Episode 741 - Hooks
May 26, 2025
Sometimes you get hooked into things, you become a fan and you wonder how you got there. A while ago you were laughing at those dorky, obsessed fans over there and now suddenly you're one of them! That's what we're talking about in this cast, the things that hook you in and our own stories about what we were unexpectedly hooked into.
Topics and Show Notes
The idea came to me as I was making a coffee and signing the words to XTCs Great Fire. It's a silly song with lyrics about a fire burning in Noah's Arc and also in a house, which is a metaphor for the singer's growing love. XTC is a strange, very progressive British pop group from the 70s and 80s. They have some extremely thoughtful and intelligent songs about culture and social issues and many that are just foolish pop-songs and yet I like them all and happily sing along to them. But I wondered how I got there.
It was 1994, I was extremely sick with chickenpox, trapped in my bed for weeks with nothing but books and my radio for company. Every so often the same few songs would come on the radio and I began to love them. I cant remember them all now but there was Spoonman by Sound Garden, Positive Bleeding by Urge Overkill, and Senses Working Overtime by XTC. Senses Working Overtime is a sort of a mediaeval chant and drone, paired with pure bubblegum pop about empirical philosophy. It's about our perception of the world and the difference between what we're told and what we personally experience. I find it beautiful. I had no idea why they kept playing that song though, it came out in 1982 and it wasn't being re-released, there was no reason for it to be played over and over at that time along with recently released hit songs.
In fact I couldn't even track it down. Years later it was re-released on their best-off album, Fossil Fuel, but even THAT was hard to track down because none of the music shops stocked it or could order it for me. When I finally got it I listed to all the songs over and over and became a fan. I was indoctrinated! I love their crazy silly pop-songs and their intellectual stuff about the failings of society equally. In this Quackcast we have a few similar stories, like the way we were drawn in to Star Trek while we initially found it dorky, and things like Buffy the Vampire slayer, Harry Potter etc.
Do you have stories about things you were hooked into? if so, what were the hooks? Did you know that I didn't even like comics till an art lecturer forced me to draw them and it wasn't till I was posting my comics on Drunk Duck that I actually started to appreciate comics in general?
In Gunwallace's words: An odd little thing for Quail's random, based on my Thursday post. Quails Random - A random melange of majestic influences, cat yowls and alien sounds. This is a glorious mixture of melodic mastery that shouldn’t blend but somehow does!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Senses Working Overtime by XTC - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrcemZpOmpI
Featured comic:
Little Miss Allison Blue - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/may/19/featured-comic-little-miss-allison-blue/
Featured music:
Quails Random - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/may/20/random-quail-comics/ - Inspired by Gunwallace's newspost.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 740 - DD Radio play 4 planning!
May 19, 2025
Do you like acting? Do you like being part of collabs or community projects? Do you like radio plays? If you answered yes to any of that the DD radio play is for you! Way back in 2011 we did our very first Drunk Duck Radio Play and NOW we're reviving the idea! We have a brand new DD Radio Play and we need YOU to be a part of it!
Episode 723 - Changing tech and design
Jan 20, 2025
We're talking about how technology and design changes so much over the years and how that can change things with plot in story and it can also help pinpoint the date of something sometimes better than other things like fashion. The biggest one we talked about were phones, which have changed so much over the last few decades. Universally connected smartphones mean huge story changes- characters can all look up whatever they need at any time, communicate with people instantly, entertain themselves, take photos and videos etc. That can massively affect plots!
Episode 715 - Apocalypse
Nov 25, 2024
This is the third in our weapons trilogy and it's about what happens AFTER the ultimate weapons have done their work: Apocalypse! The end of all things… This term comes from the bible, with the Book of Revelations which talks about what happens during the end of the world, but aside from the myth it's a pretty real concept- there are a LOT of ways the world can end and has indeed ended for various civilisations throughout history.
Episode 689 - One Big Passion and Influence
May 27, 2024
What was one significant inspiring piece of pop-culture that a massive influence over your creative endeavours? All of us have had many, many different influences over the years but that's certainly NOT what we're interested in here, what we're talking about is that one thing you can remember that had a huge effect on you, why, how, and when.
Episode 585 - Adaptation
May 30, 2022
Adaptations of one thing into another is an interesting process. What's lost, what's gained, what modifications do you have to do to make it happen? As webcomicers we do it all the time in many ways, we have to adapt our influences into ideas, adapt those to stories, and adapt those to images and comics, which isn't trivial! It's often quite difficult to transform the written word into narrative sequential art- what portion of the writing gets directly turned into images, what's cut, and what becomes dialogue? For me about 20% is cut, 78% becomes art and 2% becomes dialogue or captions.
Episode 566 - feeling the vibe!
Jan 16, 2022
Let's talk about total immersion… When consuming media rather than creating it, if you're lucky you become immersed: the struggles and fears of the character become your own. You feel for them, you care, their pain, their hunger, even their shivers and sweats, you care about the world in which they live… That can be an amazing feeling and it's pretty much WHY we really enjoy and keep consuming media. Themes, great visuals, intellectual explorations of ideas and concepts are all very well but nothing compels and excites you as much as when you really CARE what's happening. So that's what we're chatting about! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Episode 500 - Celebration!
Oct 12, 2020
Finally we got to the five hundredth Quackcast! Wow! That's so many. We've been doing these for 10 years now. That's a long running podcast! To celebrate we invited our DD members aboard. We had a great fun time, lots of laughs and a really good chat. We even had time to introduce special cotributions from the people who couldn't be live with us. I'm making our exclusive patreon video of this week's cast free for all to view! Just click on the youtube link bellow.
