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12 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.

    1. TKG

      On a prior page we discussed what he’s likely got running in his system. I suggested that it’s probably Borrochero (Brugmansia arbora) which is already used by Colombian cartels to eradicate the free will of their victims.

  9. ConcordBob

    Oh, the gray is just the dim light. Here is McCarthy eating dinner, and has the typical white dude flesh tone.
    https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/comic/531-inquisitional-etiquette/

    1. Dawn

      Yeah, I was trying to show that it was dark. But went with the old Hollywood method of adding a blue grey tint over everything.

  10. 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!

Poking at foundations

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Clint
So in the last month or so, Dawn and I started binge-watching Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. We held off for awhile, even after the first season became available on Netflix, due to all the bad buzz I kept hearing about the early episodes. I was assured by those of my friends who had kept watching that “it gets better”, but I still had to ask the question: if there were only six or so episodes of Season 1 in the “gets better” category, should I just watch those and skip the rest? Surprisingly, the consensus seemed then to be that, while much of Season 1 had its issues, it was worth watching. It laid all the foundations for what was to come after, and the payoff would be that much sweeter even if the first episodes themselves weren’t particularly compelling. So we took the plunge and started from episode 1. While I won’t argue the idea that the series certainly does get better, we didn’t find it as much of a chore as we were led to believe. Maybe we were approaching it from hindsight, and that helped? I’ve also heard that watching big chunks at once allows the threads of the story to hang together far better than for those who were watching week to week (or sometimes not even week to week, since I’ve heard there were some breaks and hiatuses along the way). Have we as a society gotten too demanding of our TV shows, like they have to knock our socks off out of the starting gate (or within a few episodes thereof) or we give up on them? I think of Babylon 5 which was one of my favorite shows ever, but how to this day I never watched what I was assured was a comparatively mediocre first season. Star Trek: The Next Generation was another show so (in)famous for having a rocky start that it named an entire TV Trope, “Growing the Beard“, since fans mostly agree it started getting good around the same time Commander William Riker decided to sprout facial hair. For quite awhile following its debut, Parks and Recreation was derided as a limp, pointless clone of The Office. There have been quite a few other examples over the years of series that took some time and development before they hit their stride. Mind you, again, it’s probably much easier to deal with an uneven first impression in hindsight, with assurance that the time you’re dedicating will be rewarded. Going back to check out a TV show, particularly one with multiple seasons, can be a daunting prospect. Hitting an episode, or worse, several episodes where it felt like you could have skipped them and been none the worse for your experience, can be downright demoralizing. But maybe I’m a bit more sympathetic these days, especially in terms of the early going. After all, I still remember the criticism of this very webcomic about our first “episode” being a span of pages where nothing interesting happened. I still contend with that assertion, but it’s not quite on the level of some of the nailbiters we put forth by the end of episode 7. Foundation building is a necessary but potentially boring aspect of fiction, as you get your first introductions to the characters and the setting. I figure that’s why in a lot of action movies these days you’ll get those introductions in the midst of an already occurring action scene, except I feel more often than not you’ll get out the other side of said action scene and still have only the barest sketch of who the people involved are and why you should care about them. Did the early parts of a series like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D compare to its post-beardy existence? Nah. But they were enjoyable enough, and at least some part of every episode seemed to be working to lay the groundwork for the future. From the beginning the showrunners were supposedly promising “Everything is connected”, but after disappointments like Lost (at least in terms of answering questions) I can see how it would be rough to keep faith based on that alone. I had the benefit of being, basically, a man from the future, so I could look at it all and enjoy from that standpoint. And once I do look back like that, in addition to my enjoyment of the entertainment, my writer side gets to wondering just how much of everything was actually planned from the beginning. But that’s a topic for another time.