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The QuackCast

The QuackCast

De: Michael Morris
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The QuackCast features Ozoneocean, Banes, Tantz Aerine, and Pitface, talking about writing, movies, webcomics, art, politics, philosophy, sexuality, and everything else! We're the hosts of the oldest webcomic host on the net, Drunkduck.com, aka theduckwebcomics. 20 years this year!WOWIO, Inc. Arte
Episodios
  • Quackcast 758 - Confidence is Key

    Quackcast 758 - Confidence is Key
    Sep 23 2025

    Confidence is key! Confidence can make very attractive protagonists and villains and it can make almost any character sexy because confidence is compelling. Main characters and villains never have to be confident, but if you want your audience to be drawn to them it's a great technique. To make a sexy, compelling character confidence works was better than skin tight clothes, lingerie, big muscles or bouncing boobies.

    What is confidence? It's self possession, being comfortable in yourself, being sure of yourself and your decisions, positivity, an air of competence, command, and even control. All these things can work together to become confidence. But there are ways of faking it too: Being arch, arrogant, superior, being an arsehole, entitled, bossing people about, relying on a higher rank or superior job title etc. these things are easy to mistake for confidence and many people tend to imitate or strive for these traits thinking it will make them attractive and popular, but it never quite works.

    A character doesn't have to start out with confidence or be confident all the time. Many achieve it on their journey over the course of a story. For some it's only in specific contexts, like when they're experts at something. Some start out confident and lose it in the story in order for them to be rebuilt. The mousey girl with glasses and the ponytail doesn't suddenly become sexy because she takes off the glasses and lets down her hair, rather it's because she becomes more confident and those things are symbols of that.

    Who're some of your fave confident characters in fiction? For me: The Dread Pirate Roberts is a great example, Lord Blackadder in Blackadder 2, lord Flashheart and Captain Flashheart from Blackadder 2 and 4 respectively is a massively confident and attractive character, Elvira Mistress of the Dark is a woman with so much confidence she's a sex-symbol for the ages, Gomez Adams as played by John Astin is supremely confident, Alan Rickman's Sherif of Nottingham stole the whole movie because of the character's confidence.

    This week Gunwallace was is back an in perfect form, he gave us a second take on a theme to Curse of the Office Werewoman - Creepy, driving, compelling, official… HR is sending you directives you simply CANNOT ignore! Get to it, obey like a good office drone and shake dat ass on the dance-floor!
    The first version was live in Quackcast 683 - 16th of April 2024.


    Topics and shownotes

    Links

    Featured comic:
    Critical M4ss - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/sep/16/featured-comic-critical-m4ss/

    Featured music:
    Curse of the Office Werewoman - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Curse_of_the_Office_Werewoman/. - by CorneliusCool, 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
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    1 h
  • Quackcast 757 - Memento Mori

    Quackcast 757 - Memento Mori
    Sep 16 2025
    Mortality is a heavy, heavy subject. It was brought up in the forums a while ago so we're chatting about it now. We talk about death in popculture, how we treat death in our comics and our growing awareness of mortality as adults. You become increasingly aware of mortality as you age, mainly because you witness more and more of it in action; pets, celebrities that you loved, public figures that you're aware of, grandparents, family friends, parents, friends, and eventually even you have health scares. It's a cumulative thing, but eventually you move from being young and immortal to having the spectre of death ever-present. The ultimate goal of ALL life is immortality, it's what it always strives for in various ways; the two main ones being longevity and reproduction. Life is amazing in that it's a self sustaining bunch of chemical reactions and processes that have an inbuilt goal to keep on going forever however that can be accomplished. There are almost immortal things in our world like the earth and our sun that are billions of years old but even they die eventually and they have no way, will, or mechanism to prevent that, unlike life. But even though we as humans have relatively long lives compared to most other living things and we reproduce quite well, we as individuals certainly are NOT immortal and we have to deal with that in many ways. Our cultures traditionally separate death from normal life, we venerate it through religious practice, explain it and mythologise it. In the modern day we're separated from the realities of death more than ever before because childhood mortality is super low, we all live longer than ever before and when we reach the end of life we're hidden away in retirement homes and hospitals. Most people live in cities and don't experience the same close relationship with death that those on farms and fishing communities constantly dealt with. But it never goes away. As time moves on it always draws nearer, like a slowly creeping shadow. Which is a great analogy because light seems so bright and active, warm and enveloping, it seems ever-present and forever lasting- our sun is four and a half billion years old. But the end will come for that too eventually and things will return to darkness. Darkness and non-life are the natural state of things, life is only a brief glow, an aberration, momentary. The idea that life and death, dark and light are equal, different sides of the same coin and in balance is total and complete nonsense: Darkness and death are the normal, ordinary, basic, state of things- it's ubiquitous and universal, whereas life like light is unusual, precious, singular and special. Never forget that. This week Gunwallace was still recovering from his hospital stay so another best off: Life and Death - Light hearted lyrics and classical vaudevillian comical ukulele mixed with synth in the best tradition of flight of the Conchords… but this is Gunwallace !Originally 20th Feb 2017 in Quackcast 311 Topics and shownotes Links Mortality thread - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/180089/ Featured comic: DemiMon Hollow Town Syndrome - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/sep/08/featured-comic-demimon-hollow-town-syndrome/ Featured music: Life and Death - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Life_and_Death/, by Joff, 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 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
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    58 m
  • Quackcast 756 - Not dumb, layered

    Quackcast 756 - Not dumb, layered
    Sep 9 2025
    Today we're chatting about things that are ostensibly superficially straightforward, but are actually quite clever and layered in many ways. The two prime examples are Paul Verhoven's Robocop and Starship Troopers. They can both be taken as simply dumb, hyper-violent action films, but both are also good, solid, basic satirical critiques of society. Robocop is a critique of over-corporatism and commercialism, where the myth that “private enterprise does it better” is taken to an extreme. A company takes over the police and the governance of the city of Detroit. Policeman, officer Murphy is killed on the job, only to be revived as a cyborg and we find that the corporation owns him even after he's dead. He becomes their mindless robot slave. The whole film can be taken either as a violent action movie about a super robot cop blasting his way to justice, or as the story of a literal corporate slave on a journey to regain his own humanity and freedom and in doing so he has to murder the CEO of the corporation to free himself. Which is a very symbolic act for an American film where CEOs are seen as demigods. Starship Troopers can be taken as a simple story of brave solders flying into space and fighting back on a crusade against disgusting bug aliens that threaten earth. But we learn that the aliens were only after earth because humans threatened them first, and rather than being the underdogs, the humans are actually massively superior and the aliens are afraid… rather than fighting for our existence we're actually committing genocide (or xenocide), which was also the point of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. With that little bit of extra info all the testosterone, gun firing, soldier camaraderie, patriotism and support for the troops takes on a sinister edge. If we look at it with the right angle we see that they were Nazis all along. I really appreciate stories with those sort of simple layers that can be taken in two completely different ways. It can be very easy to fail at though when the audience doesn't see your other layer at all or your “clever” message isn't very clever or well delivered. Stories certainly do not need to have layers and alternate reading to be good. I appreciate simple straightforward stories that are as they appear to be. But these ones with single extra layer which means things have a very different and obvious reading are fun. Fight-club is famously that sort of story, when we find that Tyler Durden was imaginary all along and it changes your reading of the story, you can still just take it as it seemed in the beginning though. I think the Life of Brian qualifies as well: at the beginning we think it's a satirical version of the life of the messiah, directly making fun of Christ and the bible stories, but at the end we learn that Brian really was just a simple normal guy all along like he and his mum claimed and it changes to a story NOT making fun of Christ but rather the mindless populace who never really cared about Brian at all, they just overlayed a symbol on him and worshipped that instead which took away all his control and killed him in the end. Still, look on the bright side…. Do you like these sorts of stories? This week Gunwallace was in hospital so wa unable to give us a tune so the betst off this week is Gumshoe - Groove on into this black and white world of cool. Lazy coiling blue smoke floats out and leads the way down to this underground world of jazz and sophisticated glitz. Let the bass walk you through, take a twirl with the glittering piano keys, high-five those highhats, and take your place at the bar in the coffee lounge. Make yours black, no sugar. You’re staying up all night for this one! From Quackcast 491, 10th August 2020. Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Cafe Menagerie Blues - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/sep/02/featured-comic-cafe-menagerie-blues/ Featured music: Gumshoe - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Gumshoe/ - by Pencilz, 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
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    55 m
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