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.

Mining the metaphysical

Posted on November 11, 2015 by Clint

I suppose it’s a writer thing, but I can be downright entertained by multiple meanings. For example, the verb “mining” could refer to the extraction of valuable resources, or it could refer to setting explosive booby traps ready to blow up in someone’s face.

As anyone who’s been around the Internet is no doubt aware, bringing up religion and/or spirituality is one of the most sure fire ways to set off a (figurative) explosion. And yet such matters are so intrinsic to the human condition that it’s a rare storyteller who doesn’t set foot in that minefield sooner or later. To go back to the other meaning, there are valuables there to be mined and brought forth. Judeo-Christendom alone has provided countless strikes of metaphorical bounty for writers throughout the centuries, not even counting instances of outright fan fiction like The Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost (and those in turn have inspired quite a few spin-offs of their own). Shakespeare all but strip-mined Greek mythology for his plays, and now in latter days we strip-mine Shakespeare and posit “What if Puck was some rich dude’s executive assistant?”

Now would an Ancient Greek who believed in the Gods and Goddesses and lived their life accordingly find those representations of Puck blasphemous?  Better yet, would they have been offended by, say, how Homer represented Zeus and Poseidon?

 “Unlike practical Greek religious observance, Homer’s portrayals of [deities] suited his narrative purpose, being very different from the polytheistic ideals Greek society used. To wit, the Classical-era historian Herodotus says that Homer, and his contemporary, the poet Hesiod, were the first artists to name and describe their appearance and characters.“

Sounds a lot like what we do to this day when someone decides to represent God as George Burns or Morgan Freeman. I like to think that the reactions are similar, where a minority might take offense but the majority will recognize it as fiction and have no more problem with it than a professional computer programmer does with the average Hollywood hacking scene, unless it’s particularly insulting.

Anyhow, I don’t even want or need to bring personifications of myth or religion into Zombie Ranch, but I did feel that sooner or later I would want to touch on religious topics in a world-building sense, after establishing early on that Christianity in some form had survived the apocalypse. The easy mode most zombie (or apocalypse) stories seem to default to is splitting the world into two camps: atheistic amoral hooligans, or bloodthirsty religious fanatics — with the heroes caught somewhere in between, usually too busy trying to survive to really consider any theological questions.

Now do extremists exist? Sure. Do they get more traction in times of crisis? By the lessons of history, absolutely. Are they the whole story? Absolutely not. Cults like the Flagellants during the Black Death came and went, but the core Catholic Church endured. And because endurance in the face of disaster is one of my biggest themes, it was a more interesting answer to me that institutions like the Catholic Church could and would endure the zombie apocalypse, and a couple decades and councils later would have discussed and resolved some of the theological issues that the walking dead presented. I find the Catholic doctrine of spirit (or “rational soul”, present only in man) versus the material soul which motivates plants and animals to be a fascinating concept, and one which I could easily see being applied to the riddle of the zombie. I lay no claim to being a theologian, but I believe the Church skewing in the direction of incorporating the new facts of life (or unlife) in the Weird New West–with as little change to existing doctrine as possible–to be a plausible outcome.

Hopefully that doesn’t blow up in my face. If it does, well, them’s the breaks of mining, I suppose.