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 730 - Lighting by The Doodler
Mar 10, 2025
Today we have on a super special guest, The Doodler! This is another on our technical series about art making and this time we're talking about lighting. Tantz suggested we interview The Doodler for this because she's Tantz's go-to person for lighting issues in scenes. It was great to chat with The Doodler about her lighting techniques and the different challenges presented by different scenes. The Doodler was much better at explaining the concepts than I could have been so it was a pleasure to have her on the cast!
Episode 726 - Ego!?
Feb 10, 2025
Do you have a big ego? Do you know someone who has? This Quackcast is about utilising egos for comic characters for comedic purposes, to humanise character, or to make villains more unlikeable and or funny. Big egos are a sign of poor self esteem, people inflate their egos to cope with feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. For examples of that we have a certain prominent politician and also a tech billionaire as perfect representations of every facet of that concept. :)
Episode 725 - Your fave comics as a kid
Feb 3, 2025
We're chatting about the comics you liked as a little kiddo this week! The topic was inspired by a thread in the DD forums. This is always a fun topic and I always have to mention Asterix because it was so amazing. This week Tantz had to bow out but we have Gunwallace to replace her, and Banes is back! Gunwallace is a fellow Antipodean, that means he and I share many of the same cultural touch stones, particularity the comic Footrot Flats. (Tantz is still on the Patreon only video)
Episode 721 - A plot B plot
Jan 4, 2025
A standard thing in stories is to have multiple plot lines. In short stories or when you're just starting out as a writer you tend to have a single line, the A plot, but as soon as you get a bit more experience and write longer stories you'll find the plots tend to branch and multiply, even if you don't always fully intend it. The usual is to have the A and B plots: the A is the main one that drives the story and the B is where you put other interesting junk like character development, villain stuff, comic relief, love interests etc. But it can get a LOT more advanced than that and you can have far more than simply A and B.
Episode 713 - Gunwallace, Master Composer
Nov 11, 2024
Today we have onboard with us our resident theme maker, our classic composer and musical genius! He does all the DD comic inspired themes that regularly appear on the Quackcast and has done so for the last 10 years! In that time he's done almost 600 musical themes. At the moment Gunwallace is the games-master of a Star Trek roleplay thing that Tantz, Banes, and I all do after the cast. He's based an illustrated story on it called “On the Edge” with art by Banes and Genejoke, and some by Tantz and me, Ozoneocean.
Episode 707 - Fight Choreography
Sep 30, 2024
Fight choreography is tricky. We have it in comics, plays, movies and TV. When it's in full motion the trick is that you cant usually show things connecting so you have to work around the safety aspects in various ways. In comics you can show things connecting but how do you make the movement and the narrative believable and exciting just by using still images? It takes a lot of skill! Animation has to be the easiest way to depict fights because you can show the results of hits AND you can easily make moment believable but there are always challenges.
