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.

The canon’s roar

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Clint

No, the title isn’t a typo, just another of my puns. Ever heard the old joke “Hark! I hear the cannon’s roar!” ? There’s a version of it here if you want to look, but I think I first remember hearing it from my dad.

Basically, an actor gets one of those “spear carrier” extra parts in a play where he has one and only one line that he’s responsible for saying: “Hark! I hear the cannon’s roar!” Nonetheless, he’s so excited that he rehearses and rehearses for his one big moment on the stage. The moment of truth finally comes and his cue sounds in the form of the booming gun, and he shouts out…

“What the HELL was that?!”

Call it a pre-Internet version of the You Had One Job meme. Now a writer of fiction might seem like they have one job, but it sure feels more complicated than that by the time you’ve (hopefully) put together some coherent characters and told a coherent story, and especially if you happened to be doing some worldbuilding along the way. As a byproduct you have now established a canon, a “Word of God” of sorts instructing what is and isn’t part of your little corner of reality… appropriate enough I suppose since the term was first used in regards to Biblical scripture.

Once a canon gets rolling, it can make quite a roar, and if violated, the contradictions can certainly lead to shouts of “What the HELL was that?!” After all, the whole point of canon is to lay the groundwork for continuity, and without continuity your story is going to just be a random mess. It’s a frustrating situation that often crops up in longstanding properties where multiple authors are involved and no single creator is guiding the direction (or maybe there was, but now they’ve retired, been fired, or died).

But it can happen even in a single author situation with the original creator. Or someone who gets it in their head that they were a single author, like the utter trainwreck that happened with the Star Wars prequels.  Prequels as a rule are already much rougher to work with in a canon sense because the butterfly effect of everything that happens in them has to be considered as being able to logically blossom into a specific present that we’ve already experienced. There’s a lot to think about and be careful with, both for your sake and the sake of your fans. It’s not easy. The quicker, easier path would be to just ignore everything inconvenient and answer anyone who complains with, “I made these rules, so I get to break them. End of story”.

I feel queasy at the thought of using that justification myself, so I find it very frustrating when another author does it in a cavalier way. The Twilight series had another example where Stephenie Meyer made a plot point of saying newly made vampires are dangerously out of control, and then a certain newly made vampire is fine and perfect from the get go because… well… it’s never really explained. It’s just done, because that’s what she wanted to write.

I mean, not to say there aren’t authors/creators who I have much more respect for that have done such things. There’s the concept of Broad Strokes. There’s the ever looming fear that this has already happened in my own work, or inevitably will in the future as canon piles atop canon and one day I’ll find I’ve written myself into a prison whose only escape will be me just snapping my fingers and causing the bars to become spaghetti. What the HELL was that?!

But gah, I do try, even with the challenge of Dawn occasionally throwing some continuity curveball into the artwork which she’s fine and dandy with but I feel a compulsive need to justify, even if I may be the only person who ever notices. I do get a certain thrill out of getting called to task in the comments at times if it happens to be on a subject that I’ve thought through, even if my answers have to remain cryptic for the time being. For one thing, being called to task at all at least indicates people out there are paying attention and having some investment in the story. If I ever did succeed to a much bigger audience, perhaps everything would blur and I’d eventually just get tired of fielding the same complaints or questions over and over, and I’d start seeing the fans as more obstacles and adversaries than fellow travelers, and perhaps even reach that breaking point where I just start messing with things because I can and damn your ungrateful hides.

For now, I still feel like I call myself to task first and foremost… and while I work to build upon what’s already established for Zombie Ranch, typing up the pages to come, I still hearken to hear that canon’s roar.