The Drunk Duck Quackcast

The entire gang comes together today for two topics that were taken from recent newsposts: Emma Clare's Positive self promotion, and Tantz Aerine's Handling Controversial Characters. First up we chat about why it's always a great idea to sell yourself positively, NOT be arrogant or douchey, but rather by talking enthusiastically about what you genuinely love about your work and using that REAL and SINCERE enthusiasm to infect others with your love of what you do. Emma was mainly talking about the way you introduce your comics to friends and family but it definitely applies more broadly to self promotion in general: Don't try and get sympathy through self depreciation (oh, it's not very good…), and don't be an arrogant ass (My stuff is AWESOME!), rather you should just be honest about what you love about it (This story was so FUN to write!). There are exceptions. “READ HARKOVAST” become a great catchphrase for the author of that comic ;) Next up we talk about Tantz's subject of handling controversial characters: Real controversial characters and established characters in fiction that have very different interpretations and views about them can be tricky to use in fiction. WHICH of the popular interpretations do you choose? - The one that says they were an insane dictator or the one that says they're a hero of their people? Whichever you do you'll have audience members who're angry about it in some way. Examples are characters like Jesus (comics linked bellow), and Mother Theresa. Jesus obviously means a lot of things to different people, there's around about 2000 years of culture focussed on him and people during the time he was meant to have lived would have regarded him very differently to the later worshippers. Mother Theresa during her lifetime was almost universally regarded as a living saint, her name was common shorthand for being extremely caring. After her death opinions changed and fractured desperately. To many she was either a monster, a scheming witch, or a stupid naive backwards woman who was used as a promotional tool. Which approach do you as a writer take? This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Tusk. Fast tribal beat that makes you want to shake your hips, stamp your feet, wiggle, twitch, and vibrate all over! A nice, stompy, vibrating rhythm booms into the centre and slows things down for a change of pace. This is the ultimate dance track. Get hot, sweaty and show off your crazy moves as best you can. Put the other dancers to shame! 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: Breached - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/apr/09/featured-comic-breached/ Featured music: Tusk - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Tusk/, by Fallopiancrusader, rated T. LINKS Positive promotion newspost by Emma Clare - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/mar/30/talking-about-your-comic-to-others-and-why-you-should/ Controversial characters newspost by Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/apr/12/handling-controversial-historical-characters/ READ HARKOVAST - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Harkovast/ Holy Bible the Albino Ginger version - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Holy_Bible_the_Albino_Ginger_version/ Jesus 2016 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Jesus_2016/ Look who's back (movie) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4176826/ 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/

Today we're talking about all the ways nightmares can be used in stories. This is based on a newspost by our very own dreamboat Tantz Aerine. Nightmares are great for foreshadowing through premonitions, forcing characters to confront things and change their minds, ratcheting up tension in a story and all sorts of other useful things that you'd never consider. You can use symbolism and heightened reality, surrealism, fantasy and lots of experimental techniques that you couldn't do in your normal comic. Nightmares are an excuse to cut loose artistically, but also for your character to act out and go crazy too if you want since things are occurring in a dream reality and not your proper story. Listen to us chat more about it in the Quackcast… or become a patron and see our video about it ;) This week Gunwallace has given us the theme The Last Sheriff: Metallic tumbleweeds trundle by singing a tune of plucked wire and steely resonance in this one rocket-horse town… This is the sound of an old west future, fully charged plasma blaster six-shooters and robot cowboys in a world of red rusted steel and dust. 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: EDENTIA - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/apr/02/featured-comic-edentia/ Links: Tantz Aerine newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/mar/27/the-use-of-nightmares/ Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Featured music: The Last Sherif - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Last_Sheriff/, by RecklessHero, rated E

The entire gang is here this time again. This marks number 420 of the Quackcasts we've done. 420 is code among some for smoking dope, so going with that theme we're talking about the influence of substances on creative endeavours. People try and use substances to facilitate their creativity, we chat about why they do it, how it works, why it fails, the benefits and the issues. We DO NOT advocate taking illegal things in any way at all. This includes ANY substance, from dope, to coffee, to redbull, tea, wine, beer, cold and flu medication, headache pills, opium, adderall, ANYTHING at all, as long as it produces some mental or physiological change, it counts! There's a long history of artists and writers taking things and this supposedly affecting their creativity. Brilliant Renaissance painter Caravaggio would become wildly drunk, famously the 18th century poets Byron and Shelly would indulge, the preRaphaelite painters also took their share of things… In the 20th century we have the famous drunk writer Bukowski, Hunter S Thompson and all his indulgences, not to mention the myriad of musicians, artists, and actors, especially from the 1960s onwards when the drug culture exploded. One of the persistent myths is that substances help you access some from of external cosmic creativity or tap into a creative well inside of yourself. The former is pure nonsense and the latter is at best a partial truth… Buuuut we get deeper into the subject IN the Quackcast and the Patreon video so listen to or watch those to learn more. This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Cosmos Song. Ice cold stillness of eternity. Glittering sparkles reflected in an oil black sea of immeasurable depth. Ripples spread outwards, one after another, they collide and combine, distorting the reflections, till they die and all is still and calm once more. 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: Generation Y - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/mar/26/featured-comic-generation-y/ Featured music: Cosmos Song - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Cosmos_Song/, by Peipei, rated M. 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/

It's the rating game! Yeah! This Quackcast was inspired by Emma Clare's newspost on Friday about rating levels. On Drunk Duck we have 4 rating levels so they're nice and simple: “E” for everyone, “T+” for teens, “M” for mature, and “A” for Adult! We talk about why ratings exist and how to use them. But why do ratings exist? Well it's complicated actually… The main reason is that all cultures have various taboos and things they consider inappropriate to be viewed in certain situations so most countries have ratings systems set up to cater to that. Ratings are partly used to restrict access to some material (eg. stopping children from seeing violent or sexually explicit content), and partly as a way of marketing material: ratings let people have a good idea of the content, so parents will snap up any child rated material for their children to see and adults will know that higher rated things will be more appealing to them. Ratings such as “NC17” and “MA+15” were invented so content creators could sneak in more of what adults want to see in films (sex and violence) and still avoid a higher more restrictive rating which would mean they have less of a market because there are less forums to display and advertise higher rated work. Ratings on the duck We only have four ratings levels. These are based on old style film ratings, we do this to try and avoid confusion. Higher ratings mean you have a lot more freedom in what you can show but less freedom in who you show it to: “A” rated work is ONLY visible to adults (not kids) who are logged into the site. Theduckwebcomics is one of the few webcomic hosting sites that allow creators to post very sexually explicit material. Work is self regulated, we expect creators to be responsible adults here. The rating of a comic can be changed by us upon request, but we prefer to ask the creator to do it themselves. Here are our ratings: E: Everyone Open to everybody. Non-offensive material in text or imagery. Appropriate for both children and adults. T+: Teen Content is suitable for teens or older. Mild violence, slightly mature themes. No obscenities, graphic violence, sex, or nudity. M: Mature Content contains mature themes that might not be suitable for children. May contain occasional obscenities, limited graphic violence, implied sex, mild nudity. No sexually explicit material, no graphic sexual acts, no Hentai, no unrelenting violence, or non-stop obscenities. A: Adult Content is sexually explicit, exceedingly violent, or an excess use of obscenities. Must be logged on to view. This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Blighted The Odyssey: The spirit of exploration, taking you far out into the deep black starlit ocean. St Elmo’s fire glows around the mast and yards, swirls of glowing plankton cling and drift away from the sides of the hull as you venture further into the unknown, disappearing into the darkness… 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: Sunstrike and Bluemist An Origin Story - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/mar/18/featured-comic-sunstrike-and-bluemist-an-origin-story/ Links: Emma Clare's ratings newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/mar/21/rating-your-comic/ DD ratings list - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/about/ Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Featured music: Blighted The Odyssey - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Blighted_The_Odyssey/, by Alpharie, rated M.

There are many kinds love. Love is a great thing to include in your story for all sorts of reasons: it's an easy way to develop characters, give a character something to strive for, it's universally relatable, You can use it for tension, all sorts of things! There are different kinds of relationships you can use as well, not just heterosexual or homosexual relationships and the common trope of showing the beginning of a relationship, you can show crushes, established relationships, platonic relationships, relationships collapsing and exes coming together. For this topic we were loosely inspired by Tantz and Emma's great newsposts about romance and platonic love. We chat about luuuurv and tricks like lurv triangles! This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Angels of the Fallen. Break on into the other side, smash through the dimensional glass into a world of hot, tasty electro, spicy flamenco, and raw, roaring guitar! Get your body moving to these irresistible sounds. You won’t be able to stop yourself. 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: Bunni and Carot - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/mar/12/featured-comic-bunni-and-carot/ Links: Writing healthy romance - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/feb/28/writing-healthy-romance/ Platonic Freindships 1 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/mar/01/platonic-friendship-part-1/ Platonic Freindships 2 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/mar/08/building-platonic-friendships-part-2/ RIGHTEOUS, relationship webcomic - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/RIGHTEOUS/ 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/ Featured music: Angels of the Fallen - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Angels_of_the_Fallen/, by BustyLaroo, rated T.