UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

6 thoughts on “541 – Graverobbers”

  1. Crazyman

    “Oh, *that* kind of grave robbing? Lead on, Chuck!” 😈

  2. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    What? I say “What”?

  3. Keith

    Heh, this is going to be fun. Tradition says you need to drink at least one bottle of MD 20/20 before going to the graveyard.

  4. Honzinator

    At first I was thinking of something like a potato battery … nope!

  5. Scarsdale

    If you take a dead “D” cell battery, take out the carbon rod from the center, cut a strip of galvanized sheet metal about an inch (2.7 centimeters), take a small jar for canning, suspend the rod in the center and the strip on the side, pour in drain cleaner, you’ll get 1.2 to 1.4 volts DC. 10 of those connected to an inverter will give you 120 VAC at 0.5 amps. Do NOT keep them in the same area you live in however, the fumes will burn your lungs. Just something I learned in chem class in high school. You’d have to top-up the jars every few days, however. Any type of acid will work, even salt water. I think the teacher was a survivalist…

  6. nbaldbiz

    Scheffler, Hovland and Conners Share the Lead at P.G.A. Championship
    Jordan Spieth, who needs a victory at Oak Hill to complete the career Grand Slam, and Justin Thomas, who won last year’s tournament, just made the cut at five over.

    Give this article

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

 

541 – Graverobbers
Posted on March 19, 2025 by Dawn

WonderCon 2025 is coming soon, so the next comic is planned for April 9th.

In the meantime, relevant previousness for this week's page:

https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/comic/223-surrounded-by-film-end-of-episode-9/

 

https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/comic/483-solar-systems/

Can you relate?

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Clint
A couple of weeks ago I penned a piece on what I felt were my basics in crafting a good character. But what exactly is a good character? Or a strong character? Aren’t these adjectives bringing connotations with them that apply unnecessary baggage to the concept? Villains can be good characters. Weaklings can be strong characters. Here we are, writers who make a living (or at least make a studied hobby) of expressing ourselves through words, and yet after all this time, what the hell, exactly, are we even talking about? I suppose at the core there’s that idea I touched on of a character being somehow relatable to the audience. There’s some facet we recognize in ourselves or in others of our experience that we can cling onto, core elements and archetypes of the human condition. Yes, I just used the phrase “the human condition” unironically, feel free to virtually punch me in the face. Ow. Virtual pain. But listen, it’s not that far removed a concept from when I was studying acting. As an actor your task is bringing a character written by someone else to a semblance of life, but no one requires you to have personal experience of, say, murdering someone, much less committing suicide. Putting a successful suicide on your resume seems like something that would be a detriment to your career, at least in this world. So you have to fudge things. To a certain extent personal experience may help with authenticity, but more often than not, you’re going to be searching within yourself for the part of your own experience that’s closest to the situation. You find that angry part of you, that scared part, that grieving part, and coax it forwards. As weird as it sounds, you have methods like remembering the shattering grief you felt when your favorite pet died and using that as the gateway to the tears you’ll sob every night as your Lear staggers under the weight of his dear Cordelia’s corpse. And if you do it right, the audience will connect with that. Again the chances are that most of them wouldn’t have the personal experience of losing a child, especially under such horrible circumstances, but they can empathize with the situation. In fact it’s exactly this sort of empathy which drags us into stories and makes us crave them, safely experiencing triumphs and tragedies through a vicarious vector. I once compared writing to being a director wrangling (at times ornery) actors through the story. But another truth is that ultimately, you represent both director and actor, and the “strength” of your characters will depend at least in part on your ability to relate to them. And through them.