Duckfeed Presents

Hello all,Every once in a while we like to make a big post like this to announce some changes. 2024 marked our ten year anniversary of funding ourselves through Patreon, and over that time we’ve increased the amount of content we put out each month. This year’s changes are going to be about refocusing, reining things in a bit, and making sure we’re putting our energy where it does the most good.The inspiration for these changes came from a WOFF! Dispatch question about vacations, and how we don’t take them. Because the content calendar marches on, doing things like going to conventions, taking time off for holidays, or even preparing for events like Duckstream… anything that requires taking a break from recording requires us to flex doubletime in the run-up and in the aftermath. The result is that “time off” really isn’t a thing for us, and it never really can be a thing.These changes are about creating room in our schedule so this can be more like a regular job. The hope is that reducing our burnout will make us better podcasters. This doesn’t come naturally to us, because our instinct is to offer more instead of less, but that has led us to an unsustainable place, even with Gwen’s help. (And don’t worry, we’re keeping her around! We couldn’t do this without her at this point).For some sobering math, in 2024 we will have released 371 episodes across our 12 active shows. That’s 230 free episodes, and 141 premium episodes. That’s an average of a little more than 7 episodes per week, at about 8 hours of content per week (on average). This is a lot more than is usual for most Patreon campaigns and networks. While we pride ourselves on providing a lot of bang per dollar, these are hard numbers to look at.Guest Episodes of Watch Out for Fireballs!A couple of times per year, a WOFF! episode will have a guest host, meaning it will be Gary and a guest or Kole and a guest. This will solve two problems for us:First, it gets the responsibility of beating a whole video game in a week off of our plate for one week. WOFF! accounts for the majority of our work in a given week, and being able to tap out occasionally is a pre-requisite for any kind of workload lightening.Second, it addresses the problem of having half of the show play and discuss a game from a genre they don’t really like, and have nothing to say about. This is a drag for everyone, we think! We don’t want to stop covering things like console RPGs, adventure games, roguelikes, or RTS games altogether because of this dynamic. Tapping in a guest who is down with one of those genres makes sense, and we think it will make for better episodes. It will also bring in some fresh perspectives from people we know and trust to be great contributors (who we will also pay for their time).To tease a specific example, at some point early next year we will be covering Command & Conquer: Red Alert II, a game a lot of people have asked for. But for this episode, Kole will be sitting it out and we’re tapping in the wonderful Brayton Cameron.If someone sponsors an episode that makes sense to handle with a guest, we will check with them to see if they’re okay with this. We don’t want anyone to feel like they’re getting short shrift.Open Season on Revisiting Early WOFF! GamesWhile we’re teasing things… this has nothing to do with balancing our workloads, but in 2025 we’ll officially be open to covering games again. Specifically, a patron asked if we could revisit Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, a game that we covered wayyy too early (13 years ago), when the format of the show was different and we were worse podcasters.This will be a “sometimes treat” when it feels appropriate.Very Occasional RerunsIn addition to the guest episodes, we might occasionally designate a week to not feature an entirely new episode of a show. This won’t happen for Premium shows. Either we will pick an older episode that feels right, or we will make a premium or rarity episode free for everyone. By “rarity”, we mean episodes featured in bundles over the years. The unlocked premium episodes will take the place of our standard “welcome packs”. All of these episodes will have cleaned up audio when we can make that happen, and we will also record wrappers for the episodes to give some new context on the subject.We’ll do this sparingly when the guest episodes can’t work to help us accommodate events like conventions.We are Retiring Exquisite SufferingThere will be one episode of Exquisite Suffering in January, and then no more. We’ve done two premium episodes per month for a long time now, and we’ve decided that doing six (sometimes seven!) episodes of a mostly improv and digressionary show each month isn’t working as well as we’d like. So we’re going down to 4 or 5 regular episodes per month, available to all, with the hope that what we lose in quantity will be made up for in quality.There is no current plan to replace Exquisite Suffering with a new show, since that would work against our goal of refocusing. We feel like a $5 tier that includes premium episodes of Watch Out for Fireballs!, Bonfireside Chat (when it’s active), Real Lich Hours, and Unfilmable is pretty action packed even before you realize that it also includes the archives of all of those shows and 200+ episodes of Exquisite Suffering.The topic of the final episode of Exquisite Suffering will be determined by one lucky listener who wins a drawing. To enter this drawing, please complete this year’s listener survey (see below). The drawing will take place on New Years’ Day, and we will contact the winner to pick the game we’re covering. (Note that our usual standard for choosing an episode applies, no Custer’s Revenges please).For anyone who will miss the monthly polls, we are still going to run a poll to select one of the games we’ll cover in a given month.Using More of Patreon’s FeaturesThis announcement is more of an FYI than anything else. Patreon has added features like discounts and gifting, and we’re going to try to use those more. This means we’ll occasionally run specials on new memberships, and bring up that people can gift a subscription to our content to each other if they’d like.There are other new features that Patreon is developing that will be of more direct help to us as podcasters, and we’re going to be playing around with them as they come out.Days of Future Cast Will Be Back!Gary and Jeremy have talked about it plenty on the show, but this year has been pretty rough. We’re not saying we’ll never retire the show, but now is not its time, since we still have X-Men ‘97 and 2-3 great comics runs to talk about. There’s plenty to say. There’s a possibility that it will return to fortnightly releases, however, and we apologize for the show’s sporadic schedule recently.Listener SurveyIt’s been a very long time since we’ve done this, but we’d like to ask you to fill out this brief listener survey. It will help us understand who you are and what you want, and inform future decisions about the network in the coming year. Be sure to tick the box that enters you into the raffle to choose the subject of the last episode of Exquisite Suffering, if you’d like to do that.Closing RemarksWe are very grateful for your support, which allows us to make a living off of doing the work that we want to do. Our hope is that these changes are a welcome shakeup that will help us make our shows even better for you.This is always the case, but none of the changes outlined above are written in stone. Everything is an experiment and if any of this doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.Thanks again for listening and backing us. 2024 was a bad year for humans generally, but having you along has brought a little light to the proceedings. Please be safe over the holidays!Kole and GaryP.S. The music in the podcast version of this announcement is "Cool Cave" from the Kirby's Epic Yarn soundtrack. People tend to ask.

It's never good news when an investigator comes knocking at your door. The question is, is the news bad for you for the P.I.? What secrets dwell out in the barn, or deep in your past, or at the heart of things tracing back to a time before things with legs walked the land?Laird Barron's "Shiva, Open Your Eye", published for free in NIghtmare Magazine, is a Lovecraftian tale told from the other side. Curiosity has driven the investigator far into territory more dangerous than he comprehends... but not even the monster he seeks knows the full truth of the cyclical horror that entraps us all.Other Halloween Readings:"The Repairer of Reputations" by Robert W. Chambers"This Band Could Be Your Life" by Gary Butterfield"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman"The Mask" by Robert W. Chambers"The Tower" by Marghanita Laski"The Prodigy of Dreams" by Thomas Ligotti"In the Court of the Dragon" by Robert W. Chambers"In the Penal Colony" by Franz Kafka

A Traveler has arrived at a penal colony to observe a strange manner of execution: a device that takes twelve hours to kill the offender. Its biggest proponent, an Officer still loyal to an old regime, fanatically explains the devices's intricacies while preparing a Condemned Man for slaughter. Then, he reveals his plan to implicate the Traveler in its further operation.No stranger to existential horror, this is Franz Kafka's most viscerally upsetting story. "In the Penal Colony" brings a twisted Saw-like sense of justice and clockwork machinery into contact with his normal domain of fussy clerks and bureaucrats who exist to reveal religious epiphanies but never experience them for themselves.Other Halloween Readings:"The Repairer of Reputations" by Robert W. Chambers"This Band Could Be Your Life" by Gary Butterfield"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman"The Mask" by Robert W. Chambers"The Tower" by Marghanita Laski"The Prodigy of Dreams" by Thomas Ligotti"In the Court of the Dragon" by Robert W. Chambers

Hey folks, this is a quick announcement that's also a bummer.Earlier in the year we'd said that we planned to return to the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. We submitted a proposal for our panel, and waited, and waited, and waited... only to learn just recently that we'd been rejected.Without doing a live panel it doesn't make sense for us to spend the money and time to make an appearance at the show. We apologize sincerely if you'd already made plans to attend... Gary will still be around, and it's still a fun show to attend (even if just to see the Retronauts, who will be doing a panel this year).In the podcast episode attached to this post we talk about what we asked for, and what our plans for live appearances will be. In short, we're looking at attending other shows in other parts of the country. So if you know of any video game expos or conferences, let us know about them, but more importantly, ASK THEM TO BOOK US. Reaching out on social media makes a difference, for real.We are also looking at doing another Duckfest, if that ends up making sense.This is a little rough because obviously we have very normal brains and aren't sensitive to rejection at all. But we soldier on, and are grateful for all of your support, which makes these ups and downs easier to weather.Thanks!Kole

It's hard to choose the way you want to die. But this wasn't the case for Arthur Emerson... too bad he can't remember doing it. One day the swans and cats start acting weird. Then the fog rolls in. Then he remembers a night long ago when he rambled down the cramped streets of an Italian city, and met a man who spoke of a strange being: Cynothoglis."The Prodigy of Dreams" was published in a collection of Thomas Ligotti stories called Noctuary in 1994. It's impossible to get ahold of, as Ligotti only ever prints small runs of his work.Thank you so much for your support. I wish you a safe and happy Halloween! - KoleFeatured Music:"Out of the Mist", "Gene of Deception", and "A Love Song for Humanity" all by Jami Sieber.Other Halloween Readings:"The Repairer of Reputations" by Robert W. Chambers"This Band Could Be Your Life" by Gary Butterfield"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman"The Mask" by Robert W. Chambers"The Tower" by Marghanita Laski

We're pleased to announce our first new podcast in quite some time! Coming this fall, Gary and Kole will premiere ORB: A Venture Bros. Podcast.We've taken our approach to video games, movies, music, comics, and books... and now we're dedicating a show to one of our favorite television shows. The Venture Bros. is a long-running show on Adult Swim about a miserable superscientist, his miserable arch nemeses, and his oblivious sons. It's a love letter to all kinds of pulp entertainment from the mid-20th century, including classic animation, exploitation films, and progressive rock.We're announcing this early because we want help. We'd like to commission the cover art and theme music. So please contact Gary at gary@duckfeed.tv with your portfolio. BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists are strongly encouraged to apply.Listen to the audio announcement for more details. The show will be launching in about a month, it will come out weekly, and it will replace Monster in My Podcast, which we are putting on mothballs for the time being.We're extremely excited about this, and we hope you are too. If you'd like to watch along, The Venture Bros. is available for purchase in most of the expected places, and is currently streaming on Hulu.

The tradition continues with another horror short story for Halloween. This year it's another story from The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. "The Mask" is the story of a love triangle between three artists in Paris, which is disrupted by a miraculous elixer and a stray copy of the accursed play.Thank you so much for your support, and have a safe and happy Halloween!

In this season finale of Heartbeat City, Cozy Snugglefield is joined by Jenn Burleton to answer your questions.Links:TransActive Gender Project — The organization that Jen leads.

In this episode of Heartbeat City, Cozy is joined by Autumn Greer to take your questions.Special Guest: Autumn Greer.

On this episode of Heartbeat City, Cozy is joined by Bob Mackey and Henry Gilbert to answer your questions.Special Guests: Bob Mackey and Henry Gilbert.

On this fourth episode of Heartbeat City, Cozy is joined by Madeline Allfight to answer your questions.Special Guest: Madeline Allfight.

On this second episode of Heartbeat City, Cozy is joined by Jenni Polodna to answer your questions.Special Guest: Jenni Polodna.