

Episode 303 - Christmascast
Dec 26, 2016
It's Christmas time again… well at least it was two days ago when we recorded he cast. Today's Quackcast is a rambling christmas discussion of various things that take our fancy like the Secret Santa gift thread (linked down bellow), and the amazing art by amazing artists within it! Tantz, Pit, and Banes joined me sitting around a hot Australian sun in the outback with the traditional Christmas kangaroos hopping around and the traditional Christmas kookaburras laughing overhead! What did YOU do for Christmas this year? Gunwallace's musical theme was for E X T I N C T - A dark, bleakly epic SciFi soundtrack with a touch of James Bond in the strong baseline.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Mr Valdemar and other gothic tales - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com /Mr_Valdemar_and_other_gothic_tales/
LINK
Secret Santa gifts! - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/177594/?page=1
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Pitface - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Featured music:
E X T I N C T - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/E_X_T_I_N_C_T/ by Udyr, rated M.

Episode 279 - Meet the Mutants!
Jul 11, 2016
Our very own heavily mutated Pitface put up a guest post about her fellow mutants, filling in for HippieVan while Hippy is away fighting the mutants in Japan wearing a tie-dyed sailor suit and riding a Volkswagen battle mecha, as you do in Japan… anyway, as a member of the anti-mutant police force, I had to drag in Pit for questioning! And that's what we did for this Quackcast. Banes and I interrogate Pit on the subject of mutants! Mutants are a forgotten race at the moment: Mutants are the zombies of SciFi in a way; a mob of anonymous monstrous minions who exist to menace the heroes and be gunned down in their thousands. But they're also so much more… Unlike zombies, mutants have a lot more personality and humanity, they can also be far more demonic and revolting than any zombie, they can be any shape, size of configuration. Mutants are so much scarier and adaptable than mere zombies, because unlike zombies they're not always degrading and falling apart, no, mutants are evolving constantly, they can get larger, gorier and more terrifying, i.e. The Thing. For mutant pathos witness the Mars mutants in the original Total Recall: There's a man with a baby in his chest and we feel for him and respect him. We have superhero mutants too in the form of the X-men. Can't forget them! But remember also that “mutants” are also a very real thing in this world, unlike zombies, in fact we are ALL mutants in one way or another, not just those special people with a conjoined twin or extra nipples or genitals or whatever, all of us have our own exciting DNA variation! I have a big nose, crooked lower teeth and pasty white skin myself, I'm practically a Morlock. So what is YOUR “mutation”?

Episode 268 - the antagonist-cast
Apr 25, 2016
On the Quackcast we've talked about villains plenty of times before. This time it's very different though… I wanted people to talk about their OWN villains, to promote their comic as if the antagonist was the main character, to give their antagonists the time in the sun that they so desperately CRAVE! And well it sort of worked out, not as well as I hoped but it was a good idea. We have many good contributors and they're read out by Pitface, Banes and myself. I must apologise for the audio quality though- very sorry about that, Skype kept on cutting out. Gunwallace gave us a theme to Cataclysm, a comic that I keep on trying to feature over and over again for some mysterious reason XD It's a very jaunty and modern, a good positive take on the Scifi.

Episode 261 - D.U.C.K. Radio2
Mar 7, 2016
Radio D.U.C.K. has come again for part number TWO! Bringing you ALL of Gunwallace's lovely tunes, one after another. This time we get to meet Evangelist for DD Reverend Carlton Crackers, SciFi Hour with Kurt and Steve, Woman 1 and Woman 2, a return of DJ and Rhett Blanket, and introducing BILLY-BOB Banes and JETHRO Ozoneocean! All these fantastic personalities are the mind children of scriptwriter and musician Gunwallace, and played by Gunwallace, Banes, Ozoneocean, and Pitface. Enjoy the music and remember the name of Gunwallace!

Episode 254 - Sexism in your OWN work?k
Jan 18, 2016
OMFG you sexist PIG! Heh… today we talk about trying to recognise sexism in your OWN work, what to do about it, and WHY. It turns out it can be very hard to do, and if you DO acknowledged it the instinct is to rationalise it away, justify it, or just try and brazen it out in some kind of old fashioned, largely embarrassing, display. I frequently do all three. How do we spot it? Well the Bechdel test isn't that useful, that's better for looking at broad trends not giving specific works a pass/fail - sexy outfits is one thing, if females are dressed minimally or in tight gear in CONTRAST to the males or vice versa - females ONLY having old stereotype roles (maiden/mother/whore archetypes, secretary, nurse, victim, maid etc), though this is context sensitive, i.e. it's more forgiveable if you're doing a historical story or something stylised like a fairytale or a noire story - Gender balance is another thing, it's context sensitive because certain stories will naturally have more of one gender (WW2 submarine crew, Girl's school, a prison story etc), and you don't have to have an exact balance anyway but it's definitely something to THINK about because there is no reason most stories should feature a majority of male characters and a minority of females. WHY should you think about it? Why should you care? Well the audience for almost ALL types of stories, be they action adventure, romance, Scifi, fantasy, historical, even porn, is getting close to 50/50 between men and women these days (maybe it always was?), it really doesn't make sense to alienate or belittle half your audience just because you like to cling to older ways of doing stuff. Gunwallace's theme this week reminds me of a cross between the Knightrider theme and Gunship- it's VERY retro-future. It's the theme to DDSR, a comic with cool custom “sprites”, AKA pixel-art.

Episode 241 - The Vampcast - Costumecast - Part 2
Oct 19, 2015
I vant to suck yer blud… Well Tantz Aerine does anyway. This is the second part of our Vampcast, talking about vampires in comics, lore, movies and popculture in general. We were STILL in costume, watching each other on vid at the time, getting distracted and Ozone was getting drunker and drunker on some very RED wine. Tantz was of course the vamp, Pit was a deathknight fairy princess, Banes was the scary polar werewolf, and Ozone fieldmarshal bigpants! You can see the vids of our exploits I uploaded last week. There exists an elusive 3rd vid, but we were all too drunk and tried by that stage… at least Ozone was. Gunwallace provided us the lovely Alt rock '90s style theme to the SciFi anime comic Throviria!

Episode 232 - Creating a Rounded World
Aug 17, 2015
Hello, hello, hello! This is the second part of our hugely long expose on the tricky art of WORLD BUILDING! And it really IS extra loooooooooooog… that's because we take so much time crafting the Quackcast world for you. To recap: world-building is a big part of ALL fiction from SciFi and fantasy to your common or garden police shows or even comic strips. You create locations that have relationships with each other, characters that have jobs, families, friends, histories etc, all that is just as much world building as a fantasy world with a specific style of magic and monsters or a SciFi world with aliens and a 1000 year war. Typically, if you do your homework and set up your world nicely then it makes it easier to write stories within it, but you also have to remember not to show all that research to people in the form of big long explanations. Banes and Bravo1102 join Ozoneocean to talk about it! Listen to Gunwallace's lovely theme for Regarding Dandelions!

Episode 164 - Operation Moon 2
Apr 29, 2014
A very SPECIAL episode! For this Quackcast Pit Face, Abt Nihil, Tantz Aerine, Banes, and Ozoneocean perform the sequel to last years Live radio play, with; Operation Moon 2! It also carries on nicely from the continuity of the last three SciFi Quackcasts. After the adventures in the alien hunted diner, the two Hill-billies, Daisy Dooks and her pervy old uncle Hayseed are in the custody of two sinister aliens, Palavi Kuklamu and Fritzi Von Horstheim. Their path is about to cross with the devilishly handsome space rogue Ozoneocean and brave Captain Banes! It's great fun to record a live play like this with all your actors doing their thing at the same time, nice and quick too. Editing is more of a challenge this way though. It's also specially challenging to write the whole thing in one night!