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 info was freely shared for good or ill, and it was almost impossible to stop. Then Google made things easier than ever to find. Youtube meant we could share videos. Along came social media where it was easy to connect with others and get info out, Twitter users were even described as “citizen journalists”. Smartphones from Apple and Google made it even simpler to share stuff. But little did we know the seeds had been sown for a return to the bad old days…

Monopolies are usually a bad thing and now the internet is divided among a small cadre of huge monopolies. The massive success of social media at connecting us, Google search, Youtube for videos, and Apple and Google at managing our phones and online lives has narrowed us all down and made us far more vulnerable. It's still possible to skirt them all and use other services, but their reach, versatility, utility, ubiquity and user-bases means you're sacrificing a hell of a LOT if you do. Governments are still ineffective at censoring these but they can ban and restrict them which means the media companies that own these services introduce there own forms of restrictions and censorship as a way to try and avoid that and the loss of revue it would mean. The impact of those restrictions are massive since so much of our lives are online now.

They can have all your online accounts deleted, it can affect access to all the photos you've taken of your kids, your phones and tablets can become useless, work contacts and friends can be lost, years of work at building an online client base or fans can be wiped out in seconds with no way to get it back, and that's just a small sample. There are REAL costs involved too, these media companies like Meta can steal your money from you and you have zero recourse- the building of those fanbases and connections, online galleries, video production etc has REAL monetary value FAR in excess of the service they provide you (especially since their ads and data mining pay for it), but they treat you and your work as a free resource. Corporate censorship is THE worst issue facing us now in this context, because of its power, reach, arbitrariness, and total lack of any accountability. With a simple change of their Terms of Service, new policies, the AI bots they're using to police stuff suddenly for no reason you can find yourself in peril.

Lastly there is the idea of “cancel culture”, which has been quite exaggerated because it's seen as left wing and therefore scary. The truth is it's always been around and practised equally by right wing, left wing, and centrist people. The internet HAS given it more reach and made it a bit easier to “cancel” people because you can more easily find out info about them and what they've done and you can also easily make up things and spread campaigns to attack people whether they're based on truth or lies. What is “cancel culture”? Basically it's a kind of mob justice with all the issues and problems mob justice always has: people are stupider in groups, there is no presumption of innocence or context, and there's no possible limit to the “justice” enacted. For every righteously cancelled person there will be many more who it was done to maliciously. And ALWAYS remember when you support stuff like this, if it can be done to others then it can be done to you. We like to think that these things are only done to “bad” people, but reality doesn't work that way, anyone can see you as bad at any time.

Out of it all though, corporate censorship is by far the worst, as the official Drunk Duck Instagram can attest. In an ironic twist it was taken down and deleted by Meta after this Quackcast was recorded. Drunk Duck has had itself “censored” repeatedly by Google because their system downgrades us on its search engine for their own silly reasons, like lack of a mobile site option, putting social media results ahead, we got downgraded for lack of HTTP even though it's not needed at all on our site because accounts contain nothing sensitive and don't deal with money, so we had to pay money to get that up and running to retain our visibility… Have you been the victim of any form of censorship? Even as a viewer? I know many people who've suffered losses and issues do to corporate censorship.

Gunwallace wasn't able to do a theme this week so instead we have a reprise of Tales from Two Tiny Tittybars - Bouncing boobs in DA CLUB! This was originally from 6 Nov, 2017 in Quackcast 228.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Previous Quackcast on censorship - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/quackcast/episode-750-censorshipping Forum post about censorship issues - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/180046/ Another forum post on censorship problems - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/180048/ Twitter is made of bots - https://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-elon-musk-bots-fake-traffic

Featured comic: Mister Man Eater - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/jul/28/featured-comic-mister-man-eater/

Featured music: Tales from Two Tiny Tittybars - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Tales_from_Two_Tiny_Tittybars/ - By Moneko, 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/

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

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.

Next week we'll chat about how free speech and censorship works now on the internet the way it is now, but for now it's a bit of a rambling overview because it's a gigantic topic! With “free speech” and censorship people always imagine that it's something very basic and black and white but when you look into it the complexities and complications are pretty huge, not to mention there are NO universal global “free speech” rules and that is a big issue with the internet and instantaneous unregulated communication which bypasses national borders.

Basically “free speech” usually means that governments aren't allowed to restrict the political expression of individuals because that is essential for preserving free democracies. We expand that to “free expression” in a more general sense because we don't want governments restricting what we can say or do (within certain limits). But that's just about preventing governments fining or jailing or killing us for what we say, it's not about people or businesses restricting us… Then there's the issue of using “free speech” to advocate for violence or persecution, or lying about catastrophes in order to cause mass panic, THEN you can face government limits. Or what if your way of expressing yourself is to defame people and accuse them of made up issues? Then you can face them in court for things like libel or defamation and that is unfairly weighted towards people who have more money so they can get away with lying about you in public and they can also get away with claiming the TRUE things you said about them were libel too…

And that's just a taste of how complex it gets. Not to mention copyright issues, fair use, obscenity, ratings systems etc, it all factors in! On Drunk Duck we need to have a ratings system that comics fall under. Our Adult rated comics have restrictions on them, and we don't allow comics that depict underage characters in sexual situations, (that can be hard to police). Comics designed to defame others can also face restrictions. So censorship is everywhere! Though DD is more free than other comic hosts on the net and that has always been one of our main features from the very beginning!

What have been your experiences with censorship?

This week Gunwallace has given us a musical theme inspired by Mortify - A sepulchral, highly evocative, almost dreamlike reverie on the tenebrous existence of the penumbra between life and death, dark and light, where souls hang on the edge of oblivion.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Info on freedom of expression https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/rights-and-freedoms/freedom-information-opinion-and-expression

Forum post about censorship issues https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/180046/

Featured comic: Dragen Asylum - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/jul/22/featured-comic-dragen-asylum/

Featured music: Mortify - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Mortify/ - by Pit Face, 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

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 simple social animals and following fashion is an instinctual way for us to fit in with our social groups and participate in the simple social hierarchies based on how closely we follow the current fashion and how cleverly we express it. It's herd behaviour.

But why is it folly? There are a few very important reasons that you shouldn't follow fashion: 1. It dates you in a really unfortunate and specific way. So you stuff is forever tied to a specific time. 2. Fashions come and then go, which means you only have a limited time before what was cool and making you fit in turns around and does the EXACT OPPOSITE. 3. You become just another part of the crowd, which is hard to stand out from, and in truth you will probably be a bad version of whatever the popular style is, which will be more obvious when the fashion moves on and no one makes allowances for you anymore because you were expressing a fashion they liked, rather you'll just be seen for what the are: a wannabe. 4. You will be driven to change things in order to keep up with fashion changes, which will be very disruptive to your work and annoying for your audience. 5. Audiences that are attracted to you because of the fashion you're expressing will also quickly leave when that's not the in thing anymore.

Slang changes all the time. The very worst and most stupid thing you can ever do is try and unironically keep up with current slang, especially if you're trying to see “cool”. Why is that? Because the people most up with the latest slang are 12 to 14 years old, do you really want to be thought of as cool to a 12 year old? Aside from that the constant changes mean that using current slang dates you more than anything and gives the opposite of your intended meaning, instead of ever being cool you will look very stupid. If you must you can use it ironically and that will save you, you can also use it historically to date your stuff to a particular time, OR you can invent your own like A Clockwork Orange, the Simpsons, or The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Now we come to the topic of “style vs fashion”. You can be stylish instead of fashionable, this means you pick styles from where and whenever you like (even current fashions), based on your passion for those things and you intelligently incorporate them into your own personal style. The difference is that you are not simply following a trend because it's the done thing, going along with it, doing your own poor version of it because you don't really understand it and it not fitting in any way with you what so ever. Style is making the best choices and picking the best examples of things that worked, while fashion is simply fitting in.

So what have been your own worst fashion mistakes? This can be in creation, clothing, hair, whatever. Did you try and jump onboard with manga style when that first became the big fashion in Western comics? I know I tried and did a terrible version of the style! Did you do the whole non-linear story thing? The alternative world thing? The superhero in the “realistic” outfit and setting thing? The “webtoon format” vertical scrolling infinite canvas thing? There are many more fads and styles… It's NOT a bad thing to do any of those as long as you're not just don't it because it's the popular thing at the time. Also, back in the late 80s I had black/grey acid wash jeans and white high-top shoes. And I also had a pseudo mullet (long at the back with lots and hairspray and gel on the sides).

Gunwallace wasn't able to do a theme this week so instead we have a reprise of May the Rain Come, by Zimeta. It's a very beautiful piece. From Quackcast 177, 28th of July, 2014.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic: Sheltered Lands - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/jul/14/featured-comic-sheltered-lands/

Featured music: May the Rain Come - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/May_the_Rain_Come/ - by Zimeta, 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 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

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 conscious so much as having a reason to bring more promotion to creators- that's important to remember. This is marketing :)

We have a forum thread discussion* where people have shared their own recommendations. InkyMoondrop, Bravo1102, Lothar, Dragonsong12, PaulEberhardt, Kawaiidaigakusei, and J_Scarbrough had some great suggestions already!

PaulEberhardt: - April as Autism acceptance Month. - December as Universal Human Rights Month - December's also Learn a Foreign Language Month. - October is Dyslexia, Depression and Breast Cancer.

Bravo1102: - February is Black African heritage month - March is Woman's heritage month - November is for war, veterans and remembrance.

Dragonsong12: - Hispanic heritage - Mental health

Lothar: - Relationships - Mental health -Drugs and alcohol - Poverty - Religion - Politics - War - Existential dread

Ozoneocean (me): – Erotic comics awareness month – mixed media comics – Newspaper strips – Political creators – War – Romance – Female creators – Creators who started before the digital age.

Kawaiidaigakusei: - Alien Month - Furry and Scaly Month - mental health - Language Other than English Month - Fantasy Month

J_Scarbrough: - October: Scary comics - December: Christmas, good will, happy celebration theme.

All good suggestions but some of them can be joined into others I think? Something like “Hispanic Heritage” could go into a category like Kawaii's “Language Other than English Month”, and “Poverty” and “Drugs and alcohol” could be subsets of “Mental Health”? Also on the Quackcast Banes suggested February for “Romance” because of valentines day. Please give your opinions and suggestion! Tantz wants a popular vote of these.

This week Gunwallace has given us a musical theme inspired by Over the Asphodels - Creeping, crawling, sneaking, and snarling from a delicate orchestral beginning into a grinding, heavy electronica

Topics and shownotes

Links

*Let's design DD Month Events together! (forum thread) https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/180026/

Featured comic: Tech Rush - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/jul/08/featured-comic-tech-rush/

Featured music: Over the Asphodels - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Over_the_Asphodels/ - by Ma_Na, 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/

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

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

Tantz is a good person to talk about that with since she's published a few novels in her fantasy Art of Veiling series. And Banes is a good person to ask about it because he's interested in writing a novel of his own!

Have you ever had plans to write a novel? Do you prefer them over short stories or comics? How would YOU approach writing a novel of your own?

This week Gunwallace was overwhelmed so as another best-off special treat we have a reprise of the theme to Ginger&Shadow - Lovely string music with the competing themes representing the two cats. From Quackcast 204, 3rd of February 2015.

Topics and shownotes

Links

The Art of Veiling - https://www.amazon.com.au/Art-Veiling-Awareness-Tantz-Aerine-ebook/dp/B00CRMM25K

Featured comic: kingdom of cats - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/jul/02/featured-comic-kingdom-of-cats/

Featured music: Ginger&Shadow - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Ginger_and_Shadow/ - by Barry Corbett, 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

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's another myth. Just keep working at it over and over and practising new things till you get the results you want.

This cast was inspired by Gunwallace's newspost last week where he discusses this very thing. We go a bit deeper into the subject and Tantz lends her considerable academic and scientific weight as well as numerous anecdotes. It really is a persistent myth that you can only learn well as a child and then after that you may as well not even bother, but that's wrong for a lot of reasons. Like most myths it is based on grain of truth: children's brains are “empty” so they're predisposed to gather as much knowledge as fast as they can, copying from everything, so they can learn to survive and become functioning humans. Because of that they can seem to pick up the basics pretty fast. When you're an adult you don't have that need anymore so you pick things up slower. That's all it is, you can still learn at any age and in fact adults have the advantage: they're more dedicated to what they want to learn and they have the experience and intelligence to understand what they learn and make better use of it, so they can synthesise that knowledge, apply it to other things and sub in other knowledge and experience to augment their learning.

In my own experience teaching digital animation to tertiary students, in which they were taught how to use media creation tools on their computers, the basics of animation and how to create a full animated project, the older students did so much better than the younger students that they were in another league. People of the ages 50 and 60+. They were more dedicated and more interested. The younger students 18 to early 20s had more trouble understanding what they were doing and staying focussed. And in my experience as an art student at university it was much the same, older students always did better, without exception.

Why is this? When you're older you have more experience and can deal with distractions better. You have much more draws on your time so when you really want to do something you will be more dedicated to it because you have to make that time count. You have more money to put towards to what you're interested in. You care less about the positive or negative reinforcement of others; you don't do what you do for praise and you don't care as much about criticism. Your brain is fully formed so it's not being confudled with hormones or structural changes. Your social situation is more stable and less crucial so it doesn't interfere as much with things you want to do.

Obviously there are things that make it harder too: Physically you're more prone to injury and slow healing. You're not as fast. Your eyes and ears might not be as sharp. You have much less free time and have to make moments count more. You haven't got the same dedicated support structure that most younger people have, and so on. But despite all of that the advantages still help older people win out.

So learn to do art better, practise writing, learn other languages, learn to dance, play guitar, weld, code, whatever you feel like! Have you got any experience learning something when you're older vs learning as a kid?

This week Gunwallace has given us a musical theme inspired by The Midnight Tea Party - Relaxing and exciting! A feathery, glittery explosion of laconic violin and electronica. We’re in heaven and we’re having a rave!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Gunwallace's newspost about Starting Late https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/jun/25/starting-late/

Featured comic: Space Spaghetti - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/jun/24/featured-comic-space-spaghetti/

Featured music: The Midnight Tea Party - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Midnight_Tea_Party/ - by Mystic Hand, 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

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.

This Quackcast was inspired by me thinking about musicians like Prince, Queen, and David Bowie- many younger people now are looking back on them as if they were musical geniuses, like Beethoven and Mozart, but I can clearly recall when they were just pop-musicians, you were interested to hear their latest stuff on the radio of their latest video but it wasn't ground shaking. They were not considered super dooper massive cultural icons then, in fact they had less regard and hero worship than most modern young celebs do now! Your average popular “influencer” probably gets more regard now than David Bowie did back in the 70s and 80s.

As Generation Xers Banes, Tantz, and I were part of a world in the later days old the cold war, when it was at its peak, before the end. This flavoured all of culture in all sorts of direct and indirect ways and if you don't understand that then you can't properly understand those cultural products that came out of that time. All the massive prosperity of the west and ultra-capitalism from the 1950s onwards with the USA solidly driving all western culture was because after WW2 the world was split in 2 and everyone had to unite around the USA because they were the strongest power militarily and economically in opposition to the “communist block”, NATO vs the Warsaw Pact.

It's the reason American media from Hollywood stayed as so huge, the reason American influence in music was so primary, and the same with style, design, and technology. But there are plenty of direct influences too, a character like James Bond makes no sense outside of that split world, in fact nor does any spy fiction that came from then. The Klingons in Star Trek were Russians. The action genre in movies solidly had to do with the cold war- Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger's career's were formed around Cold War influences…

What big aspects of history where you “there” for? The fall of the Berlin Wall, Perestroika, 9/11, The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the start of myspace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the beginnings of social media and influencer culture, the rise of reality TV, the fall of bookshops…?

This week Gunwallace was inspired to craft a musical theme to Capricious Infection - A mystical, magical, stargazing sound here, touches of Journey of the Sorcerer by The Eagles. You can imagine you’re in a field in darkness, wandering over cold, dew wet grass and staring up at the vast, glittering majesty of the milky way galaxy above.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic: Wings Of Daera - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/jun/16/featured-comic-wings-of-daera/

Featured music: Capricious Infection - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Capricious_Infection/. - by CressidiasComics, 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 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

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 character they can generally solve any crime pretty easily with their amazing abilities… if they're NOT a main character then they're usually pretty useless though haha!

Why is this done? Well there are a few reasons, one is that the creators might not know very much about the profession so they pack in all the best parts of it into their portrayals, especially if they want to show that their character is the best at something. One reason is that it's a good shorthand and saves time and resources if you just pack one character with the skills of 10 people instead of having to write an entire team, so they become almost an avatar that represents the idea of a profession. I think of the character Doctor Hodgins in the TV series Bones, he specialises in slime, bugs, and soil samples at a forensic pathology lab - real experts in that field say that it would require a large team of people to match the work of that character.

We commonly see this with action heroes. Spies for example, specifically field agents have so many skills and abilities that they do the work of an army of people. John Wick represents the fictional occupation of a hit-man with fictional skills of solider martial artists. Doctors in fiction (as main characters), can recognise any malady without advanced testing or machinery and usually cure them in a single day. Artists can reproduce any style of work extremely quickly and draw super realistically from memory. Musicians can play any song with no practise and grab an audience's attention and emotion with it in their first performance.

Sherlock Holmes is ostensibly a prime example of this trend, he's an expert detective and can solve any crime with almost superhuman powers of observation and leaps of logic. In most versions of him that is how he's always portrayed, but that's actually not quite right since the version of Holmes we're given is mediated through the perspective of his partner Doctor Watson who is astonished by Holmes and hero worships him, so he could almost be considered an “unreliable narrator”. In THIS way Sherlock Holmes could be an example of the CORRECT way to handle this trend: He SEEMS to be a super expert mainly because the view of him we see is recounted by a person who thinks of him that way.

What are some issues with this? If it's done too much it can easily get on the nose a ruin suspension of disbelief. It can also create unrealistic expectations in audiences and this can cause REAL harm in reality when people expect all their ills to be easily diagnosed and cured- and when they aren't then they turn to alternative medicine (fake medicine) which promises cures and yet does nothing but pretends it does. People will shun real police who can't seem to solve disappearances fast enough and turn to psychics or even violent vigilantes instead. So there are indeed bad consequences for taking things too far in fiction.

Has your job ever been misrepresented this way? What are some of the worst, silliest versions of this trend? What are examples of when it's done right?

This week Gunwallace has given us a musical theme inspired by Machine World - Desolate plains, the image of post apocalyptic destruction, black rocky sands, rusting steel wreckage, the massive skeletal remains of long dead machinery, haunted, ancient, abandoned, yet humanity persists.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic: Drunk Duck Awards 2025 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/jun/10/featured-comic-drunk-duck-awards-2025/

Featured music: Machine World - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Machine_World/ - by Hamburger_mafia, 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 Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

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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/

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