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9 thoughts on “540 – Trick Hello”

  1. Scarsdale

    Called it, she figured he’d do this, if by choice or by zombie voodoo. I’m sure the “friendlier” questioning will start soon, if she doesn’t just kill him out-right. Or just add him to the herd.

  2. Crazyman

    Gotcha! 😉

  3. Zombatar

    This turn of events is a surprise only to Eustace. And, maybe, Eustace’s subconscious. After all, this way he doesn’t have to actually risk actually attacking Suzie, which gives him a greater chance of survival than actually attacking her. I wonder what he was promised/threatened with?

  4. ConcordBob

    Not to nit-pick, but since sights are on target, finger should be on the trigger. Especially this close.
    The usual rule is “keep finger straight and off trigger until sights are on target”.

  5. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Not to nit-pick, but since that was current philosophies regarding trigger discipline have evolved.
    Of course, it will depend on who you get/got your training from.
    Experiments have determined that the fraction of a second to go from finger off the trigger to finger firing when appropriate is insignificant, and the risk of firing unintended is greatly reduced.

  6. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    I did the google thing and I believe I saw how you reached this conclusion … but there are two parts to it – One should not omit the second part.
    “Trigger Finger Discipline: · The practice of keeping your finger “off the trigger” until your sights are on target AND YOU ARE READY TO DISCHARGE THE FIREARM.” (Caps are my own)

  7. Crazyman

    She wants him alive so she can question him; otherwise, he’d already be dead. 💀

  8. ConcordBob

    Good discussion on trigger discipline!
    His skin is very pale / gray. Is this malnourishment, or has he been poisoned with a mind-control drug? I would have to go back and look a t all various of skin tone.

  9. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Now can we satisfy my curiosity? Colt, Smith & Wesson, Ruger, or other timeline variant?

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540 – Trick Hello
Posted on February 26, 2025 by Dawn

Suzie hearkening back to the last time Eustace was faked out. She probably regrets not being able to sneak the Lawn Ranger into the bedcovers to be the victim of the stabbing.

And with that, it's Episode 23 time! Welcome back to the Ranch, everyone!

Smoothing out the dramatic irony…

Posted on December 13, 2017 by Clint
If your understanding of irony is limited to 1995 Alanis Morrisette levels (or backlash thereof) you may not be aware that there are actually different subsets of the concept. At its base concept, irony is a matter of unexpected outcomes or juxtapositions: for example, the song’s line of “10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife” does not by itself fit the basic definition. However, if you went to an International Knife Convention and all the displays were about spoons, that would be highly ironic. I have personally been to “comic conventions” where the offerings of comics are sparse to non-existent, and that is ironic. Putting a convicted embezzler in charge of your corporation’s finances is ironic, and also very probably not a good idea. But anyhow, once you understand the basics of irony, you learn there are flavors of irony beyond the basic, one of which is dramatic irony. I may have discussed it in one of my previous blogs, but for discussion’s sake I’m bringing it up again. Dramatic irony is a tension caused in fiction by the audience knowing something the characters do not, like an oblivious Character A being alone in a room with another character who we know is The Murderer(tm), especially when Character A brings up some crucial piece of evidence and The Murderer asks that age-old loaded question, “Who else knows about this?” and we’re now screaming at the book or screen for Character A to answer “Uhm… everyone! Told lotsa people, yep! Got a tape set to go live on the news at 6pm tonight if I don’t key in the secret code!” but no, Character A answers “just you and me” and they’re not long for this mortal coil. Dramatic irony can be torturous to suffer through, especially if the writer cannot resist things like a lady on the deck of the Titanic shouting, “Oh darling, this ship is to die for!” But the unspoken compact is that it will eventually be smoothed out and brought in line — the characters at last also knowing what we know — and that provides some level of catharsis, ideally a powerful enough catharsis to justify all of our squirming. Stories with happy endings and tragic endings both indulge in dramatic irony and it really just comes down to a matter of timing: do the characters realize what the audience knows in time, or a moment too late to stop something irreversible? If Iago’s perfidy is uncovered before Othello kills Desdemona, if Romeo gets the crucial message that Juliet is only faking her death, then those plays end very differently. Then again there’s the example of Oedipus Rex where the irreversible actions (kill father, marry mother) have already occurred before the play even begins and the whole thing is just us waiting for the horrific realizations that will come to pass as Oedipus investigates the murder of the previous king Laius. The Greek tragedies are hardcore like that. Sometimes dramatic irony smooths itself out in catastrophic fashion, a crashing wave after a steadily rising tide, like the climax of Hamlet which leaves the stage infamously strewn with both dead bodies and confessions. Sometimes it happens in smaller stages, puzzle pieces slowly clicking into place. With Zombie Ranch I’ve been erring towards the latter method, and additionally keeping some details held back from the readers so that reader and character ideally might make some discoveries (or at least confirm suspicions) in a simultaneous fashion. It may or may not work out depending on the reader in question but some of my personal favorite moments in fiction aren’t just outguessing (or “outknowing”) the character(s) but “being there” with them as the puzzle finally becomes clear. I gasp, they gasp, and hopefully there’s enough time left to avert tragedy (since despite all possible appearances to the contrary, I remain a sucker for happy endings). But even if it all ends in blood and tears like those Delphic foretellings so often did, achieving those moments where the dramatic irony collapses in a moving way sure does make for a good story.