UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

5 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.

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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.

Smarting it up…

Posted on April 5, 2023 by Clint

We’ve all heard of “dumbing it down,” right? Well just in case, you can educate yourself on the idiom here. This is the classic creative conundrum of, say, me not using a lot of the words I just used on account of the danger that people might not understand them. Oftentimes it’s at the behest of an editor or executive who believes that not treating the audience as if they were mentally deficient or short of attention span or both will lessen the appeal of the product (and thus the amount of cashola it might generate). Product that is aimed at or seen to be as “for kids” is especially vulnerable to this as I’ve noticed throughout my whole life that there is a disturbing tendency among a lot of people to equate lack of age with lack of intelligence.

Myself, I believe that lack of intelligence and lack of experience are two very different things. Children and teens might lack perspective (and to be fair, there are plenty of adults who do as well) but they can get their brains around a lot of things conventional wisdom wouldn’t expect if you give them the chance. In fact, doing so just might broaden that perspective they lack, as well as potentially helping their self-esteem.

For example, when I was a youngster in the mid-1980s, much of Saturday morning cartoon fare was rather mindless by design. Certainly episodic, as it was considered that kids couldn’t and wouldn’t handle any long-term storytelling. Then The Real Ghostbusters premiered and, while still mostly episodic and bearing some cutesy elements like Slimer being the odious comic relief mascot, had a surprising amount of depth at times digging into both historical and fictional folklore. Most mind-blowingly (pun intended) of all was an episode titled “The Collect Call of Cthulhu” and yep, there were the Ghostbusters confronting the horrors of the Lovecraftian Mythos including a finale showdown with Big C himself. Unfortunately the powers that be eventually got wind of all this smartening up and dumbed it back down in later Seasons, but while it lasted it opened up a whole new ideal to me of the idea that, hey, not all this stuff needed to be written like it was teletubbies. What’s more, it felt like some adult or adults out there were reaching out to me and saying, “you’ve got a brain and you can handle this.” That felt good.

Later I would learn one of those adults was J. Michael Stracynzski and that totally tracked. I also remember the one guy at my local geeky gaming store who treated us kids well and even ran campaigns for us when the other adults there were barely tolerant of our presence. So anyhow, at WonderCon I got a chance to pay that forward, taking a break from our booth with Dawn’s generous permission to try out an introductory game of the Starfinder RPG. Somehow I ended up the Captain of the ship at a table full of strangers including two teenage kids, one of whom seemed shy and another who was definitely not shy but who managed to create his own character while all the rest of us just grabbed pre-gens. From what I could tell of all the options involved, this was no simple feat. Kid knew their stuff, certainly more than I did for all that I probably could passably claim to be his grandfather.

It probably helped no small amount that I had the Captain role and the starship combat in Starfinder (and as presented by the GM) seems heavily focused on the crew in various assigned roles checking in with the Captain for guidance. I may not have known the system inside and out but I like to think I can latch onto potentials and run a decent game plan on short notice. And more than that I just tried to make sure everyone felt respected and was having a good time, especially the kids. I believe the children are the future, or something like that. The sheer gleam in the one kid’s eye when they (as ship’s Engineer) suggested re-routing power in a certain way and I told them “Good idea, let’s do it!” — that was wonderful and I hope they carry the memory of a greying-haired adult (and ostensible authority figure) being earnestly supportive and immersed in the game they so obviously loved.

Anyhow I reckon I’ve strayed a parsec or so off of my topic at this point, so let me just attempt to bring it back around and say much prefer enjoying a creative property that treats its audience as smart people than the all-too-common opposite, regardless of genre. And that goes for writing one, too.