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The Drunk Duck Quackcast

Books & Literature

The QuackCast is a theduckwebcomics.com podcast hosted by Ozoneocean, Banes and Tantz Aerine who run DrunkDuck, the oldest Webcomic hosting site on the net! They chat about all things webcomics, writing and art techniques, social and cultural issues, pop-culture, and a whole variety of interesting subjects!

Location:

Australia

Description:

The QuackCast is a theduckwebcomics.com podcast hosted by Ozoneocean, Banes and Tantz Aerine who run DrunkDuck, the oldest Webcomic hosting site on the net! They chat about all things webcomics, writing and art techniques, social and cultural issues, pop-culture, and a whole variety of interesting subjects!

Twitter:

@DrunkDuck

Language:

English

Contact:

61438237204


Episodes

Quackcast 678 - Panel order!

3/12/2024
Banes did a really interesting newspost about panel order and how we read comics- not just left to right or right to left but which panel flows to what and how you get the reader to go in the right direction when something isn't intuitive. We're all comic people and we host a comic site so this was perfect for us to tackle! And as we talked it out we realised that clever panel layout can be employed to assist in true nonlinear storytelling. Film and TV attempt to do non-linear but can never ever truly do it, despite extreme degrees of wankiness with some writers film is simply a liner medium and will always be that way because it plays at a specific pace and that can't be changed within the medium. (you have to introduce external conventions like forcing people to skip to other parts). So whenever someone tells you a film does non-linear storytelling because of time-jumps or flashbacks, it's not true, it's always linear. - Computer games trump both comics and film in this regard. But I digress, comic layouts can be clever and confusing. They can enhance or hinder clear storytelling and communication in many ways. Do you experiment with layouts? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Explorer Chronicles - Prepare for a marvellous adventure! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, warm breezes tickle the air, wide green vistas spread out invitingly before you, the distance is lost in the morning haze. This is a light digital orchestra of joy, promise, and anticipation! Topics and shownotes Links This was inspired by Banes' newspost about panels here - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/mar/06/how-do-i-read-this-comic-panels-flow-and-blockage/ Our own examples of strange panel layouts… Bottomless_Waitress https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Bottomless_Waitress/5451939/ Without Moonlight - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Without_Moonlight/5719212/ Typical Strange - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Typical_Strange/5460237 Without Moonlight - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Without_Moonlight/5642287/ Without Moonlight - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Without_Moonlight/5691752/ Featured comic: They’re Both a Kilogram - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/mar/05/featured-comic-theyre-both-a-kilogram/ Featured music: Explorer Chronicles - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Explorer_Chronicles/ - by Aurorajames, rated T. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Duration:00:57:03

Quackcast 677 - You can't spell "Fail" without "AI"

3/5/2024
I remembered that a promised Quackcast was AI: slavery for artists and creators. This is an important subject to cover especially from this angle. It's slavery because it uses our creative products as fuel for it's database training for free and then uses our work to make money for their creators, essentially exploiting us for free. This isn't just about the image generators, it includes crap like chat GPT too: that system steals and repackages the creations of others without credit, payment or any acknowledgment. The use of all this sort of AI (except the ethical ones), is immoral, unethical and is a practice that basically endorses slavery. People are moronically starry-eyed with the idea that it answers their silly queries like a knowledgeable human, not realising the obvious fact that all it can do is repackage other people's writing for them. The fact that they use chat GPT instead of googling the information themselves is an indictment of their own characters. And this is quite apart from the fake “creative” stuff that's generated. How does it make money? Currently most of the companies that developed these programs are offering the use of them openly in order to get free testing from the public and to increase their profiles in hopes of getting billions of dollars in investment from people like Google and Facebook, which is already happening. Already our creativity is making masses of money for a few people and we're not seeing any of it. In the future whoever runs these generative AIs will simply charge for their services if they're not incorporated into other services that we already pay for (either directly or indirectly through advertising). The idea that it will always be the way it is now or that “the genie is out of the bottle” and “there's n going back” is childishly naive and completely ignores the way previous examples of “disruptive” tech are integrated into the commercial world. Great previous examples are the spread of free music, programs, games, and videos on file sharing services in the late 90s. We STILL happily have for all those things now and they're all still multi-billion dollar industries because things adapted and laws were changed. The moral is: if you are an intelligent, moral, ethical person then do not use generative AI. And don't think that this is the Apocalypse and that it's all doom and gloom with no possible hope in sight. The industry will eventually correct itself and there will be a new balance, as there always is. This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Sandra’s Day - A spicy little latin number Chassé’s in with some fancy footwork, does a clever spin, grabs a willing partner and twirls them around the dance floor before finishing up with a hard stomping finale, a crash and a grand exit! Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Adventures of Sena - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/feb/27/featured-comic-adventures-of-sena/ Featured music: Sandra’s Day - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Sandras_Day/ - by Lionclaw, rated M. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Duration:01:00:20

Quackcast 676 - Baby it's cold outside, cultural context

2/27/2024
Oh baby it's cold outside… That's a tricky song, well it's not really but a few years ago the silly pop-culture warriors on Twitter started acting as if the song was all “rapey” with the male in the song trying to pressure the woman into sex. The problem was they were absolutely ignorant of the correct cultural context in quite a misogynist way. In the era the song came from women could not be seen as openly actively wanting sex so they had to play flirting games like the one displayed in the song. The reason the modern “rapey” interpretation is misogynist is because it strips the woman off her power and agency and casts her as an innocent, sexless child with low intelligence, instead of an adult woman with sexual needs actively participating in a game of flirtation with the man she's chosen. Understanding cultural context is vitally important if we don't want to come off at idiots. History, geography, and time all blur this context but usually all you need to do to get the right feel for is to take a moment to familiarise yourself with a few other examples of contemporary media and absorb those differences. Rarely do you need to do more than that, but sometimes wider cultural study is needed. The very worst mistake you can ever make though is to look at something only through modern eyes in complete isolation from examples of stuff from the same time and place. At best, you will NEVER properly understand it, at worst you will come out with all sorts of idiotic theories like the Baby Its Cold Outside morons on Twitter. This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Un Re Stop Comics - Quatermass and the Pit! This is some freaky Delia Derbyshire early Doctor Who stuff. Freaky fractured soundscapes of mind twisting terror and wonder. This track sucks you into another dimension where you see with your ears and hear with your skin. You brain will never be the same! Topics and shownotes Links Oh Baby It's Cold Outside lyrics - https://genius.com/Idina-menzel-baby-its-cold-outside-lyrics Featured comic: Cometman - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/feb/20/featured-comic-cometman/ Featured music: Un Re Stop Comics - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Un_Re_Stop_Comics/ - by lagoticspy, rated E. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Duration:00:59:02

Quackcast 675 - Lurv

2/20/2024
It was Valentine's Day last week so let's talk about lurv. Love makes the world go round, love solves all problems, love heals all, love is eternal, love is all you need, all you need is love… Well those are all the typical and utterly meaningless pop culture platitudes but they sound good. Why meaningless? Because “love” isn't defined, it's a very vague term that can mean a lot, far too vague to be used the way it is in those phrases. Love can involve lust, friendship, patriotism, affection, yearning, passion, honour, protectiveness, stuffiness, obsession, and so much more. And none of those things are the same, they can all be wildly different and yet still be “love”. So that's sort of what we chat about - different kinds of love and how people use it in pop culture, especially webcomics. Whether us part of our genetically coded instinctual imperative to breed and safely transfer our genetic template to another generation or something more complex and nebulous, we try and address quite a lot of it 😚 How do you approach love in your work? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Opposites Attract - Frenetic and full of a buzzing diffuse energy that suffuses everything like a universal static charge. This music drank waaaay too many espressos and red bulls so now it’s bouncing off the walls, tasting colour, and seeing in 5 dimensions. Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: VacMan - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/feb/12/featured-comic-vacman/ Link to interview - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/feb/16/creator-interview-spooky-kitsune/ Lite bites review - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Lite_bites/ -not in yet but will be Featured music: Opposites Attract - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/_Opposites__Attract/ - by Pita Gene, rated T. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Duration:01:00:30

Quackcast 674 - Fashion

2/13/2024
Do you change your style to go with current fashions or do you stick with your own thing and stay independent of changing trends? This is complicated by the fact that most people's styles are often influenced by an earlier fashion they just stuck with, but certainly not always, and some fashions reach a point where they become fully developed and eternal (like Art Deco), so it's worth sticking with those rather than changing to reflect ephemeral trends that are never properly formed. Fashion in design concerns everything! We can talk comics: art style, panel style, lettering style, use of media, writing styles. We can talk clothes, product design, even the design of things that people mistakenly believe are driven by 100% practical concerns like firearms. Fashions in design are everywhere when you know what you're looking for. Webcomics are a good example. They started in the late 90s as both sketchy graphic novel zines, and 4 panel newspaper gag strips. It wasn't till the early 2000s when they really took off and the first webcomic fashion started: gamer comics. These were comics featuring two slacker guys living together as room mates who played video games. These were EVERYWHERE. Since then a lot of fads have blown through webcomics from the rise of the fury comics, Boy love, the manga influence, Experimental comics, the infinite canvas vertical scrollers, fully digitally drawn and coloured comics and more. What sorts of fashions have you noticed in webcomics? Do you follow them or do you go your own way? Talk about any other fashions you feel like too if you want! I love a 1920s and 1930s influence to my clothing style for example. This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Bloodwing Fire Fist Angel - Heavy bass and a fiery guitar walk with slow, ponderous steps, shaking the world and burning it down. This is raw, thick, real, tasty, and slathered in BBQ sauce. I hope you like your comic themes well done! Topics and shownotes Links Fashion discussion thread - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179589/ Featured comic: Curse of the Office Werewoman - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/feb/06/featured-comic-curse-of-the-office-werewoman/ Featured music: Bloodwing Fire Fist Angel - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pitrats/ - by HenryMueller, rated M. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS Next week, possible subject Copyright theft AI “art” (Mindjourney, Stable Diffusion, DallE etc), is digital colonialism: slavery.

Duration:00:59:25

Quackcast 673 - By their deeds you shall know them

2/6/2024
Here we're fulfilling the promise of Quackcast 671 and examining what the art can tell us about the artist! Can certain themes, an art style, choice of imagery, jokes, humour, character opinions, colour choices or anything else tell us anything about the artist? This can be pretty subjective though a lot of stupid and dishonest critics pretend it isn't and tell us great long stories about how this director is “deeply misogynist” because of certain repeated themes - I once watched a youtuber focussing this criticism on Tim Burton with content that was 100% subjective motivated reasoning entirely dressed up as objective fact. It was very silly. It helps if you know a bit more about the artist, their opinions and life when using the art to examine them so you don't go too far off the rails like that youtuber. It still doesn't give you a reliable result but it's better and if you do it well it can at least be entertaining and make sense. In our Patreon vid we tackle our old fave Star Wars and see what that can tell us about George Lucas. A very cool way to begin! And I think we managed to come up with some interesting insights. For the Quackcast first we jokingly examine each other's work in a critical way… then we move on to our absent Quackcast Alumnus Pitface and examine her using her first main comic on DD, Putrid Meat. This was a fascinating examination! If you're still unsure about this sort of thing, take the example of pulp writer Robert E Howard. What does his work tell us about him? We mainly know him as the writer of Conan, muscle bound barbarian and poster child for the old Sword and Sorcery genre. But he was also the creator of many similar stories about other characters from different times and places, some funny and some serious but almost all male, big, strong, clever, crafty, physically fit, and intuitive. Knowing what we do of Howard, a young man from a small Texas town who was incredibly well read but also large and muscular it's easy to say his characters usually represented an idealised version of himself. They shared his small town distrust of the big city types (representatives of decadent civilisation in his stories), as well as his own pretensions to “racial superiority” which was very much off the time and area (Texas in the 1920s and 1930s), but more tailored to himself and NOT the silly Nazi “Aryan” version. His characters initially reflect his own thoughtless misogyny and sexual inexperience, almost verging on homosexuality, but that rapidly changes in his later writing, even notions of racial superiority melting away as his own experience of the world broadened and a relationship with a woman in his life changed his ideas about femininity. This culminates in his last story “Red Nails” which features an evolution and almost a reversal of a lot of his earlier themes, with a female protagonist hero while Conan is relegated to a side character. Reading his stories in the order they were written was well as knowing a little about that man's biography seems to give you a fascinating insight into his thinking and reasoning! THIS sort of thing is where examining the artist through their art shines, even though it is still largely subjective. What does your art tell us about you? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Maynard and Grimm - Grim and hauntingly introspective. This theme takes you down some dark and mysterious paths, into gloom and hidden places. Be careful, it’s very, very dangerous! Topics and shownotes Links Putrid Meat - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/PUTRID_MEAT/ Featured comic: I Am Not The Protagonist - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/jan/30/featured-comic-i-am-not-the-protagonist/ Featured music: Maynard and Grimm - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Maynard_and_Grimm/ - by Phinmagic, rated E. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Tantz Aerine -...

Duration:01:03:33

Quackcast 672 - Fave Fantasy Creatures

1/30/2024
A fun topic this time. We decided to chat about our fave fantasy creatures. Mine was elves, Banes' had the bigfoot and Tantz had dragons! We chat about where our love started, why we think we like the creatures and a bit about the creatures themselves. For me it was because I always identified with the elves I read about in Tolkien and Brian Froud's book on fareies because I was slim and slight, with long hair and sharp features. Banes loved bigfoots because he liked that it was a local monster to him and it was very much into Universal monster type creatures. Tantz loved dragons because they were awesome, beautiful, powerful and mysterious. So what are YOUR fave fantasy creatures and why? Do you agree with what we say about elves, bigfeet and dragons? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Pitrats - Deep, heavy, dark, wide, foreboding and awesome in scale and scope. This is drama writ large and very evocative of the serious story of Pitrats and its well crafted setting. Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: The Brooding Muse - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/jan/23/featured-comic-the-brooding-muse/ Featured music: Pitrats - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pitrats/ - by HenryMueller, rated M. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Duration:01:00:13

Quackcast 671 - Art Vs the Artist

1/23/2024
Art VS the artist! Can you infer something about the creator from their creation? Do you think the art is an accurate reflection of the artist? For THIS Quackcast I wanted to tackle the idea of whether you could judge or infer the mind of the artist from their creation and how wrong some people have been about that, but instead we got all turned around and misdirected and talked mainly about separating the art from the artist when the artist is discovered to have done something horrible, or is at least accused of that. Can you still go back and watch the Cosby Show for example? The position I'd like to go with is one of default separation- we should always have some sort of distance between the art and the creator when we can because if we don't then it's going to be very tricky to be able to really appreciate anything… there's always someone nasty in the mix somewhere and we're doing a disservice to the other people who worked on the thing as well as culture as a whole if we close of access to stuff or shut off our appreciation for things because someone involved in them was later found to be awful. But then there are other aspects to this too: you don't want your consumption of the art to monetarily advantage an awful person, and it also depends on how closely the art is connected with the artist and whatever awful thing they did. We also talked a tiny bit about judging the the creator based on their creation and how unfair that can be. One example of mine is Masumuni Shirrow who created many amazing and influential cyberpunk works like Ghost in the Shell, Apple Seed, Dominion Tank Police, Intron Depot, Black Magic 66 etc. but I feel people unfairly dismiss him because he also loves to draw sexy women. He's a genius with incredible artwork, densely plotted, clever, intellectual, thoughtful, philosophical, yet exciting action cyberpunk stories that have been pretty foundational in our modern culture, and yet some morons dismiss him for also drawing sexy ladies. I hate those people. This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by The Focus - a creepy yet beautiful piece that brings points of colour to a cold grey landscape and eventually ramps up to a climax that sounds as if it was played in reverse with pieces of broken glass. Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Magic Power Ball - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/jan/15/featured-comic-magic-power-ball/ Featured music: The Focus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Focus/ - by Spooktergeist , rated T. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Duration:00:59:42

Quackcast 670 - Wise use of influence

1/16/2024
This Quackcast is about using influence wisely! I had a DD comic creator come to me, apparently a bit distressed at some of the things we'd said in our last Quackcast about drawing adult comics- they had decided to delete their entire webcomic. I checked on google and it turns out they deleted it everywhere, not just DD, even down to their twitter! I've since talked to them some more and got more of the story and made sure they were ok but it was pretty alarming at the time nevertheless. That got me on to the idea of being responsible with your influence: when you have any sort of platform people listen to you and think you have authority. Because of that you have to be mindful and try not to pretend you know more than you do, don't confuse objectivity with subjectivity or opinion with fact, always try to qualify things, add context, and give exceptions. On our Quackcast we talk very authoritatively about ways of doing art, drawing, writing stories, what comics should look like, dos and don'ts etc, and we always have very strong opinions. But the funny thing is that we're usually pretty hypocritical- because we'll do a Quackcast recommending specifically against something and explaining why it's bad and then we'll have another Quackcast parsing that very thing. Sometimes that change of attitude happens during the course of a single podcast! If you listen to us at all, take what we say as advice rather than instructions. We each have fields of expertise on specific things- Tantz on psychology and ancient Greek history, me on Graphic design and art, Banes on music and comedy, we all have expertise and decades of experience running a webcomics hosting site, producing webcomics and podcasting, but we don't know everything about everything! Outside of those fields our knowledge is a bit general and even within them we all know we still have way more to learn! So take what we say with a grain of salt. This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Carl and The Lost Shad0w - The haunting, lost, godless sounds of a creepy bassoon while it moans within the encroaching penumbra as darkness envelops. A climax of uncontrolled chaos shatters the revere in this ode to the tenebrae. Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Donkeyskin - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/jan/09/featured-comic-donkeyskin/ Featured music: Carl and The Lost Shad0w - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Carl_and_The_Lost_Shad0w/ - by Jazzy - rated E. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Duration:00:59:44

Quackcast 669 - sexelant

1/9/2024
The number of the Quackcast is 669 so that means it's time for sexy stuff again! But despite the topic this isn't an adult cast and we keep things to a respectful tone. We chat about how drawing sexy characters can be a lot of fun but they don't have to be realistic or anatomically correct to be sexy; stylised, simplified, or abstract forms can be just as alluring and get the pulse racing, it just depends on the setting, story, and other themes in there. And conversely, a perfectly realistic form with realistic anatomical features can be very unsexy if things aren't done right! We talk about times when sex in a comic is not about sexiness (sex scenes can be very serious or nasty), and also when having sexy looking characters doesn't indicate that it's a sexy comic- just like in real life looking sexy doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex. We talk about how sex scenes in porn, comics, imagery, movies and TV shows normally never reflect reality because actual sex tends NOT to be very visually appealing- sweatiness, cramps, mess, gravity, bad breath, bad smells, bad hair, awkwardness, embarrassment, fatigue, disappointment, boredom, not to mention positions that hide all the interesting things from the viewer. Because what is so compelling about sex is NOT actually the bizarre reality, it's the procreation instinct of the viewer. That's tied up with our physiology, partly in our brains but also to do with various organs and glands that secrete hormones, pheromones and other chemicals which drive our behaviour. Sexiness is a symbolic shortcut to evoke that, which is why we don't ever how to show sex in its full gritty reality: the viewer does the majority of the work, they only focus on the thing that suggests to them the idea of sex and heir instincts take over. Which is also why when you normally think of sex you don't usually think about the the ‘mess’ so much. Then we briefly touch on some sex myths that media perpetuates mindlessly, like the idea that smoking is required after sex, or that losing one's virginity has to involve any pain or blood, or that hymens MUST be broken, and that the “pop your cherry” phrase is actually pretty disgusting and perpetuates a bad sex myth.. What are some sex myths you see in media? This week Gunwallace was still overwhelmed with holiday duties so I picked out a sexy them from the past. Is this a theme for a comic? No! It could be a theme for X Up, it does have some Wah Wah guitar (the sexiest guitar), but it isn’t, this is a theme for the number 6. The number that a certain DDer, Plymayer, gives to comics when he feels they deserve it: “A 6 out of 5”. This is a theme for a concept, the concept of a supportive DDer, To plymayer, and to every 6 he has ever handed out. (Okay, so it’s also a theme for X Up … but don’t tell anyone). Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Carl and The Lost Shad0w - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/jan/02/featured-comic-carl-and-the-lost-shad0w/ Featured music: X up - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/X_UP/ - by Plymayer, rated A. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Duration:01:01:47

Quackcast 668 - Year in Review

1/2/2024
Happy new year. Happy 2024! We're doing a year in review show this time because what else do you talk about in the last recorded thing/first presented thing of the year? We chat a bit about the progress of Drunk Duck's massive update and we each talk about what we personally achieved with our own webcomics- Tantz with Verdant and finishing Without Moonlight, Banes with Kaiju Valentine, me with Pinky TA and Bottomless waitress with Banes, and our new 3 way group comic called Key of Dreams, which is still in the planning stages. In 2023 Tantz finished her first volume of Without Moonlight and started on her new fantasy webcomic Verdant involving magic, witches and giant bugs. Banes tackled a number of things but the standout was his cheeky comedy romance comic Kaiju Valentine about a normal sized man and his gigantic girlfriend. For me it was finally finishing the 8th chapter of Pinky TA and starting on the second chapter of Bottomless Waitress with Banes. Now we're all looking forward to starting Key of Dreams this year. It's a dream story with ancient Greek gods based on a script written by Tantz, with artwork by all of us. What things did you mange to achieve in 2023? What will you be starting in 2024? This week Gunwallace was busy with Christmas and new year so instead I dipped into out stores and puled out a prize, Gunwallace's them to Kings Club - This is a modern mafia movie soundtrack, starting off eerie and atmospheric and then ramping up the cool and bombastic. There’s traditional theme bolstered by a hard gritty rock techno edge. Topics and shownotes Links Tantz: Verdant - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Verdant/ Without Moonlight - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Without_Moonlight/ Banes: Kaiju Valentine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Kaiju_Valentine/ Banes & Ozoneocean: Bottomless Waitress - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Bottomless_Waitress/ Ozoneocean: Pinky TA - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pinky_TA/ Featured comic: The Focus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/dec/26/featured-comic-the-focus/ Featured music: Kings Club - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Kings_Club/ - by AmeliaP, rated M. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Duration:01:04:26

Quackcast 667 - Merry Christmas and Interview with John Celestri!

12/27/2023
Merry Christmas! Today we interviewed John Celestri, a new member of DD and a very cool person. John has worked as an animator on some of the coolest shows in the 70s and 80s. He was the guy behind Boba Fet on the Star Wars Christmas special, he animated She-Ra, He-Man, Rock and Rule, the video game Dragon's Lair and more! He's a true legend. We're making our weekly DD Patreon vid free for everyone to see as a Christmas present, so go check it out: https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck John is a truly interesting guy. he's been working as an animator, writer, illustrator and creator all his life. It was so amazing to talk to someone who helped create the original She-Ra and He-man! And that maddening game Dragon's Lair that no one could ever get anywhere through, he actually animated that! Amazing stuff. On DD he's hosting his comic Bloodwing Fire Fist Angel. He chats to us about that and more, so tune in to hear what he has to say and have a look at our free vid on Patreon. Merry Christmas from Drunk Duck This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Delos - A haunting, nightmarish horn draws you into a vast creepy echoing world, lit by the sparse, lyrical plucked notes on a melodic electric guitar. This is regal, scary and terrifying at the same time. The sounds of a vast underground desert cave at night. Topics and shownotes Links Bloodwing Fire Fist Angel - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Bloodwing_Fire_Fist_Angel/ John Celestri on DD - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/JohnCelestri/ John Celestri on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2Jkh1TsKDUBhR3Wa5a3o_g John Celestri art for sale - https://johncelestricomics.square.site/ Featured comic: Spring - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/dec/19/featured-comic-spring/ Featured music: Delos - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Delos/ - by Austinjabberwocky, rated M. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Duration:01:01:22

Quackcast 666 - Evil

12/19/2023
We're up to number 666 Quackcasts so our topic this time is evil! Evil is a complicated subject, we all think we know what it is but we really don't, there are just so many aspects to it so it's very hard to fully encompass. Broadly “evil” can be something very subjective: anything that runs counter to our own well-being as individuals- people, things and situations that do us harm. You can expand that to your property, your family, friends, acquaintances, pets etc. As that definition gets bigger though to encompass your neighbours, street, suburb, city, state, and country it becomes more objective bit by bit, till we come to the idea that “evil” is something that runs counter to human rights, or the existence of life in general, or the right to self determination etc. A more objective view of evil. But there's MORE! There's an embedded idea in our culture that “evil” is caused by external forces, smoothing that's quite popular in a few religions and myths. Characters like the devil, Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, or demons which encapsulate, perpetuate, influence, control and characterise “evil”. They embody it, they work to spread it, they influence people with it. The idea is that everything evil in the world is caused by them. It's often wrongly assumed that all religions are structured like the Abrahamic ones (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) with a good and evil duality and “evil” being associated with the underworld in some way, but that's really just caused by looking at them from a mainly Christian lens. Death and the underworld aren't evil in most religions and rather than having strictly good or evil characters, “evil” is usually a matter of context and any character can be a mixture of both good and evil. There's a good reason for this type of externalisation of evil though- by characterising it in such a symbolic way it helps us better understand different aspects of it and look at it from different angles. After-all characterising, symbolising and simplifying is how we better understand all reality, that's what's behind mathematics, physics, and all sciences really. The last big evil factor we chat about is something we could also call “malice”, that is the active act of deliberately committing evil as opposed to simply doing something that is defined as “evil” for, another reason, i.e. taking your parking spot because they need it, killing a person in the line of duty as a police officer, not holding the elevator doors open for you because they were in a hurry… Instead they do those things because they want to cause harm and they enjoy it. This is how we like to portray psychopaths and serial killers in fiction. But even with malice there is a spectrum: on one end the person does the thing because they want to cause pain and distress, on the other end they do it simply because their own needs and pleasure are all that matter, they know that they cause you to suffer but that's irrelevant to them. So the big take away from this is that there are a lot of different ways of thinking about “evil” and it's often a spectrum rather that just one solid thing. But how do you define evil? How do you use it in your creations? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by On The Edge - Star Trek Adventures - I wager 20 Quatloos on the Vulcan… This is an epic, awesome intro, it builds steam from a portentous beginning with digital French horns and strings, gathering urgency and energy as it rockets into something grander and more dangerous. Trumpets blast us to a new dimension. Please note that the ‘comic’ is by Tantz, Banes, Ozoneocean, Genejoke, not just me. And if other people want to submit drawings to it we would be more than happy to look at them and make it a true community project. Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Romancing Lucifer - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/dec/12/featured-comic-romancing-lucifer/ Featured music: On The Edge - Star Trek Adventures - ...

Duration:00:57:43

Quackcast 665 - Eyes

12/12/2023
This week our talk is an art one: eyes! We talk about how to draw them, adding meaning and expression, the way different cultures use them, different styles for doing eyes, reflection, shadow, focus and a million other things! Eyes anchor a face, they're THE most important landmark because humans are instinctively drawn to them as are most other creatures because eyes are an ancient thing that connects most animals, not just mammals but birds, reptiles, fish, crustaceans, arthropods, arthropods, insects and more. And for this reason hiding eyes or blocking them or even removing them is a great indication of evil or that something is wrong. There are Soooo many ways of drawing them from simple dots, circles within circles, lines, or going full on with something more realistic. While not the first to develop it, Disney is famous for popularising a particular style of big eyes, which notably went on to influence early manga creators and that in turn became the main style throughout eastern Asia in animation and comics. Large eyes in narrative art in the region have been honed to an intricate art form with extremely complicated reflections, intricate colourings, and a multitude of expressions and indications of character and mental states. Typically western comic art uses eyebrows and eyelids to a lessor extent to indicate expressions. Usually eyes are either proportionally realistic or in more stylised art they tend to be large and simplified. And while the eyes in manga style art are able to take the entire burden of representing expression, in western art they tend to have to work in concert with other facial features like the mouth, brows, set of the jaw and creases on the face. One of the toughest things with eyes is to make both of them the same. A trick is to simply copy and paste to mirror one eye. In the old days you'd use tracing paper, carbon paper etc… Ironically though if you make both eyes too perfectly mirrored and alike things look LESS real and relatable because in reality eyes are rarely perfectly mirrored and when they are it's a little weird, though it's not something you notice most of the time because your brain automatically corrects for things like that. The upshot is that you shouldn't get too crazy about making sure the eyes you draw match perfectly, as long as one isn't too tilted or higher than the other. We talk a LOT more about this on the Quackcast of course… So how do you go about drawing eyes? Do you prefer the manga look or the Western approach? Do you have any issues with drawing eyes? This week Gunwallace was too busy to we replayed an old fave, Gunwallace's theme to Android Blues - Cold blue, ancient mechanisms, clicking and pulsing… springs contracting, gears turning, cams slipping, servos spinning, capacitors whining… the machine works perfectly and mysteriously. NEXT UP - Quackcast 666. Something evil… Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Short changed - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/dec/05/featured-comic-short-changed/ Featured music: Android Blues - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Android_Blues/ - by Stahlberg, rated A. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Duration:01:01:59

Quackcast 664 - Parody and satire

12/5/2023
We're talking about parody and its evil twin satire. There are good parodies and bad ones but we feel the better parodies are the indirect ones that make fun of and exaggerate the theme or the vibe of something rather that simply doing a direct copy but with jokes; For example, Austin Powers and Kingsmen are indirect parodies of spy films, Blazing saddles is an indirect parody of Westerns, The Princess Bride and Shrek are indirect parodies of fairy tales, Galaxy Quest and the Orville (first season) are indirect parodies of TV SciFi shows etc. Direct parodies can be great too, like Spaceballs, or McGruber, but they run more of a risk of by relying on the fact that you've seen the original. Another main type pf of parody are the grab-bag ones that include direct parody scenes from all sorts of different IPs, these are probably the weakest of the type. Things like Hotshots, Meet the Spartans, and Not another teen Movie are good examples. Finally there's satire, which is parody with a point, sometimes those points are very sharp! satire uses parody to make clever comments, it's not just making fun of the tropes it uses. Good examples are The Life of Brian, and The Onion website, Whachtmen (the comic and movie), The Boys (TV series and comic). Horrible examples are the fake news sites that use “satire” as a defense when in reality they only exist to spread misinformation, propaganda and sell advertising. It's a genre I love when it's done right, with things like Dodgeball, Tropic Thunder, Team America, and Cold Comfort Farm What are your fave types of parody? What are your fave parodies and satires? Can you name any parody comics here on DD? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Huckleberry - an eclectic mix of scattered, percussive themes that coalesce into a dance of multicoloured joy and energy. Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: The Alphahumans - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/nov/28/featured-comic-the-alphahumans/ Featured music: Huckleberry - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Huckleberry/ - by Matt Comics, rated E. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Duration:01:00:55

Quackcast 663 - AI and The Duck

11/28/2023
This Quackcast tackles the issue of AI comics on Drunk Duck. We're discussing either a ban or rules that would enable them to be posted under conditions. We also talk about AI generated imagery and the issues with it and well as its future and the relationship between it and artists. This is a very complicated and much misunderstood subject. First, there are two main types of generative AI: we'll call them ethical and non ethical. Ethical AI is trained using licensed and copyright free material. Non-ethical AI is trained using stolen material. The benefit of using ethically trained AI like the one Adobe created is that copyright isn't at issue and allows the creation of imagery that can actually be used commercially without problems. There are many myths about generative AI: 1. It allows a person with no skill to be able to create art: No it doesn't, it allows them to ask a program to follow a broad guideline to make something that roughly matches text. People have ALWAYS been able to do this by HIRING artists to make images for them. The humans could do a better job of understanding instructions. Generative AI steals jobs from those people. 2. The purpose of free unethically trained generative AI is to democratise the process of creation: It isn't. The purpose of this type of AI is to increase the share prices of the companies that developed them. The process is exploitative at every level. first it involved the theft of art to train a machine, then it makes low quality imagery for users so that the companies can hype their buzz, get press and become established and popular enough that they increase in value and can be bought for billions. 3. It's fair use, transformative art: Under copyright these are exceptions that cover normal human use of images, like satire, fan art, collage, sampling etc. These are judged on a case by case basis because they are “exceptions”, but they ONLY cover things a human has done, not a machine, which would be moronic if it did. And they can never cover people taking art without payment or permission and feeding it TO a machine. 4. Just like any new process, photography or digital art etc: Another instance that's an obvious myth. This isn't a new process because it involves no creative work by the instigator, all you're basically doing is getting an automated free commission. Commissions have been around since the dawn of time, they're not new and there's no issue with them. The issue is that the thing you're commissioning is powered by theft. 5. The same things as sprite comics or fan art: Wrong again. The use of sprites is covered under fair use but is governed by the copyright holders (Namco, Sega, Nintendo). They can decide at any time to go after sprite art creators either en mass or just the most profitable. They choose not to because it's generally transformative enough and helps with brand awareness. Exactly the same with fanart 6: It's like an artist using references or taking inspiration: A thoughtless myth. The generative AI programs with their data-sets are NOT humans, they are machines like a toaster, car or a CNC mill that cuts out aluminium iPhone bodies. Creative imagery performs the function of fuel for these things, its an essential ingredient and they can't work without it. 7: It's Pandora's box. Once it's opened there's no going back: Pandora's box is a myth that concerns a girl accidentally releasing all the evils into the world from her box and once released there was no turning back. It has no bearing on reality, it's only used as a conceptual tool for describing things but it's actually a fallacy. The Pandora's box fallacy was used extensively back in the early 2000s to describe the issue of rampant piracy of games, music and video. People claimed there was no going back and there would be no way for musicians, game makers, software engineers, or studios to make money anymore, that has proved utterly untrue. The threats to copyright were addressed in many...

Duration:01:04:05

Quackcast 662 - Drunkduck tales

11/21/2023
Webcomic communities have different cultures, but why and where do they come from? DD's culture is pretty chill, we're reasonably neutral and accepting of a wide range of ideas and perspectives, we're egalitarian to a very high degree, we don't do cliques, we don't exclude, we don't tend to jump on culture wars… We don't like tribalism of partisanship. So why are we like that? Well the culture of DD is strongly tied to our distant origins in 2002 back when we were formed, 21 years ago in the early days of the internet when things online were just getting good. Dylan Squires, aka Volte6, had some spare time and decided to invest it in creating a webcomic hosting site. Those weren't really a thing back then, there weren't even that many webcomics online back in 2002 and social media wasn't a thing yet either. Dylan was a Gen Xer. He started out by contacting a bunch of webcomicers and offering them hosting on DD. There were so many benefits to it: Free hosting, comments, fan resources, forums and other things that were REALLY hard for people to set up themselves back then without programming knowledge. Out of the people who first joined the site, Ronson, Black Kitty, Spang, and Skoolmunkee became the administration team. They were all successful webcomicers in their own right and all of a similar age to Dylan: all Generation X. -I didn't join till 2003 and didn't become an admin till 2007! The 19th of March to be exact. Gen Xers and the older Millennials who started out on DD from the beginning didn't grow up with the internet or social media. They dived into the net and learned about it from it's early days in the 90s when they were in their 20s and 30s. This gave them a very different character to younger Millennials and Gen Z who're more embedded with the net because they grew up with a world bound by it. In particular social media has made people more extreme, partisan, tribal and more likely to be embedded in social bubbles because the algorithms used to encourage user participation and retention force people into social echo-chambers and push them towards extremest positions by only showing them things that elicit strong reactions. The original admin team on DD were all educated, professional young adults, with successful webcomics. All were North American. None were overly political or religious but they weren't anti-those things either. They were an accepting crowd with neutral views on most topics, back when the internet wasn't driven mainly by social media outrage and fake pop-culture wars. So they created a very welcoming and open community. The only other webcomic host at the time was the Keespace/Keenspot duopoly which ingrained a culture of “haves” and have-nots“: Keenspot were the picked few webcomicers who got to join the elite group with special privilege on the site while Keenspce consisted of everyone else. Many of the Keenspot creators actively looked down on the Keenspacers, so much so that they eventually changed the name of that part of their site to ”Comic Genesis" so they couldn't be confused with the Keenspot comicers. Drunk duck was a massive contrast to this! We vowed never to have a classist structure and to always stay egalitarian. Indeed the most skilled, professional, and established comicers on DD have always mixed freely with newbies and vice versa, everyone is always ready to help one another. Drunk Duck was always built around the idea of community. When Drunk Duck had its major collapse in about 2012 we lost a lot of users to other sites, mainly Comic Fury which had been created by one of our own disaffected people. They went there because it had a similar feel to us (since it was roughly based on us). It was founded by a younger Millennial so the social feel was quite different. At the stage a lot of the users who went there and stayed were younger Millennials because they had just been starting out and needed a stable host, they also hadn't been around on DD long enough to...

Duration:01:14:32

Quackcast 661 - Steaks... stakes

11/14/2023
Stakes are a part of a story. What does a character want? What means the most to the character? What are they after, what do they care about? Stakes can be really subjective like that and they can also be objective and more universal like death, debt, a threat to a home, nation, planet or even the universe. The most important thing though is that you can communicate the value of those stakes to the audience! It doesn't actually matter WHAT the stakes are as long as the audience understands that they're important. Sooooo so many writers seem to have zero idea about that. One idea is that you need to “raise the stakes” in order to get the audience to be more invested, which certainly works but what a bad writer will always do is just crudely add onto the objective stakes: “Ten people were in danger but NOW it's 500! But wait… now it's 6000. OMG, now it's a million! Oh wow, the fate of the known universe hangs in the balance!”. The truth is that at a certain point it loses value, we just can't relate very well to bigger and bigger numbers and the “known universe” is an empty concept to most people. To really raise the stakes you have to pick things that the audience CAN care about and/or show that it's really affecting the characters in a way the audience can symbathise with. If you write it correctly, a character losing their favourite pen can be a tragedy of earth shaking proportions and them needing to get it back can be an epic tale of redemption and self discovery without them ever leaving their office. The idea here was inspired by Banes' newspost on the Marvel films. They're a great case in point, the higher they make the stakes the less we care. The first Avengers movie was a lot of fun till the end when they were trying to save New York city, fighting hoards of meaningless CGI blobs: “raising the stakes” didn't make things more interesting. It was more engaging when they were talking and just fighting Loki because these were stakes we could more easily relate to. It's a pattern that repeats in a lot of marvel movies and TV shows. Sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they get it wrong. How do YOU approach stakes? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by I wont Marry the General as the Dragon Lords only Daughter - A dense, layered palace of a tune here, it sounds like the theme to a major Hollywood film. We have a lot of body, depth and power to this sound. All electronic. You can just imagine mysterious opening scenes, titles fading into view and flicking of screen as you wait in anticipation for the story to begin. Topics and shownotes Links Inspired by Banes' newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/nov/08/mcu-scraps-do-overs-and-to-reboot-or-not-to-reboot/ Featured comic: Adkien - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/nov/06/featured-comic-adkien/ Featured music: I wont Marry the General as the Dragon Lords only Daughter - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/I_wont_Marry_the_General_as_the_Dragon_Lords_only_Daughter/ - by ShriekingMagpie, rated A. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Duration:00:59:04

Quackcast 660 - The Multiverse

11/7/2023
Multiverses are really popular in fiction right now, eg. Dr Strange into the mouth of Madness, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Flash, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Rick and Morty, and The Loki TV series (which I love). So what is a multiverse and why is it used? Basically when multiple universes coexist at the same time, either there are a few and they're widely different or they are infinite and every possibility exists. In the real world the idea of multiple universes is purely theoretical and a relatively minor part of various quantum physics theories, while in fiction it's an important tool for mashing together separate IPs that wouldn't normally fit together and also telling interesting stories with parallel elements and “what-if” scenarios. There are some obvious logical issues with the way a lot of multiverse ideas are presented in fiction, though the concept is clearly magical rather that scientific in the way it's used it should STILL have logical consistency in order to be plausibly believable. One of the biggest issues is that the multiverse is too anthropomorphic and deterministic: humans are far too important, different worlds are “created” when people do different things, and in most of the different world the same people, places, and events exist and even when they don't the same characters exist, ie. no matter which world or who it is there will always be a Spiderman. This idea wouldn't be supported be any multiverse theory. The easiest multiverse idea to use in fiction is the one where any random change produces a split and a new world. These random changes would NOT be whether you decide to go down a a different path because that is a very complex change an not in any way random, it'd be about simple particles in the quantum realm doing different things because those are the only truly random events. The trouble is this would happen incalculable times every femtosecond in every part of every new universe, but it WOULD produce infinite world worlds where many different possibilities exist. There would be many, many, many almost identical versions of the same world with no visible change at all, there would be many worlds with all sorts of small changes and big changes but still having the same events and people in them and there would be just as many worlds where everything is different and no people in them at all. The trouble is that the kind of changes would be more limited than we think despite the infinite nature of the world because “initial conditions” play a huge part. The thing about initial conditions is that if they're different the end result will never be the same no matter how many times the scenario runs, and you also can't accurately predict what the result will be at any point unless you know the initial conditions that generated it. What this means that time will play a huge part: the point a which the universes diverge is significant to the amount of change and the kind of changes that will happen. But these changes could only involve things that are possible- there couldn't be a universe where there is a version of you that was born a different sex or ethnicity for example because those changes would have to have happened too far back for the conditions to have resulted in YOU. Every time they would result in someone else quite different from you living in a scenario that was also very different. Eg. the initial conditions were different so the result can't be the same and the further back the changes happen the more divergent the result, regardless of the infinite nature of the variations. This also mean you can't have a version of New York where magic exists, or a version of earth where we have two suns or something huge like that. But a world where you have a beard, where you became an accountant instead, where you died in childbirth, where you won a Nobel prize at 21, or where you're evil and have a goatee etc are all possible. Anyway, what are you fave depictions of...

Duration:01:16:08

Quackcast 659 - Happy Halloween 2023

10/31/2023
Happy Halloween! The time of spookiness and ghosts. Spooks messed up the cast so the sound quality is really bad I'm afraid, I tried to do what I could to fix it though. This week Banes, I, and Tantz are chatting about Halloween and related subjects like scary movies and things. I personally only like comedy horror, or whacky horror films where things are taken too far so I don't identify with the characters and feel bad because of it. I find I identify with characters in film far too much (if it's realistic), the genre doesn't matter, it can be comedy, horror, murder mystery, romance whatever, so that means if the tone is too tragic and depressing it usually makes me feel extremely down. For that reason a lot of horror doesn't appeal to me unless I can distance myself from the characters somehow. So comedy helps, or if it's super-over-the-top and whacky like The Nun. How do you go with horror and did you dress up for Halloween? Bellow you can view our Patreon vids FREE this week and see us in our Halloween gear. This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by History, An Intimate little epic fantasy - A royal fanfare trumpets the arrival of this epic beginning, hinting at gig things to come and adventure in mist shrouded lands of high mountains, deep valleys, and shaded forests. Topics and shownotes Links This week we made our Patreon vids available free to all because we liked our costumes so much! We didn't have much to say this time because we don't usually dress up this much so we were just obsessed with how we all looked but at least you get to SEE us and you can finally see the elusive Banes! Click on the links bellow to see the vids on Patreon. First Halloween vid - https://www.patreon.com/posts/dd-patreon-vid-91934504 Second Halloween vid - https://www.patreon.com/posts/dd-patreon-vid-91932022 Featured comic: The Spook Control - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/oct/23/featured-comic-the-spook-control/ Featured music: History - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/History/ - by Slickpuppy, rated M. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Duration:01:24:47