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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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

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!
- 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