Dodos Discuss

Yes, the answer is tea. Angela lives it. Abe knows it but pretends he doesn't. For nearly an hour, he pretends to think coffee is better. It must have been rough.(Yes, Angela writes these descriptions.)

Feeling curious? We've got you covered. Our random discussion points this week cover the Everglades and mangroves, Charles Darwin and Mark Twain, artificial hearts and banana DNA, and more. And of course, mocking each other when we don't know the answers. Want to feel smart? Listen to our ignorance.You can find all our episodes at dodosdiscuss.flyingdodostudio.com . We are on Instagram and Twitter as @dodosdiscuss. If there is a topic you want to hear us ramble about, let us know!

We're trying a little stochastic magic as the jumping-off point for our conversation this week, using random searches to find topics. We ended up talking about the first saint from the united states, why trains have a caboose, how many letters are in the Hawaiian language, the original of Panama hats, and much, much more.Enjoy the journey with us.

Both of us are continually working to hone our storytelling skills. As part of that work, we made our way through the exercises in The Short Story Writer's Companion by Tom Bailey. The first exercise was to write a list of attributes about a character. Nothing specific, just a list of random facts such as shoe size and favorite ice cream. Then we were to write a scene where that character has a motivation—in this case, heading out for a blind date—and include as many of those details as possible while still writing an engaging scene. We wrote these a couple years ago originally, so we revised them and now this is our critique of each other's work. More to come in this series! There are a fair number of exercises, and they were very useful.You can download the PDF of our stories, or you can see all of them on our website.

A while ago (around July/August of last year), the housing situation across America got very weird. Well, here in Bellingham, WA, rents increased from 0 to 100%. We lucked out at only a 30% increase. Ooh. It was the last straw. So here is our solution. It is slow going and we haven't moved and nothing has really happened yet, but it is in the works, so we will go on about it more as time goes on.

While This Is How You Lose the Time War might sound like a wibbly-wobbly timey-whimey back and forth and all about plot, it is not. Neither of us really like time-travel stories, usually. But this one was amazing. Time-travel is merely the backdrop and the story is really an exploration of a beautiful and peculiar relationship. Highly recommended. Let's try to figure out what made us love it so dang much.

BAAAT!We recently watched all three seasons of What We Do in the Shadows and it quickly became one of our favorite shows. But why?! We tried to talk about what we like and why we like it and how we can attempt to apply it to our own work. In the end, we were still so fresh on the show being awesome, it was hard to stop weeping and foaming at the mouth. Spoilers, so give it a watch, and then come listen.

It's time for us to gush about how much we love Murderbot. It would hate hearing us talk about it this way and would probably run away to binge watch some shows in a closet. Which, honestly, is what Angela wants to do when people compliment her. The Murderbot Diary series is by Martha Wells. It is an absolute delight and we are already looking forward to the next book in 2024.Have you read Murderbot? Give us a shout-out on Twitter and Instagram @dodosdiscuss!

As two lovers of science fiction, we adored this course: How Science Shapes Science Fiction. Checked it out from the library and watched an episode or two every night. We liked it so much that with the next Great Courses sale, we bought our own copy for reference whenever we want. And part of what we adored was the host, Charles Adler, pictured in the episode artwork. He was charming and enthusiastic and . . . well, listen to the episode. One of the funniest things we learned was what would happen to an astronaut in a bullet-like rocket, as in Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon. (Hint, it involves jelly . . . ) Is there something you are dying to learn about? Rocketry? Space travel? Jetpacks? Planetary orbits? Let us know on Twitter or Instagram! @dodosdiscuss

Starting in 2014, Angela started the natural science comic anthology Awesome 'Possum. With 4 volumes, it is a well-loved series. So here we talk about the making of this anthology, from ideation to working with creators to funding on Kickstarter and designing the book, as well as how she continued to improve the series over time. You can get your own copies from Angela's store. All four volumes are available and waiting for your eager eyes. For international shipping, most are available on Amazon.Side note: If you have any questions about the making of this anthology, feel free to send us an email or DM! There's a lot to unpack in the creation of this informative and fun series. If we get enough questions, we might do a second episode about it.Find us @dodosdiscuss on Twitter and Instagram.

Angela is writing a sci-fi story. Sci-fi involves thinking about things like . . . would people still need to wear glasses? What is the new "phone"? In this episode, we discuss some of the world features Angela wants and needs to include in this strange new world.

Do you want to read a book that makes you feel all the feelings? It's A Man Called Ove by Frederick Backman.This week, we are talking about A Man Called Ove: comparing the book and the movie, and discussing what in the world makes this such a compelling story. As ever, Angela read it and had such a big reaction to it that Abe had to read it. (Also as ever, he had to read it because Angela wouldn't stop bugging him about it.) Lots of gushing and pondering as we dissect what made us love this story. (Also note that as Angela writes this she is already welling up. Such a good book.)This is another opportunity for you to watch the movie or read the book first. And if you want a week's heads up on the stories we will discuss, you can sign up for our newsletter at dodosdiscuss.flyingdodostudio.com (bottom of the page).

Back when Angela was attending The Center for Cartoon Studies, she created the comic Green Thumbs for an anthology assignment. Before that, we had tried working on it together. It was . . . not a success. In this episode, we talk about what failed about our joint effort, what we would do differently next time, and how it eventually came to be a comic. It is short, so give it a read and then come give it a listen! Do you have any particular methods for creating as a couple?

"We talk about organization," as Abe would put it. Angela organizes in piles and Abe organizes by improv and neither of us like the other's style. You might even say we passionately dislike each other's organizational styles. But we like each other, so we try to make do.

Before it was a movie with Matt Damon, The Martian was a very fun book by Andy Weir. More in the realm of hard sci-fi, the follows Mark Watney's attempts to live after being stranded alone on Mars. Sounds like it could be boring, but Weir is excellent at bringing a twist at just the right moment when things seem safe. Angela nabbed the book and her giggles from the couch while reading it spurned Abe to read it, too. Since he enjoyed it so much, we also decided to watch the movie. Here we dissect how the story was translated from prose to film: what enhanced the story, what was worse, and why they made the decisions they did. It's a great time to go read the book, then rush back over here and listen to our spoiler-filled discussion. And let us know what you thought of the book and movie!

This time, we discuss Descender by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen. We both thoroughly enjoyed this series, so we discuss the things we like, the things we don't like, and more importantly why.  This is less of a review and more of a dissection. Jeff Lemire is one of Angela's favorite comics creators and Dustin Nguyen is a mind-blowing artist, so when we talk about the things we dislike, we are being very knit-picky. Warning: Spoilers. So go give it a read, come back, and give it a listen. Then tell us what you think on Twitter and Instagram! In the picture there is the cutest robot from the series, Bandit, a little dog-bot. 

Since it's Thanksgiving week, we thought it was the right time to share the food episode! We have very strong and contradictory opinions about food. Cheer us on or curse us for the monsters that we are!Most importantly, have a wonderful Thanksgiving or a fantastic Thursday.

One of the first projects we did together was the webcomic The Jerks. We did it for a few years and it was an incredibly fun project. Our tagline: Because there aren't enough poop and vomit jokes in the world. This might surprise you. If you want a little background, go read a few comics. Here's the first one. 

Angela works at a public library (as a page: checking in and shelving books) and David Shannon's Mr. Nogginbody Gets a Hammer came across her desk. It was instant love. She brought it home and gave it a read. It was deeper love. So we read all the David Shannon books they could get their grubby mitts on. Here we talk about what we liked, what we didn't like, and whatever else we can think of regarding these awesome children's picture books. Spoiler alert: his art is so rad.

And now for our most controversial episode ever, it's our favorite topic: poop. Initially recorded as a test, this episode was so enjoyed by our test listeners that we decided to release it to the world. If you don't think poop is funny, come back next week!Explicit for swears and so much poop talk.

We are both creators—Abe as a writer and photographer, Angela as a cartoonist/illustrator and writer—but we each think about things very differently. So let's discuss how we go about creating our various arts and how we incorporate the other into our process. (Spoiler: Angela makes more use of Abe than vice versa.)If you want to see more of Abe's work, his website is abeolson.flyingdodostudio.comIf you want to see more of Angela's work, her website is angelabcomics.com

Since we needed to post an episode to finish all the back-end workings, we figured this was a good time to give you a quick introduction to who we are. Angela asks Abe three questions. Abe asks Angela three questions. And we tell you three important things to know about ourselves. Enjoy.