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.

Postage dues

Posted on October 7, 2015 by Clint

Shipping. The part of the Kickstarter that’s probably the least awesome to think about. Some Kickstarter newbies don’t think about it at all, and end up deep in the red when all’s said and done because it wasn’t part of their budget estimate. I’m not talking about the shipping of getting the goods to your own door (though I’ve heard of people who didn’t even think about that) — it’s getting the goods from your door to the doors of all your backers.

I knew a few of those folks, and so when we launched our own first Kickstarter I was determined not to end up in the same straits. I wanted to build in some sort of shipping buffer into our goal and our tier rewards. The first problem of course is that it’s really hard to estimate, say, the size and weight of a package, when the products you’ll be sending aren’t even made yet. The second problem is you don’t want to scare people off from pledging by putting too much of the cost on them. The third is you can’t just eat all the cost yourself unless you happen to be wealthy enough to cover it, in which case why are you even doing a Kickstarter?

This is a particularly delicate dance in the case of International backers, because the moment a package has to cross a border you’re looking at quite a price hike, regardless of whether you’re using a courier service or not. In the end we went with the lowest cost option provided by our good old United States Postal Service, which still meant approximately $15 to ship to Canada and $20 to ship elsewhere.

Within the U.S. postage could still get fairly high on occasion, such as the tiers where we had to ship a t-shirt, poster, swag, and a set of our individual comics to someone on the opposite coast. Luckily in the end we didn’t have too many of those to deal with, but even with all my thought and preparation there was one thing that caught me by surprise, and that was meeting our stretch goal.

Don’t get me wrong, it was great to get the support! Our initial goal was $2200 and the stretch was $3700, at which point we promised that anyone who pledged at $30 or higher would get a free set of swag: “Uncle Chuck’s Secret Stash”. A little grab bag of Zombie Ranch stickers, temporary tattoos, buttons, etc. They wouldn’t weigh much or take up much room, and the extra money would be more than enough to get them made. No big deal.

Ah, except then we actually hit the stretch, and I suddenly realized that we now had a bunch of $30 tier backers I couldn’t just use Media Mail to send a book to and be done with it.

Media Mail is a low-cost domestic service the USPS offers for certain mailings like books, so long as no advertisements or other merchandise are present. We’d intentionally constructed the Kickstarter so that only at $25 and up did we have to start worrying about sending people non-digital rewards, and only at $40 and up did we have to start worrying about doing more than sending a book in a nicely padded envelope. Except oops, now we had swag to send.

Thankfully we had a buffer of extra funds to work with for just these unforeseen circumstances. Always, always try to ask for more than you think you’ll need (within reason, of course), because there will always be something you’ll overlook, and now what you thought was extra money is actually money you’ll end up needing to use. Heck, even if by some miracle you do calculate everything correctly down to the last dime, you never know when something’s going to get lost or damaged during shipping and will need to be replaced. We already had a bizarre incident like that where the envelope left our hands stuffed full of book and arrived at its destination slit open and empty.

Anyhow I’m going to save any further commentary until everyone gets their stuff. We sent most of the books a couple weeks ago and most everything else including the International shipments are going out this week. Oh yeah, be sure you budget in stuff like boxes and packing tape. Man have we gone through a lot of packing tape. Phew.

Excuse me while I go say a prayer to Hermes or whomever now. May they find their destinations, and may any postal or customs official who opens them for inspection remember to put the stuff back inside this time.