug/16/featured-comic-conscripted/

Featured music:
Conscripted - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Conscripted/ - by Dragonsong12, rated E.

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

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!

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Angela frowned in disappointment. Her boobs seemed to grimace in displeasure, nipples pulsing with abject fury. As she walked the heaviness of their bounce echoed her anger. She sat down at her desk, opened the document she had been working on and began to type.
She was halfway through her romance novel, “Pirates of pleasure”. Her boobs swelled and seemed to glow, echoing her happy mood as she worked. She typed…
“David admired his 6 foot 5 inch frame in the mirror, sweat glistened off the darkly tanned, well defined 10 pack rippling across his abdomen. Well-defined pectoral muscles bugled like fat watermelons. His perky brown nipples drew the eye like magnets. The huge bulge in his skin-tight white semi-transparent trousers pulsed with both threat and promise. Deep hazel eyes glowered beneath strong dark brows and a thick fringe of dark shaggy hair as he drank in this magnificent sight. He thought longingly of the wanton, headstrong, powerful pirate queen maiden waiting alone in his quarters…”
Angela's Boobs rose and fell excitedly with the quickness of her breath as she continued to type…

There's a fad at the moment for finding terrible examples of men writing about women. But this isn't a one way issue by any means. You can find ridiculous examples of women writing about men in any one of a billion romance novels, crappy examples of straight people writing gay people. bad versions of gay people writing straights, Binary writing non-binary, white writing black, and the reverse… Basically people writing about something they have limited personal experience with in a superficial manner and focussing on the aspects they fetishise. It generally produces silly results whoever does it.
This is what we chat about, with some side lines into things like ethnic stereotyping. Check out the weird manga samurai versions of national cultures done for the Japanese Olympic games.

This Quackcast was inspired by a newspost by our own Tantz Aerine. Maybe we should all have a go at some bad writing? The above version was great fun! I did a double layer: a man (me) writing badly about a woman writing badly about a man in a very silly, stereotypical way.


This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to The BirdBoys - creepy cyberpunk weirdness with a big, bouncy beat to move us along. Get lost in the hustle and bustle of a futuristic western crowd. Glowing lights, dark side allys, mysterious whisperings half heard from far away, chatterings in unfamiliar languages… A dry dusty techno future.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Men writing women badly - https://www.buzzfeed.com/farrahpenn/18-men-who-need-to-be-banned-from-writing-female-characters
Men AND women writing each other badly - https://medium.com/inspired-writer/men-women-writing-each-other-badly-9c0f46aeac5c
Woman writing men badly- https://www.thewriterscircus.com/articles/characters/5734/common-mistakes-female-writers-make-when-writing-male-characters/
Tantz post on the subject - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/30/writing-women-writing-men/
Countries as Samurai - https://world-flags.org/



Featured comic:
The BirdBoys - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/aug/02/featured-comic-the-birdboys/

Featured music:
The BirdBoys - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_BirdBoys/ - by J_vulture, rated M.

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
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

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

Mal (aka Bluecuts), Alice (aka DameHelsing), and Pitface are all together in the Quackcast to chat about all the things involved in making the DD anthology! They get a bit kinky with their symbolism and analogies haha! So be warned. The language gets a little spicy… It makes a fun listen!

These three great people worked hard over a whole year to bring together the contributions of many creators to put them all into this amazing horror anthology so they could fund the design update for DD. So please help support it and buy a copy, it's only $15

DD Horror anthology link: https://drunkducksells.gumroad.com/l/EBCcv

They chat about the possibility of doing another anthology, maybe even an Adult anthology!? That would be an interesting thing to do.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Freddy Reno Went Missing: A relaxing day in the warm sun at the beach. The smell of sunscreen on skin and salt air tinged with a pungent hint of seaweed. This music rolls in like a pleasant breeze, washing away negativity with its easy, jazzy, calming sounds. Sit back, sink into the warm white sands, let them cushion you as the heat of the sun melts away your worries.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Lullaby Tales - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/27/featured-comic-lullaby-tales/

Featured music:
Freddy Reno Went Missing - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Freddy_Reno_Went_Missing/ - by OrGiveMeDeath_Ind, rated M

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Bluecuts34 aka Mal - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/bluecuts34/
Dame Helsing aka Alcie - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/damehelsing/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

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

No, not surgical masks, this is about the kind superheros wear, also gimps, masquerades, villains and robbers! Inspired by Pitface and her deep and abiding love of gimp masks. We talk about how common it is to find masks in comics and how comic characters probably wear masks more than in any other media. And most media where characters wear masks is based on comics anyway.
What are your fave masks?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Generation Bad: An epic entrance! Striding into a grand hall, cloak billowing wide, regal, grand, huge. Violins pacing out the rhythm, twin electric guitars, one threatening with a low, distant thunder growl as the other soars and wheels high above!

Topics and shownotes

Links


Featured comic:
Erin's Space - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/20/featured-comic-erins-space/

Featured music:
Generation Bad - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Generation_Bad/ - by TheRedDeath, rated T.

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
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

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

On Friday the 16th the site was down for a while. Nasty, but we fixed that and chatted to our programmer Alexey about starting the update program on DD. The DD Anthology is also out now too, so you can buy a copy and help support the upgrades! Pit and Banes were MIA today but as a special treat you can meet my Russian hatted Ex, Miss-Judged, who's with me and Tantz in this cast. And as a super extra special treat you can see us ALL in our pateron video which is free to ALL this week! In the links bellow.

Our Patreon vid is available to all! Watch:
Vid - https://www.patreon.com/posts/dd-patreon-video-53856108



We chat about the DD fall, maybe getting JustNoPoint to be our Sys Admin, code updates for DD, the design update, and the DD anthology. Then at about the 18 minute mark we dive into our main topic: “Test of character”. This was based on a newspost by Tantz Aerine. Some examples of things we mention that have a very prominent 'test of character" component are: horror stories, O-Henry stories, Fairytails, and Avatar the last airbender.


This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Quantum Festival - Starting on the sub-atomic level we work our way up the energy levels. Mesons, baryons, quarks, hadrons, protons, neutrons, electrons, and photons vibrating, pulsing, combining, exploding. Energy is produced in strange and wonderful ways. The eerie synthesiser sounds illustrate this perfectly, beeping, bumping, clicking and wailing, helping you visualise the quantum weirdness!

Topics and shownotes

Buy the DD anthology and help us at the same time - https://drunkducksells.gumroad.com/l/EBCcv
Anthology update - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/17/the-duck-reanimated/
Crash report - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/17/annnd-were-back/
Tant's Test of Character newpost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/09/the-test-of-character/


Featured comic:
The Magister Records - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/13/featured-comic-the-magister-records/

Featured Music:
Quantum Festival - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Quantum_Festival/ - by Lokpolymorfa, rated E

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


VIDEO exclusive!
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- 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 the Discord server to chat in real time with other DD comics people - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

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.

In the early days of webcomics a few early birds got very popular simply because they were they were there first: 8 Bit Fantasy, Sluggy Freelance, PVP, Penny Arcade etc. They garnered imitators and so webcomic fashions and styles were born. We had a huge wave of sprite comics, slacker gamer comics, and slice of life comics. The “2 friends sitting on a couch playing video games and being dicks to each other while not understanding girls” was probably the most popular trend for years!

Webcomics have had a few explosions of popularity and trends diversified over the years. A significant one has been the so-called “webtoon format”, which is actually the Scott McCloud infinite canvas idea that was developed years before. That site encourages creators to use it because they prefer it for their mobile site and app. But it's created a larger trend of people making their comics in that way regardless of host.

Tapas and webtoon only promote certain styles of webcomics on their front page which in turn creates another style: manga influenced work with large eyes, flattish, muted colours, digital 2D art only etc with only a limited range of story types. People see that and start to imitate it, thinking that's how webcomics should be, or if they do work like that they can be popular, or just because they like it, or don't know any better…

The limitations of technology create styles when people use premade models in popular 3D programs. This happened in the early days of 3D with all the Counterstrike comics and people using 3DMax and poser models. It happens with in digital 2D art with an overuse of standard brushes in Photoshop, Gimp and now Procreate and Infinite painter. These things are influenced by limitations of the tech, which creates a new style and that gains imitators.

What popular tends and styles have you noticed in webcomics? And what casued them?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Patchwork and Lace - Darkness abounds, walking into a dark tomb, past shadows and demon parasites, into mysteries beyond light and human understanding. Deep underground where humans were never meant to venture, learning horrific truths about the universe and what lies beyond… The distorted bass line takes you down… deep down.

Topics and shownotes

Featured comic:
24Hour Cake - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jun/29/featured-comic-24hour-cake/

Featured Music:
Patchwork and Lace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Patchwork_and_Lace/. - by Itsasooz, rated T

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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 the Discord server to chat in real time with other DD comics people - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

There was ALL sorts of kerfuffle on the internet centred around the phrase “Heroes don't do that”.
It began with an interview of two people involved in the production of the Harley Quinn TV animated series. According to them there was a sex scene between Batman and Cat Woman, including a scene of cunnalingus. They claim that a representative from DC told them to cut that scene, saying “Heroes don't do that”. But what is the real story?

The nerd-net exploded over that! It's super important to realise that it is NOT a direct quite from DC comics though, it's a 3rd hand paraphrased remark: originally second hand and paraphrased by the two interviewees, then delivered 3rd hand to us by the news blog that published it. Hence it CAN NOT be said to represent the editorial policy and exact words of DC.

Further, we don't know if the intent was “Heroes don't perform cunnalingus” or “We don't want to show our heroes performing oral sex on screen”. Most of the nerd-net automatically assumed the former, perhaps because people tend to think overly literally, or they like to go for the funnier, stupider, more bombastic interpretations. The latter seems the far more logical and obvious version to me though. It's silly to think there would be certain super common sex acts that DC would forbid their heroes participating in off screen.

With that in mind we're thinking about the idea of the "image" of characters, including our own: What WOULD they do onscreen and what would then NOT be shown doing?
#heroesdon'tdothat
#heroesDodothat

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to SweetGum - Hot summers day in the shade, looking out over the wide expanse of a fresh green sunlit valley where you can see to the limit of your dreams. Far mountains dissolve into the sky and the world goes on forever.


Topics and shownotes

Featured comic:
Staff and Steam - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jun/15/featured-comic-staff-and-steam/

Featured Music:
SweetGum - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/SweetGum/ - by BitterBadger, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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 the Discord server to chat in real time with other DD comics people - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Webcomicers need to learn to draw and write in order to become webcomicers. There are many other skills and also different ways to make webcomics, BUT most of us draw and or write. Here Tantz and I talk about terrible teachers of these skills and better ways to learn :)
(Also, Jason from Friday the 13t is a big fat buttface)

When it comes to creativity it's a tricky thing to learn and teach, Mainly the most important thing is learning the raw skills you need in order to produce that creativity. A bad teacher will try and impose their own notion of creativity on you, use jargon, skip steps and basically not explain to you WHY you do certain things. Good teaching in creative feilds is about skills, techniques, tools, learning the terminology, and the reasoning behind things.

What were some of the worst and best expereinces YOU had when learning to draw or write? Who were the bad teachers, the good teachers, the bad lessons and the good ones?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Necroblivion - The raw, bussing fuzz of distorted electric guitar over calm, almost celebratory rhythm driven music brings to mind the sounds of North African Tuareg band Tinariwen. This is quite a positive vibe and a very African sound.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Fatman - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jun/08/featured-comic-fatman/

Featured music:
Necroblivion - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Necroblivion/ - by Paneltastic, rated M.

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

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

Taking on more than you can handle - i.e. James Cameron and JJ Abrams are good directors and writers but neither could handle the demands of a complex Sci-Fi project that needs full world building and internally consistent logic etc (Avatar and Star Wars). They're great with more simple SciFi that's based on 21st century earth and simpler stories, but epic SciFi was clearly a long way beyond the capabilities of either. We're talking about when WE have been caught taking on stuff we couldn't handle, how we dealt with that and also how other creators dealt with it too.

It's very easy to get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task that you take on, whether the story style is too much for you, you can't get a good ending, the research is too much, the artwork is too hard, the schedule is too demanding etc. We've all been caught in some way or other, usually multiple ways! One strategy is to break stuff down into more manageable chunks, but sometimes that's just too hard anyway. It can be wroth it to battle on because it forces you out of your comfort zone and makes you learn new lessons and techniques. Sometimes you can still produce something great even if you didn't reach what you were originally aiming for. And sometimes it actually makes more sense to quit because you find yourself wasting too much time and energy on it when you could be spending that more profitably elsewhere. There are no single right answers here.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to COSMIC SAFARI: A trip through the wilderness of the vast galaxy, along beautifully coloured nebula filaments, past the rings encircling gas giants, and through the tails of comets! This is Jean-Michele Jarre meets a small remote controlled car!


Topics and shownotes

Featured comic:
COSMIC SAFARI - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jun/01/featured-comic-cosmic-safari

Featured Music:
COSMIC SAFARI - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/COSMIC_SAFARI/ - by Frenemy, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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 the Discord server to chat in real time with other DD comics people - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

We've done a few Quackcasts about how terrible Mary Sues are… well this is the opposite! Tantz postulated that they can be likable and GOOD for a story and then won us over easily by telling us why during our Patreon video. In the Quackcast Banes and I join in, having been convinced of the idea. We talk about how if the Mary Sue is a likable, good person, genuinely humble or altruistic and helpful then that can mitigate their Mary Sueness. Whereas if they're selfish, take their status for granted, take advantage of others or are just there to be marvelled and worshiped by the astonished onlookers (re: Rey), they can be unpleasant.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Erin’s Space: Racing on down to a slow, calm interlude at the seaside… Pulp fiction meets Café Del Mar. Gunwallce turned a balalaika into a surf guitar for the exciting intro. Then we relax to soft, smooth jazz

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Necroblivion - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/may/25/featured-comic-necroblivion/

Featured music:
Erin’s Space - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Erins_Space/ - by Pelta8d, rated T.

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/

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

The famous film Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa gave its name to the style of a story that has the same scenes told from different perspectives. Many comics and movies have done this, it's a really cool trick to try. Not only can it help you show a different perspective of a scene it can also show your story in a completely different style when you show things through the eyes of a particular character and how they “see” the world. It can even be a great trick for making a sequel- rather than a linear continuation of a story you show a story that happened in parallel to the sequences shown.

You get that with the “event comics” made by DC and Marvel where one large event takes place across multiple “titles” and that even made its way to the Marvel cinematic universe with a few stories happening at the same time, very notably the events of Black Panther and the Civil war. In fact this sort of thing was even part of the very first origins of my comic, Pinky TA, back in the late 90s: It started as a painting series depicting the events of a point in time. Some painting followed the story in a linear fashion (before and after), others depicted the same point in time from different angles and perspectives. It's a really cool way to help you look at your story differently.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Trevor: A black line on the horizon of dense sound builds like a tidal wave, rising higher and higher as it comes closer. It never breaks, only swamps and envelopes you as it rushes past dragging everything with it with the enormous power of the ocean behind it, flooding like a rising tide from the sea, drenching you in sound.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Newspost on timeloops - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/apr/28/when-i-come-around/

Featured comic:
Huckleberry- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/may/11/featured-comic-huckleberry/

Featured music:
Trevor - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/TREVOR/ - by JCorrachComics, 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/

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

So what IS SciFi? Well it's a pretty wide umbrella term and contains a lot of different things. In some senses it's just an imaginative fiction story where science replaces magic. SciFi can simply be a sciencey setting where genre stories take place (romance, adventure, nior, horror). It can be a magical fantasy space opera with a futuristic skin (Star Wars), it can be “hard SciFi” where the story is set in the future but the science is completely plausible, it can be written with strong themes that examine philosophical questions and make interesting points about the nature of humanity, and it can be so many more things too. It's a broad church!

Where did SciFi begin? Basically it all started in the 1920s. The “pulp” magazines were super popular. People just couldn't get enough of them. Publisher Hugo Gernsback found a niche re-publishing old speculative fiction stories ( Jules Verne, HG Wells, Mary Shelly etc), in some of his publications, and single handedly created the “Science Fiction” genre as a way to sell them. Pretty soon a new crop of writers was producing new stories specially to be a part of this genre and to go in his magazines, these were the first SciFi writers… Among them EE Doc Smith, Isaac Asimov etc. And the genre was born.

It's currently popular to say that Mary Shelly was “the first SciFi writer”, I'd counter that and say not really… It was a big step on the road but what her Frankenstein character was most influential with was monster fiction, she created the “mad scientist” subgenre that has been hugely influential in horror fiction. But when you're talking about the “first” of something the problem is that you can ALWAYS come up with earlier examples, which is why I list Gernsback in the 1920s as the true creator of the genre.

For example, the stories of E. T. A. Hoffmann pre-date Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and out of them we have stories of a scientist creating a lifelike clockwork robot, becoming Operas and the famous ballet Coppélia. And if we want to go back to the earliest primordial SciFi origins what comes to my mind is many of the Greek myths: the famous Scientist Daedalus who created wearable flying wings, animated toys, the Labyrinth, even the ability for a woman to mate with a bull! Then there's Archimedes (a real person) with SciFi stories of his accomplishments like the creation of a sun-powered ray to destroy warships or a giant claw machine that plucked them out of the water… Or the stories of the ships built by the Phaeacians (in Homer's Odyssey), they're able to travel as fast as a falcon to any destination you can think of since they know all the cities of the world and can navigate automatically. SciFi has a LONG history for something that wasn't codified till the early 20th century.

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This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Starlights, Gunwallace says: “Had some time this morning. Here's a theme for Starlights. In my head I'm imagining you with your new guitar dressed in the white dandy costume playing the solo.”
My description: A dandy gent in bright white frock coat and tricorn hat festooned with giant ostrich feathers stands outlined against the stormy grey sky… He shoulders a cream coloured stratocaster, and shreds, ripping out a soaring solo against the growing winds of the coming storm -


Topics and shownotes

Kawaii's newspost on the Beauty of SciFi - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/may/02/the-beauty-of-science-fiction/

Featured comic:
Cupcake War Machine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/may/04/featured-comic-cupcake-war-machine/

Featured Music:
Starlights - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Starlights/ - by Kawaii Triangle, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
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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Time loops in stories are a lot of fun, they can be really complicated and interesting. Groundhog day is the most famous version of this trope. Banes tells me it's a “trope codifier”. In a time loop story characters are caught reliving the same events over and over with the main character being the only one who's really aware of it, Sometimes the loop happens only once or a couple of times, or many, many times as in Groundhog Day and Palm Springs. We chat about some of the different time loop stories, their characteristics and why we like them.

We also talk about the instance where you actually experience this in reality: re-watching and re-reading books, movies, TV shows etc. It's like WE are the main, aware character and the loop is the movie or the book. We get something different out of them each time, just like Bill Murray's character in Groundhog day. Videogames give us even more of a time loop experience, allowing us to follow different threads and make different choices to achieve different outcomes at the completion of the game. If you “die” you also “re-live” the game over and over till you manage to complete it in the way you want! Tantz brings up the example of the game Undertale that specifically recognises and draws attention to this.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Akacya the Bounty Hunter: Reverential awesomeness. Buzzing distorted beat pacing out the time and encouraging you to move, a slow, heavy, swaying, stomping dance. A wobbling, vibrating guitar weaves through and ties it all up like a bright satin ribbon around a present, topping the track off with a beautiful display of shibari.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Newspost on timeloops - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/apr/28/when-i-come-around/

Featured comic:
Phantasos - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/apr/26/featured-comic-phantasos/

Featured music:
Akacya the Bounty Hunter - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Akacya_The_Bounty_Hunter/, by Shinka, rated M.

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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Character height is not something we think about too much but it's actually a fairly big deal: in terms of what the height means, what it means contextually, how the character fits into their world, how they relate to others around them, and how it's like to draw them!
A character can loom, they can shrink down, they can appear bigger than they are due to force of personality or smaller due to being shy and retiring, Largeness can equal power and strength, stupid docility, threat, potential, or it can be used to highlight the strength of a much smaller character that beats them as in many animes.
It can be very tricky to get a good sense of the size of characters in relation to others and how they fit within the world, just using chairs for example can make a huge difference depending on the characters.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Lyza's Sandstorm - Softly, pacing, creeping, exploring the haunted vastness of the empty space. Abandoned, wind whistles through, distant creaking, the soul has left the building but something dark remains… waiting.

Topics and shownotes

Forum discussion on character height - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/178679/

Featured comic:
Starlights - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/apr/20/featured-comic-starlights/

Featured Music:
Lyzas Sandstorm - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Lyzas_Sandstorm/ - by Simonitro, rated M.

Listen to the Pitface Interview! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiSOTrWQ1Jk&t=187s&ab_channel=SurgeryHead

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
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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Evil superheroes are a stupid fad, that's my contention. My opinion. They've been around for a long time but now they're so popular it's becoming a bit of a fad and might turn into its own genre. I suppose Marvel and others have saturated the superhero market so to stay relevant other companies are doing “twists” on that traditional genre, hence the evil superheroes.
I think it's a stupid idea because: we already HAVE evil super characters, in the form of villains; it's an escapist fantasy medium of a world where heroes are actually good, unlike reality where they're more complex and often actually evil (i,e, police shootings) subverting that just takes us back to reality again rendering the superhero part of the equation pointless; a character being corrupted by power and becoming evil is not really that complex or interesting, it's actually very, very obvious, a character trying to remain good in spite of the power IS complex and interesting because that's far harder to do. And so on

The counter argument is that the superhero genre has been around for about 90 years or so now and can do with a little examination. I say fair enough, but it doesn't need to be a fad or a genre in its own right. Handle it correctly and make them the super villains. Some evil superheros in these things: Chronicle, Bightburn (horror in the style of The Omen, Case 39 but using a superman origin), The Boys, Invincible, Hancock, My super Ex-girlfriend, Venture Brothers.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Journey Through the Star Sea - In Gunwallace’s words: The brooding darkness of this seemed to fit the featured comic this week. On the brink of death’s door, the man seeks and seeks, search for succour, absolution of the sins of the body and mind, a cure for his disease. It’s a dark and dangerous universe, there’s no rest for him to be found…

Topics and shownotes

Links

Forum discussion about evil superheroes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/178671/

Featured comic:
Journey Through the Star Sea - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/apr/13/featured-comic-journey-through-the-star-sea/

Featured music:
Journey Through the Star Sea - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Journey_through_the_star_sea/, by Scribbloid, rated T.

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

Mary Sues are always a fun topic!
There are some misconceptions about them though… Mary Sues aren't all female, they can be any gender. Being super powerful or super popular or super pretty etc doesn't equal a Mary Sue, not even if your character super stands out next to all the others, those things ONLY indicate they might possibly be one. What equals a Mary Sue is a character that doesn't have to struggle very hard for anything, a character that is almost universally admired, and or loved (even by the enemy), a character that masters hard skills with ease and ends up teaching the teachers and beating the masters, a character that's destined to succeed and does in spite of internal story logic… All these things and more can add up to make a Mary Sue.

It's why Batman and Superman are NOT automatically Mary Sues even though they stand out and have super powers/abilities/skills. They have a million stories about how they face challenges, how they get people killed, how they lose powers, how people hate them etc. They could be Mary Sues only if they had bad writers.

Rei from the new Star Wars movies is a classic Mary Sue, although very well acted by the awesome Daisy Ridley, she doesn't face any serious struggles in her straight line trajectory to success, she defeats all enemies with ease, masters every skill better than all masters, and is destined to win. So even though she doesn't stand out aesthetically or physically, she qualifies. Similarly, Rick from Rick and Morty can be a bit of a Mary Sue in some stories in that he rarely faces real challenges because he's worked out everything beforehand. Whenever things seem to be going wrong for him you realise he's already engineered the situation so he can win, this makes him less compelling as a character, less immersive and believable.. You find out that even the social challenges he seems to face in some episodes were actually pre-engineered by him to reach exactly the conclusion they did.

The important point there is that it's only in SOME stories. Any character than be a Mary Sue if the writing fails them. but that doesn't mean that's what they always are! The classic story characters from the late 19th century Sherlock Holmes the super detective and Raffles the gentleman thief can be Mary Sues: over-powered and working to imbalance their story environments, but only at times.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Last Child of Gluttony: White lines flash past as your knee comes close to the road… your bike roars as you lean into the curve. The road is a blur of speedlines. Red lights flash bright in front of you, tailing off behind as you whip past them. You’re king of the road, no one can catch you. This music evokes speed, night, racing, roads and heat!

Topics and shownotes

Banes' Mary Sue newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/apr/06/the-bestest-evar/

Our old Mary Sue Quackcast - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/quackcast/episode-211-how-mary-sure-are-you/

Featured comic:
Hierarchy - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/apr/06/featured-comic-hierarchy/

Featured Music:
Last Child of Gluttony - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Last_Child_Of_Gluttony_/ - by Cdmalcolm1, rated M.

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

VIDEO exclusive!
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- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
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Image credit: There's Something About Mary, 20th Century Fox.

Empathy is like sympathy but you don't think about it. It's what happens when you see someone get hurt and you wince in pain watching them, it's when you see a really uncomfortable moment in a sitcom like The Office and you cringe, It's when you feel sad when the characters are sad about something.
Empathy is an important tool for audience immersion- if they're feeling that strongly for the characters then you've got them invested in your story!

Funny story… the topic of this Quackcast was inspired by us talking about the risks of “going commando” and the fact that it can happen to women as well as men. This led us to go looking for photographic and video proof, as you do… and what we saw gave us instant empathy for the poor unfortunate. Hence the Quackcast topic ;)

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to PleaseRewind: Quiet threat, creepy, seeping, strumming, thrumbing, coming CLOSER, inside, peering around, waiting to begin. This is a quiet track filled with an undertone of urgency suggested by the constant quick rhythm and lonely guitar.

Topics and shownotes

Featured comic:
PleaseRewind - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/mar/23/featured-comic-pleaserewind/

Featured Music:
PleaseRewind - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/PleaseRewind/ - by paneltastic, rated T.

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

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
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Folk tales are the primordial ooze of culture. Nobody knows where these stories began, nobody owns them, They're added to and expanded by successive generations. They spread and grow because they have resonance to all sorts of different people across time, different languages, and ethnicities. We talk about that resonance and why these stories still have meaning for us today, why new ones are still being created, and why you're free to use Beauty and the Beast or Snow White and the Seven Dwarves for your own creative projects without worrying about copyright issues.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Lost in the Supermarket: Creepy, piano notes in a white room, stalking, creeping, watching, waiting, preparing to STRIKE, fading, hiding. Frenetic tangles of sound beat at your ears, startling, disorienting, disjointing…

Topics and shownotes

Links


Featured comic:
The God of the River - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/mar/15/featured-comic-the-god-of-the-river/

Featured music:
Lost in the Supermarket - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Lost_in_the_Supermarket/, by TENSA1, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
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!
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Today we chat about the disappearance of another Drunkducker. This fellow was a politician in his daily life and a furry in his downtime. On DD he was the author of the adult furry comic Tina's story, an exceptionally well written slice of life comedy comic with adult elements, staring an anthro poodle lady and her human partner.
This man had his online activity taken and used to destroy his political career. The comic which was his passion was used as ammunition to ruin him. We chat about this in our Quackcast! In light of what happened to Gina Carano for her silly words this is interesting.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Stickman And Cube - Slow, simple. Lo-Fi, like a careful stepping dance between two partners, competing with their moves. First one has a go, then the other, then they start complimenting each other’s movements with their own and eventually dancing together in a single unified performance.


Topics and shownotes

Tina's Story and Grey Muzzle - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/178628/

Councilman Gray Muzzle - https://medium.com/@isaacforn/councilman-gray-muzzle-42fd2285401f

Featured comic:
Shu’Halo: The Balance Overture - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/mar/09/featured-comic-shuhalo-the-balance-overture/

Featured Music:
Stickman And Cube - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Stickman_and_Cube/ - by Pieguy259, rated T.

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

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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Today we're interviewing Bluecuts34 who is one of the crew assembling the DD horror anthology to raise money for Drunk Duck! She's the author of an adult comic (Castle of Joy), so she's on today to talk about adult comics in general! The discussion between Pit, Tantz and Bluefuts34/Mal was fascinating, tackling all different aspects of erotic and porn comics. Castle of Joy is a fantasy X comic with action happening between two lady characters.
Subscribe bellow to see bluecuts34 and hear her tell us what she thinks of Milo Manara and his erotic comics!

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Albion: Majestic and serene… Equally appropriate for a long sweeping view of a huge, brightly lit modern starship with clean lines, or a beautiful mountain tarn, filled with freezing, crystal clear waters reflecting heaven… Classical, awesome and inspiring!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Bluecuts34 comic (WARNING, comic rated A) - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Castle_of_Joy/

Featured comic:
Blake The Goblin Bilker - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/mar/01/featured-comic-blake-the-goblin-bilker/

Featured music:
Albion - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Albion/, by Genejoke, rated T.

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

Today we're talking fans! Isn't it great to have them? We're all fans of something, but as webcomicers having fans means they're a dedicated audience who care about your creative output and send their love and appreciation to you- this really helps you stay motivated and inspired to keep on creating and producing new work. Here we talk about our experiences with fans and of BEING fans.

It helps that we're fans of each other. But we also chat about some of the things we're fans off. What are your fan experiences and what are YOU a fan off?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Slow Burn: A Wildfire Journal - This music smoulders away like red glowing coals. Heat emanates from this thick, tasty bass line, the guitar singes away like fire, picking up volume and power till it’s hosing all and sundry with liquid flame!

Topics and shownotes

Webcomics in the year of your lord, 2020 and now - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/178589/

Featured comic:
Golden Spiral - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/feb/23/featured-comic-golden-spiral//

Featured Music:
Slow Burn: A Wildfire Journal - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Slow_Burn_A_Wildfire_Journal/ - by Arborcides, rated E

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

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!

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Gina Carano who plays Cara Dune in the excellent Star Wars franchise Mandalorian has been fired, as we all know by now… It's a great series, really one of the best incarnations of Star Wars since the original trilogy, and Cara's character was pretty cool. Though I personally didn't really like her lunk-head costume- Fully dressed characters in SciFi with bare biceps always look stupid to me for some reason. Doesn't matter if they're men, women, anthros etc, it's just ugly, especially when they're wearing armour. UGH! Be that as it may Gina said some pretty silly things on social media, and kept saying them after she got in trouble for it aaaaaand then Disney booted her.

So we're having a chat here about that mainly as well as some other subjects… but you'll have to listen to find out what those were! And if you want to find out our PERSONAL views on this state of affairs you'll have to subscribe to our Patreon so you can watch our vid on the subject ;)
Anyway, do you think they should recast her role, come up with a similar character played by someone else, bring one of the other characters back to fill her character's role or just leave the position free?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Hungry Heart! A foreboding intro leads gradually along a dimly shaded garden path, the ground thick with rotting leaves and the air redolent with the smell of decay… and through into a hip, happening disco! Pink lights flashing, the dance floor is slick, black and reflective, everyone is jumping and the beat is pumping!

Topics and shownotes

Webcomics in the year of your lord, 2020 and now - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/178589/

Featured comic:
The GodMode - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/feb/09/featured-comic-the-godmode/

Featured Music:
Hungry Heart - - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Hungry_Heart/ - by Bildosola, rated M.

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

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
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Happy 2021 everybody!!!!! For this fun first of year Quackcast We do a commentary and reaction to the Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta classic sword and sorcery animated movie from 1983, Fire and Ice! Tantz and Banes have never, ever seen it before so it was a new expereince to them and maybe to YOU as well?
Fire and Ice is a simple fantasy story about evil prince Necron who wants to rule over all the lands using his control of a huge glacier. Brave Princess Teegra, Larn (mullet head), and Darkwolf (the Deathdealer), team up to battle to stop him destroying the southern lands. It was done with rotoscoped animation which made the figures look quite realistic. Rotoscoping is basically filming real actors and then taking out the background and painting over their bodies and turning them into cartoons. It's an analogue old fashion way of doing motion capture, like they do in modern 3D CGI animation.

Our Commentary begins at the 16.40 minute mark! To watch along with us, go to https://youtube.com and search for “Fire and Ice”

The musical feature this week that Gunwallace has given us is theme to O Sarilho: Exotic, Eastern, jazzy groove with a European flare. Lush green piano, bone dry desert winds of the jazz flute, hot sun of the bass shining down on the beautiful sands of the solid percussion below, warm, glittering and stable.

Topics and shownotes

Fire and Ice IMDB info - https://https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085542/
A smilar animated fantasy fim from the 1980s, Starchaser: The Legend of Orin - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090065/

Featured comic:
Area 5 Point 1 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/dec/29/featured-comic-area-5-point-1/

Featured Music:
O Sarilho - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/O_Sarilho/ - by shizamura, rated T.

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

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