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.

No script survives contact with the production

Posted on February 18, 2015 by Clint

There exists a military strategy maxim that is attributed to Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder. In its original verbose form, it is translated as “No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength.”

You may be more familiar with its condensed form: “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” It’s the idea that the battlefield is an ultimately chaotic place, where even the most meticulous plans can go horribly awry due to factors beyond control. In fact the meticulous plans are the most vulnerable to failure, depending on how unwilling those in charge are to abandon them when they don’t work. Moltke’s other, less famous quote states, “Strategy is a system of expedients”, which is more or less saying that it alters based on the conditions, opportunities, and limitations of the moment.

Creative writing is not the same thing as mass warfare, but it really does seem similar in the respect that it is a rare thing for a script to survive contact with the actual process of production and have the final product emerge unchanged. A great example of this is Jaws, which I now own on blu-ray and have long been familiar with just how much the original creative vision Spielberg sat down and storyboarded had to change because of matters beyond his control, like the mechanical shark breaking down on a constant basis. They had to get creative and use various means to imply its presence instead, and even though it all seemed like a day-to-day disaster and failure at the time, the end result was cinematic history. Had Spielberg been inflexible the movie probably couldn’t have happened at all, much less been an all-time classic.

Even in my personal experience, working with just one other person, the amount of behind-the-scenes compromise that occurs in producing the comic might surprise you. Sometimes we can’t find the reference we need for the angle I envisioned. Sometimes things get accidentally left out, or other things are inserted I didn’t intend to be present. There are occasions when this happens that I’ve insisted on correction, but just as often I’ve taken the long view and looked over my strategy, seeing if it can be adjusted based on the new circumstance, and more than once I’ve actually ended up excited at the opportunities. I would love to say everything happens just as planned because that makes me seem really cool and collected and mastermind-y, but then again I’m pretty sure those kinds of masterminds only really exist in fiction. Mind you I’m not claiming to be a strategic genius, but I’d say the historical guys we hold up as such certainly had their plans, but their real talent was in being able to to take apparent setbacks and turn them into an advantage, finding solutions rather than devolving into paralyzed panic.

Will they be good solutions? Maybe, maybe not, but it seems like the only true defeat is when you just flat out give up and sink into the despair that your story just can’t be accomplished. Many an army commander lived by the idea that so long as their force remained intact, they could lose any number of battles and still maneuver for an eventual victory.

So if you feel like you painted yourself into a corner with your writing despite your planning, well, maybe it’s time to knock out a wall just so you can keep going. Who knows? Maybe your house of ideas will actually turn out better for having that cross-ventilation. Or, true, you could just end up with a jagged, silly-looking hole, but hey, could be worth a try if the alternative is just ditching all the work you’ve done altogether.