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.

Flip it good

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Clint

This is probably going to end up as another one of those “personal experience masquerading as wise writerly advice” posts I seem to gravitate towards. I’ll be honest, a lot of times when I put these posts together I have no idea if they’ll necessarily be helpful to anyone. In fact, I’m not sure it’s even my primary goal to be helpful, so much as that might end up being a side effect of whatever screed I happen to be spewing on any given week. My experience and insight are not on par with that of, say, a Neil Gaiman or Mark Evanier, so I hesitate to act like you should give me your hand and let me guide you down the perilous path. If you take my hand regardless, I feel it’s only right to mention that, while I don’t exactly feel like I’m completely blind, I may have misplaced my glasses.

But you know, I’ve read my share of advice snippets from all manner of authors far more published and successful than I, and what’s struck me is that the only thing they have in common is that they’re names I recognize. Everyone seems to have a different method, a different approach, a different style, and in the end all they can do is give you advice on how to be like them. The downside of this is that there appears to be no set formula, no one correct and proper method to being a good writer. The upside is exactly the same. You can cherry pick from all the words of wisdom and take as your role models those folks you feel are most in line with your own philosophies. You can even spend time reading what I write here, and if it happens to help you out, then more power to you. More power to us all.

Where was I? Oh yes, the title. It refers to a sticking point I got to in my script, in point of fact the script for this very week’s page. I had written it out originally as a dialogue between Suzie and Eustace where they were talking about ownership rights and restitution and blah blah blah. I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s important stuff, but I kept coming back to what I’d written and huffing with a sense of frustration. Just the act of re-reading it was making me, the writer himself, tune out of the scene. It wasn’t interesting. It was, in fact, f-ing boring, and even moreso because a lot of what was being said had already been covered, such as in the recent “A Moment With Suzie” pages. I get itchy with works of fiction that keep repeating the same stuff over and over unnecessarily, particularly in terms of things that could be categorized as exposition. The 2011 Green Lantern movie comes to mind as one of the worst recent offenders for me. Yes yes, we know this. Yes, we get it. MOVE ALONG ALREADY.

Well there I was, feeling that exact same way about something I myself had produced. But what could I do? Scrap the scene entirely? That’s always an option, and I certainly haven’t shied away from “offscreen” conversations before, but I’d been skipping around (and ahead) already several times this episode and I worried that had become a bit dizzying. Suzie and Eustace needed to talk, but any way I wrote that dialogue was straying awfully close to “As you know…” territory, which seemed like a really crappy use of a weekly installment. And poor Frank. Yes, he’s a stoic guy who doesn’t talk much, but here was another page where he’d just basically be standing in the background.

That’s when the epiphany struck. The me of two weeks ago that wrote a whole article about character perspectives moseyed up, knocked on my skull, and drawled, “Howcum you don’t flip it ’round and show this part from Frank’s point of view instead?”. Past me apparently drawls and moseys and is altogether much cooler than present me, although he’s still rocking an Aloha shirt.

But anyhow, damn if that didn’t work just fine. In fact, suddenly I had a way to bring the Zeke/Frank dynamic back into the picture, which felt far more interesting than Suzie and Eustace talking business. Let that happen over yonder, where we can clearly see that it’s happening but don’t actually have to listen to Suzie reiterating that all the McCarty zombies are legally her property, except for Zeke, because now Frank’s bought Zeke and is ready to gift him back to your family, and…

Sure, I suppose the Zeke/Frank thing could be its own measure of “Yes, Frank’s guilty and conflicted about Zeke, WE GET IT”, but… eh, I think it’s moved along now from the business in earlier episodes since we get to see Frank attempting unsuccessfully to rid himself of the “problem” in a way that would have perhaps satisfied his conscience as a good deed, only to be shot down by Eustace coming to the realization that he doesn’t really want or need a walking corpse that looks like a green, decaying version of his son.

Good try, Frank. And good drama for me, and hopefully the readership. In a scene that even I was feeling bored and unsastified by, flipping the perspective was all it took.