UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

9 thoughts on “558 – Cotton Clad Calamity”

  1. Raznaak

    Yup, he’s a bastard XD

  2. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Are those pajamas available in XXXL in the gift shop?

  3. Otaku

    It’s been a while, so let me ask: Did we get a reason for him to WANT Susie dead? Not to backseat, but if we didn’t, I’m worried were about to move into “Stupid Evil” territory. Now, stupid happens, don’t get me wrong. It’s not bad storytelling for that to be the case here.

    You’ve just done a good job NOT having that be a driving factor, so the “Kill off the stars of my successful reality TV show.” seems shortsighted, otherwise. Oh, I guess I could be mistaken about the in-story reality TV show’s success. Like, if the company behind them is losing money, or they think a change in management at the ranch would make the whole thing more popular/profitable, then I can see the above scenario happening as well.

    I REALLY think I’m just forgetting something important, but that I don’t have time to deep dive to remind me of, hence the comment. >_<

    1. Deoxy

      It certainly has been stretched out over quite a while, but there have definitely been hints from quite near the beginning that whoever is running the reality TV show definitely wants her dead.

      But I certainly don’t recall any reason why.

      1. Clint

        Yeah it’s fair to not remember since it’s been a hot minute (many, many minutes) but if you feel like a refresher the most relevant bits would be the beginning of Episode 8 and the end of Episode 15. We haven’t explicitly spelled out exactly what The Exec means by his “side hustle” or who was on the other end of that phone call, though.

        I’m hoping that when the whole thing is eventually available it will make sense, or at least enough sense to have hung this narrative on.

        1. Otaku

          Thanks for the replies, Deoxy and Clint. Yeah, I’d totally forgotten about those things. Good to know!

  4. Evervigilant

    Seems about time for the two people who aren’t there to make a surprise entrance as the ace Susie didn’t even know she had.

  5. Scarsdale

    There’s still 3-5 people on her side that might be planning something. This guy is a megalomaniac with a god complex, so letting him think he’s the sharpest tool in the shed sets him up for a fall. Everything depends on those cameras, and I suspect their little stop over by the charging coffins had something to do with her actual plan, not the one the a-hole thinks it is.

  6. lyra

    Really enjoyed the opening of Zombie Ranch. I like the combination of the western setting with the zombie concept, it gives the story a really distinctive atmosphere. I’m a freelance illustrator and animator, and I’d be interested in seeing how some of these scenes could translate into motion, especially as a short animated teaser or character scene.

    If you’re ever interested in something like that, you can reach me here:

    IG: eve_verse_
    Email: [contact.lilaclines@gmail.com](mailto:contact.lilaclines@gmail.com)
    Discord: Lyralilac_

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558 – Cotton Clad Calamity
Posted on August 26, 2026 by Dawn

What would you call this? Armchair assassination? Merk-from-home?

Well, Suzie ain't dead (or undead) quite yet, so we'll just have to see if his gloating is justifiable.

Hoarding is okay when it’s imaginary…

Posted on April 17, 2019 by Clint

I may have written about this before. Get ten years of nearly weekly blogs under your belt and it can be a bit of a blur… but heck, anything important enough to write about once can arguably bear repeating. So let’s talk about hoarding.

Oh, not the kind where you’ve got mummified cats in the corners of your living room because you haven’t cleaned it in years. There’s not really much of an upside there. But hoarding imagination is another matter, and what I mean by that is this — when you’re engaged in creative endeavors, never throw an idea away.

Now if you’re jotting all those ideas down in physical media I suppose you could eventually become swamped in decaying notebooks and journals, but the advent of electronic storage means that doesn’t have to happen. Hell, you could even just store it all in your head, but personally speaking I prefer to dedicate what memory space I have there to more current needs. See, it’s entirely possible that a given creative idea is too stupid to ever see the light of day in any form… but so what? Doesn’t hurt anything to keep it around, and there’s the possibility that somewhere down the line as you ransack the dusty halls of your notes and/or brain, you might pick it up and find out that it’s just what you needed. Yesterday’s trash could be tomorrow’s inspiration.

For example, Dawn and I are both fans of the D&D vodcast Critical Role (though lately we’ve been playing catch-up on episodes rather than watching as they air). We’ve also both been Gamemasters in our time, so it was with rueful laughter that we watched one episode where Dungeon Master Matt Mercer had to basically chuck an encounter he’d prepared as the players managed to snag an insta-win through a clever spell use and a successful slim-chance die roll.

I’ve been on both sides of this phenomenon and there’s an undeniable exhilaration as a player when you successfully go “off script” and subvert the carefully laid plans of your Gamemaster. If you happen to be that Gamemaster, you have to learn to adjust, and yeah, maybe that dungeon you spent all weekend working out the details of isn’t going to happen because your players took a look at the dank hole in the ground and decided they’d rather head onwards to the next Inn. One of my GMs literally chucked a thick binder over his shoulder defeatedly when we did just that.

But see, don’t throw all that work away just because it didn’t fit into the current session! Instead, I’d keep that binder handy and then maybe sometime in the future my players would want to stick their noses into some dungeon that I *didn’t* prepare for… only hah! Here happens to be this ready-made dungeon I can haul out and use, with some tweaks here and there to suit the current circumstances.

So same thing with writing. Maybe you find an idea or character or event doesn’t fit into your story after all, even though you love it dearly and perhaps even spent a lot of work researching it and fleshing out details. You’ve got to cut it. But keep it around, right? It might be just the piece of the puzzle you need at some point. A sequel perhaps. Or even a different tale entirely. Hoard that imagination and the trash has every possibility of becoming treasure.