The Drunk Duck Quackcast

Betrayal is an interesting thing to use in fiction. You can have betrayal of your nation, your organisation, friends, lovers, religion, beliefs, self. In stories it can be used to add a nasty twist or completely change the flow of events and alter the balance of power in a dramatic way! It can be devastating in relationships. The story of Judas betraying Christ for 30 pieces of silver is one of the most famous betrayal stories and became so iconic that the phrase “30 pieces of silver” or just the word “Judas” became synonymous with the act. Of course the inspiration for the best treachery and betrayal comes from real life and the names of the betrayers often echo down through history. IFrom Rome we have Brutus, in the USA the name “Benedict Arnold” has a similar meaning to “Judas”, the 20th century gave us the term “quisling” after the Norwegian political leader Vidkun Quisling who sold his country out to the Nazis. Betrayal is a horrible thing to experience, but it can be very useful in fiction- as long as you don't also betray your audience by not properly bracketing, contextualising or justifying the betrayal, i.e Captain America and the “Hail Hydra” fiasco. Betrayals are an extremely powerful tool because they can absolutely and very suddenly reverse and alter plot, character relationships, story structure and the audience expectations all on one fell swoop, so it's best not to handle them in such an amateur, soap opera fashion. This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Through the Window: Flamenco, Latin, fast stepping, toe tapping, heel stomping to this powerful rhythm that wants to get your body up and moving, swaying and spinning on the dance floor, shimmying with your partner, fast and intense! Topics and shownotes 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! Featured comic: The way of the Waifu - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/may/14/featured-comic-way-of-the-waifu/ Featured music: Through the Window - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Through_the_Window/, by Andore Mordre, rated E. Links: Betrayal newspost by Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/may/17/betrayal/ Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/ Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean

Inspired by Emma Clare's Friday newspost about supporting characters, today we're discussing sidekicks! Sidekicks are a useful character type that are used in so many different ways. They can be a specialised type of supporting character that are also a main character or they can be the main protagonist in some cases. In comics sidekicks came in during the early days as a way of giving juvenile readers their own insert character who they could identify with… Bucky Barnes, Jimmy Olsen, Robin etc. They had other functions like giving the hero someone to save, providing commentary, reaction and exposition. Later when that kind of sidekick fell out of favour they became superheroes in their own right. But sidekicks are a lot older than comics. People in social situations will often naturally fall into that sort of role because humans work well in hierarchies. One person takes the lead and the other follows: the person with the most forceful personality, The most experienced person, the higher ranked person, the socially superior person leads, and the other follows and that's reflected in literature. Class was often used to put people in their “natural” roles: Frodo and Sam from Lord of the Rings; AJ Raffles and Bunny Manders; Sherlock Holes and Dr Watson: the posher person with the higher social rank is automatically the leader. This is very much a part of the British class system, officers and senior management came from the higher social classes etc, it's a large subject. But that's also inverted occasionally; Jeeves is Bertie Wooster's Valet and social inferior and yet Jeeves is the leader in that relationship. The sidekick is often the main character when used as the point of view character to tell us how marvellous their leader is. We get this with Doctor Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Bunny in the Raffles the gentleman thief stories, Bertie in the Jeeves stories, and Archie in the Nero Wolfe stories. Archie is interesting; he does everything, he's the main active character, and yet he's still no more than a sidekick to the great Nero Wolfe. Sometimes the sidekick is the smart character who's there to try and rein in the excesses of their leader, like Arthur with the Tick, Sancho Panza with Don Quixote, Doctor Girlfriend and the Monarch, Agent 99 and Maxwell Smart, Kif and Zap Brannigan, Banes and Ozoneocean… They can also be used to compliment the leader by replacing something they lack, not just intelligence as in the former example. Kato in the Pink Panther provides Inspector Clouseau with muscle, Brock Samson provides EVERYTHING for Doctor Venture, Doctor Watson has skill the ladies, tact, charm, and humanity that Sherlock lacks, Archie has the confidence and mobility that Nero hasn't. There are so many clever an interesting ways to use sidekicks, far in advance of the Batman and Robin method! I think we should continue to use them. What are your fave sidekicks and why? Do you have a sidekick in your story? This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Operation Boom - Booooooooooom! This one thunders in, all action and furious energy, rolling in like a 50 tonne bulldozer at high speed while on FIRE and sparking with insane electrical discharges. This is danger music. Bright yellow with black diagonal lines. Listen for the deep, bass booms. Topics and shownotes 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! Featured comic: Customer Service - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/may/07/featured-comic-customer-service/ Featured music: Operation Boom - - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Operation_Boom/, by Recklesshero, rated E. LINKS The importance of supporting characters, newspost by Emma Clare - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/may/09/supporting-characters-and-why-they-are-important/ 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/

In this Quackcast we chat about set-ups. pay-offs, and rip-offs. To make your climaxes and endings more satisfying you have pay-offs for audience expectations: set them up in the story and pay them off at the end. If you fail to pay-off then you get a rip-off, it's pretty simple. Your audience will be really disappointed. That's not to say disappointing and unsatisfying ends to stories are wrong, not at all! Often those are fully intended. We're just talking about satisfying audiences, not “good” endings. There are a lot of ways to do this, oh so many… building up the emotional development of a character in the story and giving them an emotional pay-off is a small scale why of doing this. On a larger scale you can have a satisfying end battle where the forces of darkness are defeated in a resounding way. A “Checkov's gun” that was hinted at earlier finally comes into play… or maybe you just have all sorts of great call backs to hints of things mentioned earlier in the story, rewarding the careful watcher. This topic was inspired by both Emma Clare and Tantz Aerine's opinions of the Avengers Endgame and the 8th season of Game Of Thrones. This week Gunwallace has given us a Requiem for Tupapayon, our recently departed and loved member of the site: A haunting, sepulchral piece… a deep, brooding, melancholy requiem that expresses the reverence and sadness we feel for our departed ducker, Isaac Ramirez, aka Tupapayon. It takes us into the dark shadows of a lofty gothic cathedral, where the magic of coloured light through stained glass paints the cold stone floor, shining through the gloom, the same way Tupapayon would always light up the site with his presence. Topics and shownotes 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! Featured comic: Angels of the Fallen - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/apr/29/featured-comic-angels-of-the-fallen/ Featured music: Requiem for Tupapayon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/may/01/rip-tupapayon/ Links: RIP Tupapayon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/may/01/rip-tupapayon/ Emma Clare on Set-ups and pay-offs in fiction - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/may/02/a-confused-rant-about-setup-and-payoff/ Tantz Aerine's counterpunch - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/may/03/a-proposed-counterargument/ Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/ Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean

On one side we have creators of content and on the other we have the consumers. The consumers number in their billions and they're voraciously hungry for constant stimulation! Pretty much all creators are consumers too… So why don't they want the beautifully made, clever, spicy, artisanal dish you're selling? Why do they prefer the nice, bland, familiar mass-market high in fat, sugar and salt fast-food of the mainstream instead? One approach people typically take is just to ape the mainstream and hope that works, sell their own counterfeit McDonald's so to speak. This isn't fun for anyone. You'll get only limited success this way… One of the real reasons popular mainstream things become so popular is because they make us feel more connected to each other and they connect with all of us on some level. They make dishes around things that are tasty and fun to most of us: Pizza, tacos, fruit, tomatoes etc. Basically we can get more of an audience for our stuff if we create it and sell it more in terms of the things that are universally relatable, are connected to the bigger cultural experience, or that make as feel bigger and more connected to others somehow: like religion for example, patriotism, love, fear for our lives, death, childhood, whatever. The more universal something is the more people it will strike a chord with. We do NOT have to change our work to include universal themes. What I'm saying is that we should either find those themes already IN our work and turn up the level on them slightly, or simply promote and sell our work in terms of those themes. Read more in my newspost on the subject linked bellow. This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Super Temps: Sounding a lot like someone drumming on the open tops of a lot of PVC piping, this is a slow, creeping beat that builds and layers: a real construction zone. Stacking that scaffolding higher and higher into the dark sky, lit up by bright, piercing arc lamps that star, blur and streak though the dark skeleton of the unfolding structure. Topics and shownotes 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! Featured comic: Void The Guide to a Healthy Relationship - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/apr/24/featured-comic-void-the-guide-to-a-healthy-relationship/ Featured music: Super Temps - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Super_Temps/, by Smkinoshita, rated T. LINKS The Creative Divide newspost by Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/apr/27/the-creative-divide/ Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Pit Face - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/ Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

What's your favourite weapon in fiction? Mine are ridiculously giant swords, huge anti-tank rifles, and mecha. There are a lot of complex reasons for weapon choices in fiction, a Kalashnikov assault rifles for example signals certain things about the person carrying it: They're usually a bad guy for a start. This originated during the cold war, with certain types of bad guys using AKs. First it was Soviet Bloc soldiers, then it was Viet Con and rebels from South East Asia, then it became the “terrorist” weapon. The sub machine gun is the weapon of the bad guy. Terrorists used to use Uzis (before they turned to AKs), bank robbers used to use Mac 10s, now it's the HK MP5. Good guys carry an M-16 or AR-15 rifle. In historical fiction traditionally the bad guys carries curved swords while the good guys had straight swords, this came from crusades. Minor characters carry spears and heroes carry swords. Women, weaker characters and rebels carry bows. Giant swords and guns are often given to smaller characters in anime (usually female), as an obvious contrast with their small size. It's meant to emphasis the fact they're sort of a “mighty mouse”. Weapons technology can also be used to signal things about the society using them. In fiction the Nazis are highly mechanised, with their huge Tiger tanks, sleek half-tracks, and fighter panes. It shows a ruthlessly efficient fascist state with the power of high technology on their side. The Empire in Star Wars was directly influenced by them. In reality the Nazi forces were largely horse drawn, their air-force was limited and they had very, very few tiger tanks. But they lent us the “empire” trope where the bad guys have better weapons and the goodies have to beat them with pluck and improvised tactics, as in Avatar. So what are your fave weapons in fiction and why do you think they're used in stories? This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Bottomless Waitress. This 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!: Slip into a comfy booth, get your butt comfortable on our soft cushions, and enjoy a plate of down-home cook’n in this fine establishment, filled with a cast of friendly ladies. Try a plate of our famous bottomless fries, a cup of our delicious bottomless coffee, and the sight of our lovely bottomless waitresses! Topics and shownotes 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! Featured comic: Operation Boom - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/apr/15/featured-comic-operation-boom/ Featured music: Bottomless Waitress - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Bottomless_Waitress/, by Ozoneocean and Banes, rated M. Links: Your fave weapons in fiction thread - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/178137/ Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/ Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean