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Moonlight meanderer

Latest episodes

Episode 428 - Expectations of Male and female audiences

Ozoneocean at May 28, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes Gunwallace, Customer Service, Drunk duck, Expectations of Male and female audiences, featured comic, featured theme, Jetpack Jill, kawaiidaigakusei, Ozoneocean, Pit Face, podcast, Quackcast 428, Tantz Aerine, Webcomics community

What are the different expectations for female and male audiences? This almost entirely a culture based thing, it changes depending on where and WHEN you are from as well as your age and experience… but some obvious things are determined by our physiology: sex sells, but there are slight differences based on gender. I wasn't interested in the “why” (genetic predeterminisim or evolutionary psychology), just the “what”.

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Episode 427 - Betrayal

Ozoneocean at May 21, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes, Betrayal, drunk duck, featured comic, featured theme, Gunwallace, Ozoneocean, Pitface, podcast, Quackcast 427, Tantz Aerine, The way of the Waifu, Through the Window, Webcomics hosting community

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.

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Episode 426 - Sidekicking

Ozoneocean at May 14, 2019, midnight
tags: Customer Service, featured comic, featured theme, Gunwallace, kawaiidaigakusei, Operation Boom, Ozoneocean, podcast, Quackcast 426, Sidekicking, Tantz Aerine, Webcomics community

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.

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Episode 425 - Pay-off or rip-off?

Ozoneocean at May 7, 2019, midnight
tags: Angels of the Fallen, Banes, drunkduck, featured comic, featured theme, Gunwallace, Ozoneocean, Pay-off or rip-off?, Pitface, podcast, Quackcast 425, Requiem for Tupapayon, Webcomics hosting community

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.

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Episode 424 - Selling your creative dish

Ozoneocean at April 30, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes, featured comic, featured theme, Gunwallace, kawaiidaigakusei, Ozoneocean, Pitface, podcast, Quackcast 424, Selling your creative dish, Super Temps, Tantz Aerine, Void The Guide to a Healthy Relationship, Webcomics community

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?

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Episode 423 - Fave weapons in fiction?

Ozoneocean at April 23, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes, Bottomless Waitress, Fave weapons in fiction?, featured comic, featured theme, Gunwallace, Operation Boom, Ozoneocean, Pitface, podcast, Quackcast 423, Webcomics hosting community

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”.

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Episode 422 - Positive promotion and controversial characters

Ozoneocean at April 16, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes, Breached, featured comic, featured theme, Gunwallace, kawaiidaigakusei, Ozoneocean, Pitface, podcast, Positive promotion and controversial characters, Quackcast 422, Tantz Aerine, Tusk, Webcomics community

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!).

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Episode 421 - Dreamcast

Ozoneocean at April 9, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes, Dreamcast, EDENTIA, featured comic, featured theme, Gunwallace, Ozoneocean, podcast, Quackcast 421, Tantz Aerine, The Last Sheriff, Webcomics community

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.

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Episode 420 - Substance abuse and use

Ozoneocean at April 2, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes, Cosmos Song, featured comic, featured theme, Generation Y, Gunwallace, kawaiidaigakusei, Ozoneocean, Pitface, podcast, Quackcast 420, Substance abuse and use, Tantz Aerine, Webcomics community

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!

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Episode 419 - The Rating Game

Ozoneocean at March 26, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes, Blighted The Odyssey, featured comic, featured theme, Gunwallace, Ozoneocean, podcast, Quackcast 419, Sunstrike and Bluemist An Origin Story, Tantz Aerine, The Rating Game, Webcomics community

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.

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Episode 418 - Many kinds of love

Ozoneocean at March 19, 2019, midnight
tags: Angels of the Fallen, Banes, Bunni and Carot, featured comic, featured theme, Gunwallace, Many kinds of love, Ozoneocean, podcast, Quackcast 418, Social marketing, Tantz Aerine, Webcomics community

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!

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Episode 417 - Can we be better?

Ozoneocean at March 12, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes, Can we be better?, featured comic, featured theme, Gunwallace, Ozoneocean, podcast, Quackcast 417, Redneck, Social marketing, Tantz Aerine, The Lightning Orb Garage The Comic, Webcomics community

What is Social Marketing?
Basically its word-of-mouth and viral marketing smashed together and weaponised: Marketing companies hijack hot-button social issues and hitch their client's brand to them in clever campaigns (“We can be better”, etc). The purpose isn't really to make a brand seem progressive, modern or new, rather it's another way of getting it trending on social media that's guaranteed to work, unlike the legion of hit or miss but mostly failed “Viral” campaigns. Whether people say negative or positive things about this issue is irrelevant to the marketer, as long as people are talking about the brand is all that matters. Free advertising is the goal, but it has a social cost.

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Episode 416 - Making cuts

Ozoneocean at March 5, 2019, midnight
tags: Aikonia, Banes, featured comic, featured theme, Gunwallace, kawaiidaigakusei, Making cuts, My Cute Wish, Ozoneocean, Pitface, podcast, Quackcast 416, Tantz Aerine, Webcomics community

The entire team is here this time, no one was cut… So we're chatting about CUTTING, as in cutting out scenes to make a story cleaner, leaner and less flabby, but also NOT cutting because in a webcomic you don't have to, and when you cut badly you end up with a “D movie” effect where story scenes don't follow, don't make sense and plots seem to go nowhere or happen for no reason.

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Episode 415 - lazy solutions cause plot-holes!

Ozoneocean at Feb. 26, 2019, midnight
tags: Aikonia, Banes, featured comic, featured theme, Gunwallace, lazy solutions cause plot-holes, Ozoneocean, podcast, Quackcast 415, Space Repair Garage The Comic, Tantz Aerine, Webcomics community

This Quackcast expands on my newspost from Friday about forgotten abilities causing plot holes, but now bunny Banes and Lady Tantz wade in to lend their genius to my silly ideas and we chat about what the real issues are: bad writing and laziness!
This is when a character gains the ability to walk through walls or become bullet proof or go back in time and then forgets it for the rest of the story or in the sequel When basically 80% of the problems they encounter could be solved by it… And you're mentally screaming at them “Use your damn power that you got 20 pages ago… Remember that thing that would help you avoid all this trouble!?”
Using easy solutions to get out of problems causes plot-holes! And your audience will hate you for it.

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Episode 414 - Bad Hollywood

Ozoneocean at Feb. 19, 2019, midnight
tags: Bad Hollywood, Banes, featured comic, featured theme, Grind, Gunwallace, kawaiidaigakusei, Ozoneocean, Pitface, podcast, Quackcast 414, Tantz Aerine, Ursa Tale, Webcomics community

Hollywood has a tendency to simplify or completely alter stories to make them more mainstream and appealing to their idea of a popular audience. In this Quackcast we thought it'd be fun to run with that idea and re-imagine our works for “Hollywood”.

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