My idea was to talk about social pariah characters, people who it's socially acceptable to laugh at, despise, or even hate. They can be the uncool people, the dorks, the dags, the idiots, the overweight, the ugly, the old, the out of touch, the over the hill… On the extreme end they could be monsters and criminals. Generally they're written pretty two dimensionally as a collection of cliches, but when the writing goes beyond that to lend them humanity is when it goes to the next level.

I'm not talking about underdogs or members of minority groups because people should already know better than to write them as stereotypes or to laugh at them for being what they are. I'm not talking about “punching up” or “down” or sideways either.
A good example would be one of those Mansplaining “M'Lady” characters: a fat, young white guy with a thin goatee beard, in a black stingy brim fedora hat and black trench coat, worn over a t-shirt and cargo shorts. It's socially acceptable to universally despise that person, and it can even feel good to have someone like that who everyone is allowed to laugh at. Other examples are the Boomer, the Karen, the angry vegan woman, nerds, pervs, trainspotters, Furries, Bronies, and Treckies.

My conjecture is that an ordinary or bad writer just uses them as is and leverages the popular social derision surrounding them for humour. While a really good writer goes beyond the cliches and gives the character some humanity. Dwight in the US version of The Office started out as a character we loved to hate, but as the show wore on and he gained more humanity he became an immeasurably better character. King of the Hill is a show entirely dedicated to the sort of people pop-culture gives us permission to mock and deride and yet it shows us their vulnerabilities which makes them so much better than the characters in Family Guy who are similarly despised people but with no other dimension.

One of the main faults of the second Knives Out movie, Glass Onion, is that the characters are mostly all built around cliches we're supposed to despise, and they don't go beyond that. I liked the film but it wasn't as clever it thought it should be

By all means start off with a boomer, Karen, angry vegan lady or a Mainsplainer, pick the low hanging fruit jokes, get all the easy laughs, but then turn things on their head. Go deeper. Show them as more than a simple cliches, more than a cutout! That will enhance your story supremely, make your characters more interesting, the drama more effective and your jokes funner.


This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Prince of the Moonlight Stone - Mysterious sounds of the cold, snowy, moonlit, pine-forest… Percussion heats up and leads us down into the steaming jungles in the valleys below, away from the cry of the wolf and the savage bite of the cold mountain winds.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Explorer Chronicles - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/24/featured-comic-explorer-chronicles/

Featured music:
Prince of the Moonlight Stone - - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/_Prince_of_the_Moonlight_Stone/ - by KillerSandy, rated M.


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

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Talking about AI again but this time our subject is different: Does it have a negative influence on culture?
AI creative tools in the hands of an actual skilled creator opens up amazing possibilities. Real creative people will be able to use them as the tools they are, to mix and match with their own knowledge, talents and many different creative sources to produce novel and interesting things!

Culture is invigorated by people making novel things, but the way these creative AIs are designed they produce essentially only derivative content. This can be tempered by the human factor of the person using it, especially if they come to it with a lot of background skill and if they don't intend to simply “stop” with the AI produced art but rather intend to use it as part of a larger process. However, because this technology mostly attracts non-creative people most AI produced creative work is not creative (be it writing, video, music, games, or visual art). The commercial pressure to produce the cheapest and quickest products will mean that creative people are largely pushed out of creative jobs and replaced with non-skilled, non-creative people using AI tools, which will have a degrading effect on culture produced in the commercial industry.

That can have a negative impact on culture as a whole, especially as younger people grow up with it as the norm, not knowing anything else.


This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Meatware - Grinding, red, churning, twisting, growling, processing, heavy, liquid, viscous, thick, fibrous, chunky, fatty, sinewy… a heavy electronic sound that gets you deep in your bones.

Topics and shownotes


Tantz's AI newspost on culture - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/20/the-ai-problem/

Adventure thread - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179254/

Featured comic:
American Pantheon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/16/featured-comic-american-pantheon/

Featured music:
Meatware - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Meatware/ - by TheJagged, rated M.

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

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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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The Saying goes that The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side of the Fence. Envy and jealously are destructive, negative feelings that either lead to bad outcomes or just make you feel pretty crappy. It especially affects creators! We get down about our artwork, our writing, the popularity of someone else's comic etc and we wish WE were as good as them and wonder why we aren't… maybe we're just not as good? If we could only just have their talent, their luck, their skill then WE'D be awesome too. it's just not fair…

Banes heard a pretty cool solution to this on a podcast once. The idea is that you CAN have those things you're envious off, you can have all of their cool traits, popularity, all the good stuff, but ONLY if you're also willing to accept all the crap in those person's lives as well. Would it really be worth it? To swap your life completely with theirs and not to be yourself any longer?

Or in a more realistic sense, you can look at those people who're beautiful and thin, or big and buff and muscular, those people with fantastic guitar skills, parkour champions, amazing athletes and dancers, and envy what they have… But YOU can have that as well, YOU can be like that, you just have to put in the thousands of hours of work it requires to have those skills, the thousands of dollars of beauty products, training and surgery, physical complications, the injuries, all the struggle and privation, all the denying yourself of life's many pleasures, tasty foods, TV watching time, time with friends and family… Because that's usually the true cost of the things with envy in others. The difference is that they're prepared to pay it.

Even super wealthy people like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos paid a cost to get where they are: would you be prepared to make those bad deals, to cheat and scam strangers, friends, family, exploit others for your own personal gain again and again and again, are you prepared to wear that on your conscious and your soul? If so then the billionaire life is for you. :)

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Silences Echo - A sophisticated piano jazz bar, with a faint touch of latin rhythm… almost a tango. People dancing close, tension in the air, the energy is crisp and flowing with this short, punchy tune!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Banes' excellent and encouraging newspost on his Cure for Jealously - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/11/the-cure-for-jealousy/

Featured comic:
Meatware - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/10/featured-comic-meatware/

Featured music:
Silences Echo - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Silences_Echo_/ - by Hykarige, rated M.


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

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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Adventure is a fun genre! Not as many things get made for it these days but it used to be hugely popular in the past. It's one of my favourite genres and this is what we're chatting about for the Quackcast. What IS adventure? I think it usually involves a whole lot of different things like exploration, action, discovery, heroic protagonists, rivals, travel, exotic places, fights etc. It can be set in the past or in the modern day. Good examples are The Mummy, Indiana Jones, the original Tomb Raider, the two new Jumanji films, Strange World, Pirates of the Caribbean, Ducktales, Tailspin, Jungle Cruise, Uncharted and so much more. I'd love to know your faves!

Adventure stories have a basis in reality, real life explorers like Sir Richard Francis Burton, Marco Polo, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. And from this background there's a negative connotation in the adventure story DNA: because it comes from a world of colonialism and imperialism. Adventure often involves an emissary from the known world in the west going off to the unknown world in the east, Africa, or South America to see exotic places and discover new things, which of course are not exotic or new to the locals that actually live there!
But even so I think it has a valid rationale because these things were largely unknown and exotic to the wider community in the west and this was the way they found out about them. Adventure stories also work perfectly well from other perspectives- the adventurer can originate in Africa, China, Polynesia and wherever else and they can be exploring Europe or any other part of the world and it works just as well.

No theme from Gunwallace this week because of the holidays, so more best-offs! These are the two themes Gunwallace made for Bottomless Waitress from Quackcasts 423 and 490 -
- Theme number one is such a happy sounding, Southern, joyful track, filled with banjo and layers of guitar, twanging away… bringing notes of sunshine, natural wood, the light glinting softly through tree leaves and making dappled shadows on the ground… Perfect for an advertising jingle!
- Theme number two: Revenge of the banjo! We start off with a tractor roaring into life and a banjo opening us up to the sounds of rural Midwest America- wide open corn fields, golden wheat, grain silos, quiet back-roads, haystacks, big red barns, and a kinky little diner where the coffee is bottomless and so are the staff!

Topics and shownotes

Adventure thread - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179254/

Featured comic:
Arkin Blade - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/03/featured-comic-arkin-blade/

Featured music:
Bottomless Waitress - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Bottomless_Waitress/ - by Ozoneocean and Banes, rated M.

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

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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Happy 2023! This was the last Quackcast of 2022 and the FIRST Quackcast of 2023! I was recording during 2023 while Tantz, Banes and Pit were still stuck in 2022 because of the time difference between us, so we straddled the years!
We had the full crew here of myself, Banes, Tantz Aerine, and Pit Face! We chatted about what we did with comics in 2022, what movies we saw and the issue of “AI Art” and how it impacts actual artists. It was a really cool talk!

What movies did YOU see in 2022 and what big changes happened to you?

It was lovely to see Pit again and you can see us all in great detail in the new video format on our Patreon video for those clever $5 and up supporters :)

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Short changed - Snappy, happy beat, with a joyful repealing piano tune. This is such a simple piece but is so nice and happy and friendly! This makes a lovely new start to the new year ^_^

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Withdrawn - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/dec/27/featured-comic-withdrawn/

Featured music:
Short Changed - - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Short_changed/ - by Kiddermat, rated T.


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

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