The QuackCast

Last time we talked about old fashioned censorship, NOW we're talking about how it's used these days! Back in the day there were limited pathways for you to disseminate information: newspapers, radio, TV, public speaking, posters, books, film, pamphlets, ads… They were all easy for governments to shut down in various ways. But then along came the internet and suddenly it was a free for all! Anyone could easily make a website and in...

Hey ho! We thought we'd address the topic of censorship again on the Quackcast!
Today we're covering the topic in a rather general sense: The need for censorship; how it can be wrongly used; free speech and its limits; how free speech isn't equal around the world; slander and defamation; how censorship used to be applied to media and how that has changed since the internet and more.

This week our cast is about the folly of following fashion! It could be with clothes, hair, interior design, architecture, music, OR creation! Things like plot styles, story structure, art, lettering, fonts, jokes, twists etc, all are subject to fashions of the day. And we are driven to participate in it, not because we're fashionable creatures who want to be “in” with the latest trends, rather it's because at our core we're just s...

Tantz Aerine showcased LGBTQ+ comics and creators for Pride month in June with the help of Skyangel, Mainly on Bluesky. It went to so well that she came up with the amazing idea of doing more monthly features for other themes. She doesn't want to dictate to us what those theme should be though, she wants input into the idea so we can all come up with good themes together! The idea behind a month long showcase isn't to be socially c...

Novels are basically long stories. They tend to have a lot of different plots and things all happening at once, unlike short stories. When writing a novel you have a lot of freedom to tell really BIG stories, stories that spanning worlds and centuries if you feel like it. In this Quackcast Banes chats to Tantz about the art of novel writing and what makes a novel

There's always time to start learning something new! If you think you're bad at art and people told you you lacked talent back in the day and that if you didn't start as a child then you have no chance to be good, please know that all of that is false- you can become an amazing artist whenever you start. In-born magical “Talent” is absolutely not required! Practise is ALL you need. None of this “10,000 hours” bullsh*t either, that'...

History is something big that happens in the past that you look back on and wonder about… ofttimes we only know about it from the pages of a book, old video footage, relics in a museum, or something like that, but there are also living resources for history in the memories of older people and indeed in your OWN head.

Professions in fiction are usually always portrayed in very exaggerated, super fantastical expert versions of themselves. Like if it's a psychologist they generally know exactly what a person is thinking, why they're thinking a certain way, what all their issues are, why they have them and how to fix them. They can tell if a person is lying and the truth they are coving up by doing so! If it's a police detective and they're a main ...

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 ...

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” tha...

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.

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!

Artwork from Key of Dreams

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 N...

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.

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.

Welcome to another DD Quackcast! We were going to discuss Ad Hoc rationalisations and also “what happens AFTER you take over the world” but both topics were waaaay too trumpish and we didn't feel like getting negative and ranty about that fellow's foolishness so we thought we'd talk anime instead! But what is anime? At its simplest it's just cartoons like any other but they happen to be from Japan. There's more to it though, most a...

When love turns to hate… It's a common trope in fiction: partners split up and their once loving relationship turns to one of bitter acrimony! We see hate turning to love frequently too, that's another common trope, I saw both when I watched Willow again last night. Mad Martigan and Sorsha went from hate to love to hate to love again, and Sorsha and her mum Queen Bavmorda went from love to hate. It's a staple in fiction because it'...