UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

5 thoughts on “Issue 22 Cover”

  1. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Ooohhh … He looks – desperate.

  2. Zombatar

    No hat. He lost his hat. Which had a lot of his personality. Alert! Alert! We have a Lost Hat emergency! This is Not a Drill! Alert! Alert!

  3. Scarsdale

    Hang in there, I’m a retired fireman, and those pictures/videos have me sweating… The closest thing to a forest fire I ever fought was when a stupid tried to burn raked leaves on a windy day. 4 houses! Mostly grass and bush fires but, yeah.

  4. Clint

    Good news, we are back at home and there was a home to return to. It’s been a crazy week and a serious near miss seeing as several other homes on our block burned. Terrible stuff but the Ranch persists.

    1. Honzinator

      Welcome back.
      My mom’s whole town, Monrovia, seems to have survived so far, too, but it ain’t over yet.

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Issue 22 Cover
Posted on January 8, 2025 by Dawn

Traditional post-issue comic cover! Episode 23 is currently TBA but we're hoping to have the first page out on January 22nd so as to not leave y'all hanging from the proverbial cliff for too long.

[1/9/2025 NOTICE: Some of you may know we live in the Greater L.A. Area and if you've heard about the wildfires here: yep, we're currently evacuated from our home and still unsure as to its fate. We grabbed our computers and backup drives so whatever happens we still have our files, but definitely expect some delays and cross your fingers that the worst we're going to end up having to do is throw food out of the fridge due to power loss.]

[1/11/2025 UPDATE: Good news, we are back at home and there was a home to return to. It's been a crazy week and a serious near miss seeing as several other homes on our block burned. Terrible stuff but the Ranch persists.]

[1/22/2025 UPDATE: In the post-fire chaos we forgot to mention, no comic this week. Things are intact but there's still cleanup of smoke and ash to do, insurance to wrangle, etc. We had a really close call.

Since we're between issues anyhow we're going to push the start date of Episode 23 back to February 26th. Gives us some room to breathe (literally!).]

I’d like to have an argument, please…

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Clint
One of the most famous sketches ever presented by Monty Python’s Flying Circus is the “Argument Clinic”, which at least for the time being you can watch in its entirety right here via the magic of YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y The hapless customer in the sketch eventually leaves his argument session in dissatisfaction at the perceived lack of quality.

“This isn’t an argument!”

“Yes it is!”

“No, it isn’t, it’s just contradiction!”

“…No it isn’t.”

One wonders if he might have been better off seeing if they had a “Debate” category. In any case, it’s a good consideration for fiction writing where characters are going to have an argument. People just shouting yes, no, yes, no at one another gets old fast even in real life, much less in the realm of fiction where conservation of detail (and dialogue!) comes into play. On the other hand, if you get too fancy they’re going to sound less like people and more like talking points. This is where it becomes vital to remember who’s involved and why they’re arguing, not just what they’re arguing about. Also important are the skills and “weapons” they bring into play. What’s an argument, after all, but another kind of fight scene? An uneducated character usually isn’t going to start eruditely quoting Aristotle in support of their views — that’s not a weapon in their arsenal. If there is, it’s usually a case of someone outside the fight “handing it to them” — say, some TV pundit they were watching — and even though they’re using it they won’t be particularly skilled and will be in danger of a swift parry and riposte by someone better trained. On the other hand, they may be stubborn enough not to care, or to possibly change the fight into something more actually physical. Which brings up another point: if someone’s physically superior, then you as the author have to figure out why they wouldn’t take advantage of that to get their way and instead are fighting a possibly losing battle in the realm of emotions and words. As the author, it’s good to set the scene towards the outcome you need, but then I’d say “let them fight”. Let those debate points and insults and wheedlings fly from their lips according to the individual(s) in question, so that the conflict itself feels natural to the audience. If that leads down an unexpected path, then perhaps a reset (rewrite) is in order, or maybe your plot itself is what needs to give a little if the characters keep veering off script. And yes, that’s a weird concept considering you’re in process of writing the script. But you shouldn’t ever have to feel like your hammering your characters back into the shapes you demand, like they were so many nail heads sticking up from the otherwise smooth board of your story. It’s conflict, after all, and conflict by its very nature isn’t smooth. It might be better to work with the bumps.