This is a weird one to encapsulate, but it was based on an idea I had while re-watching Star Trek the Next Generation and I had to explore it with my fellow Quackcasters, Banes and Tantz. I believe it's generally better to enjoy something in the order it was created rather than the chronological order of the story because you'll understand it so much better in terms of why things are as they are, the creative and aesthetic choices and cultural impact.

Re-watching all of Star Trek the Next Generation in order taught me so much about how and why the show and characters developed: NOT from a lore and story perspective but from a practical, technical perspective. I'm watching for the stories but I also notice different filming techniques, lighting choices, sets, props, costumes, how and why the actors perform and act in certain ways, line deliveries, and a million other things: basically the reality of the thing and it's interesting to think how that conflicts with fan lore, or “this is why they went this way with the character” vs “the character did that because…” And it's especially powerful if you can connect it to the culture and current events of the time in which it was created.

Now in the world more often than ever people look at creative projects in a kind of cultural vacuum, totally isolated from any cultural context except their own current culture at the time they view the thing, which is bad enough but people's passion of reboots and prequels compounds this. Whether it's Marvel, Dr Who, Star Trek, Star Wars or whatever you'll see this happen with any popular creative IP: the established meaning of these things will be changed constantly due to retconns and a sort of fan lore takes over as a way to make sense of it all. I think it's important to understand the real reason why things are as they are…
For example Lando Calrisian wears a cape in The Empire Strikes Back because the costume people dress Billy Dee Williams that way to show he was the ruler of the Cloud City, to give him authority and majesty, while the prequel film, Hans Solo, retconns it into him wearing capes because he's a silly pansexusal fop, totally changing and misunderstanding all aspects of the character.

That said though it is also very important that later generations are able to develop their own cultural connections with established IPs in their own way and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact if they can't then those IPs will die, their continued interest and passion is what keeps those things alive and current! It's just important not to lose sight of why things really developed as they did and enjoy things for what they are rather than for what they are AFTER retconns.

Hahaha, I hope this makes some sense? What are the most annoying bits of fan lore you've come across? Personally I can't stand the Warhammer 40k lore now, it just gets worse and worse as time goes on.

This week Gunwallace was inspired to craft a musical theme to Bad Mix - Quite, chill, creeping, slowly sliding, finding, searching… this one will keep you on edge. It has a very unnerving tilt to it!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Dream Eaters - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/jun/02/featured-comic-dream-eaters/

Featured music:
Bad Mix - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Bad_Mix/ - by GabeRoch, rated M.

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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It seems like every single “badass” in TV, Movies, books and comics is “ex-special forces” or something like it these days. It's become a meaningless cliche. Writers use it as a shortcut to show a person is super tough and competent, able to handle ANY situation and also have a dark past. We chat about how silly it is to overdo the cliche and why “being ex-special-forces” doesn't really make a person better at being a “bad-ass” than anyone else.

More likely it means they're probably a more burnt out, have far more injuries, PTSD, and more personal demons than the average person. Special forces soldiers tend to get deployed more than others and they train more and harder. Many are killed in training or acquire bad injuries from it and PTSD, let alone from active service. Aside from that rather than being taciturn with a thousand yard stare and a grumpy personality and a gravely voice, all special forces people I've met have been entirely normal people, indistinguishable from anyone else.

Rambo from the first movie is one of my fave examples, he's an unstoppable killing machine but at least the story tries to explore his PTSD and the terrible way his country abandoned him when it had no more use for him. What are your fave ex-special forces people in fiction?

This week it's another best-off Gunwallace and so we're replaying a track from Quackcast 209: Joe Pop! This was a great little theme that Gunwallace wrote funny lines for in the style of the characters from the comic strip, Joe Pop. Banes and I act them out! I'm on bass.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Everything Will Be Fine at Dawn - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/may/27/featured-comic-everything-will-be-fine-at-dawn/

Featured music:
Joe Pop - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Joe_Pop/ - by Dave63, rated E.

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
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

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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.

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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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!

In 2011 when we did our first play it was an amazing community project that so many of our great members participated in. Ally Heart wrote the script, many different people supplied voices for the characters, and even MORE people did comic pages for the comic version. In 2012 and 2013 Gunwallace wrote the scripts and people returned happily to be a part of it. Unfortunately around that time our site went through so troubled times and we lost focus for big community projects so there was never a fourth play… till now!

Gunwallace has found the his 3rd script and that's what we wont YOU to join in with. Our DD plays are comedies focussed around a parody detective noir theme. The lead characters are always Maxwell McDuff, a gritty private detective, and Bill Duck who's an adventurer and world traveller hero type person. They get into all sorts of strange scrapes and daring mysteries. You can check out the latest scrip and see if you'd like to submit a voice tryout for any or all of the characters in the link in our shownotes. Also let us know if you'd like to have a go at the comic version!

Special note- we had fun trying to do a live radio play version of our sexy collab comic Key of Dreams, which we'll now be uploading to the site. Lin in the shownotes.

This week Gunwallace gave us a theme inspired by A Wing To the Stars - Melancholy, starkly blue waves of dim light in the glittering darkness of a dead galaxy.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Our NEW DD radio play script - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179981/

ALL THREE previous DD radio plays are here - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/quackcast/episode-147-merry-xmas-dd-radio-play-omnibus-edition/

Our sexy collab comic NOW online!! - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Key_of_Dreams/

Featured comic:
The Cloud Girls - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/may/13/featured-comic-the-cloud-girls/

Featured music:
A Wing To the Stars - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/A_Wing_To_The_Stars/ - by Zerahoc, rated T.

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
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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Ensemble casts is the topic for today! But what do we mean by that? The way I'm defining it for THIS Quackcast is that you have a group of main characters where any of them can function in a chief protagonist role for part of the story, they're all on the same side and they can work together in smaller groups or in one big group. This is a common structure for modern sitcoms and a lot other things like The Avengers, Star Trek the Next Generation, or Lord of the Rings for example. They're not just a group, but a group made up of “main characters”.

One of the advantages of an ensemble cast as opposed to just a group or a one or two main characters is that they can share the load story-wise and make it much easier to develop new storylines and work your way out of holes and blocks. This is because they all have advanced character development and so create stories and pathways just in how they interact with each other, their differing world views and how they approach situations very differently. It's harder to develop multiple main characters but it's easier to maintain a story in the long run, especially if it's a long running story.

Banes and I have an ensemble cast in Bottomless Waitress consisting of the three waitresses, Polly, Jane, and Francis. There are other characters like Nicky the truck driver, Wilfred the scientist, or Craig the bus-boy but they're not as important or developed. Each of the three ladies can independently drive a storyline on their own, they can work in tandem confronting each other or together against other characters of situations, or all three can work as one. There are a lot of combinations and possibilities.

Do you have an ensemble cast? Do you like it when stories use one as opposed to more of a group with a leader or just one or two main characters?

This week Gunwallace gave us a theme inspired by Plague Rat - a very dark, heavy, and serious intro leads up and into a beat heavy, 80s inspired, cool dance number that just drags you along and up out of the doldrums of the post-apocalyptic disaster of a plague-ridden, sad world, into the coloured lights and cool vibes of the dance floor!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
The Starry Ladders - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/apr/29/featured-comic-the-starry-ladders/

Featured music:
Plague Rat - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Plague_Rat/ - by Rabbit_Dance_, rated T.

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
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

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!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

People in stories, especially bad guys in stories usually want to take over the world, but why? What's really to gain? Even in reality it's a complex question. That's what we're talking about here.

What's the real reason to want to be the boss of everything? Money isn't the objective because when you become the leader of everything money is irrelevant, you control all standards and commerce. Is greed a motivation? Well no because being the boss of everything eliminates the motivation for greed. Power is the only true objective: being the ultimate boss means you can control everything. It's a crap load of responsibility and work though.

On a smaller scale, why do you want to be the leader, the CEO, the king, the boss, the emperor? It could be because you have an overinflated ego and you think you deserve it so you can show off to others (Trump). It could be that you want power and control over others. Maybe it's the only way to can achieve safety and security, by getting to the top and being in charge of everyone else? Or maybe you have a vision for the future or a passion for something and being the leader is the only way to can enact your vision or preserve it?

A very small scale example: I rose up on this site and became its leader. I started out as a comicer like everyone else, joining in 2003, positing my comic in 2004. Dylan Squires, creator of the site (known as Volte6), was always the leader then. I became more involved in the community and was made a moderator. I was passionate about the site and wanted things to run well and do right by the community. Eventually I was made an administrator with power to run the site. I was part of a small group of fellow admins. As time passed they all left and it was just me in charge. Through negotiation I took control of the site from the owner at Wowio. I later established my own team to help me run things. Through all that my only motivation was to make sure the site stayed running so that people could post their comics as usual and get comments and engagement. I'd love if someone else could be in charge instead of me though but it's a very complex and expensive process.

Why do you think people want to take over the whole world? Especially bad guys in stories?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Degrengolada - Creepy, brooding, building, exciting, evocative. Something exciting and interesting is about to begin! This is a slow, measured dance that’s leading to something big!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
OLYMPIAN HEIGHTS - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/apr/21/featured-comic-olympian-heights/

Featured music:
Degrengolada - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Degrengolada/ - by Paulie Blade, rated A.

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/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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Happy Easter! Well that was Sunday, but happy Easter anyway. In honour of that yearly and ancient ritual holiday that has its roots in the rebirth of spring in the northern hemisphere our Quackcast is on the theme of resurrection! The idea that people can come back to life in realty is pure fantasy but it is an essential part of all different kinds of fiction.

In classic time-loop stories like Groundhog Day, Palm Springs Meet Cute and others everything tends to reset at a set point. People can die and they will all come back regularly to repeat their day again. It's a very regular and understandable for of rebirth, just like spring! Contrast that with the way monsters are randomly reborn for horror movie sequels; they're killed in all sorts of ways but still tend to come back and varying points with no rhyme or reason, more like a random natural disaster.

The place where resurrection has truly found a home is fantasy Isekai stories, usually in manga and anime. The reason for this is because extra lives and resurrection are a key part of game mechanics, originally platform games but later RPGs: you need extra lives in order to complete the games, without them it's just all too hard. Isekai stories already BEGIN with a resurrection because the protagonist usually dies crossing the road to save a kitten, small dog, young child, or schoolgirl in a short skirt, and is reborn in a fantasy land as the new hero. But now that almost all fantasy Isekais are based on the mechanics of fantasy RPGs most include regular resurrection whenever characters die IN the story. Their friends just go to a temple with some gold or a special item and bring them back.

An honourable mention for the regular rebirths in Marvel and DC comics… They usually make use of alternative dimensions but nothing is off limits in those crazy stories. What's your fave sort of resurrection trope? Vampires? Different dimension versions? Cloning? Paying at a temple? Cyborgs? Virtual life uploads? Or magical rebirth?

This week Gunwallace gave us a theme inspired by Geist Gears - Follow the flow into the machine! Clunking and zapping as you traverse the circuits and electric doors inside, swelling capacitors, glowing diodes, flashes of deadly plasma from arcing conduits! It’s deadly but exciting.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Tantz's back from the dead newspost! - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/apr/19/back-from-the-dead/

Featured comic:
Turtle House Comics - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/apr/15/featured-comic-turtle-house-comics/

Featured music:
Geist Gears - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Geist_Gears/ - by Emma_Xross, rated T.

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
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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