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8 thoughts on “539 – A Knife In The Dark (END OF EPISODE 22)”

  1. Keith

    Why am I not surprised.

  2. Scarsdale

    Typical, it’s always someone else’s fault. Revenge is not just best served cold, but by stupid too. “This is all your fault!” Which is wrong, but in his head, it’s right.

    1. steelraven

      It’s also been heavily hinted he has already been brain washed by the zombie worshiping cult.

      1. Scarsdale

        Which, no doubt, made easier because of that under-lying feeling. People are always looking for a scape-goat…

    2. Clint

      I don’t know if you got my callback by intent or not, but it’s great to see almost the same words echoed! https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/comic/203-breaking-worst/

  3. RC

    Honestly, probably the first time he’s ever taken control of and done ever in his life. There’s a reason why they kept him. Give a dog that’s been beat all its life a whiff of conference and control, you got a problem.

  4. Crazyman

    Imagine his surprise when he stabs a pillow. 😜

  5. Zombatar

    He isn’t in control, RC – he’s probably drugged to the very dilated eyeballs, probably with Datura. Back on p.443, Eustace is shown holding a Mojave Rattlesnake on a stick while the Brujefe milks it into a glass. Mojave venom A is a paralytic neurotoxin, like tetrodotoxin. Tetrodotoxin was thought to be part of the legendary Haitian “zombie powder”. The other part was Datura, which contains scopalamine, which messes with memory and concentration, and is supposed to render victims docile and suggestible.
    The question is, where did he get his current dose, and did a little drone whisper in his ear?

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539 – A Knife In The Dark (END OF EPISODE 22)
Posted on December 25, 2024 by Dawn

Happy Holidays, all! That's a wrap (heh) for Episode 22 just in time for a Christmas cliffhanger! Hope we don't twist the knife too much...

See y'all in 2025 when Zombie Ranch continues!

On the evolution of grammar…

Posted on May 4, 2022 by Clint
Policing language and grammar is ever a slippery choice of career (or hobby). Don’t get me wrong, since for better or worse I am my own editor for Zombie Ranch and so have to do exactly that, especially before committing to print where fixing a typo is not just a matter of editing a text layer. I also have characters who are not necessarily adept at communicating in formal Oxford English, which is just a fancy way to say they “don’t speak good.” Yet the very idea of someone’s quality of communication is a malleable concept. You may have heard that in modern writing, “passive voice” is to be avoided. “The ball hit Jed” and not “Jed was hit by the ball.” Some explain it’s because the latter, passive expression sounds “weaker” but as far as I can tell the derogatory view of passive voice is a 20th Century invention intended to conserve words while conveying the same concept. Go back to the mid-19th Century and you’ll see passive voice everywhere, even in military communications where you’d think Generals were getting paid by the word. Sorry, I mean the word paid the Generals. Woof, that’s active voice but doesn’t make much sense. That’s the rub, isn’t it? The end goal of communicating is to convey ideas, everything else is just window dressing. A message forum question like “how to find code?” sounds ESL to me as a knee-jerk reaction, and yet the more I think about it, do we really need to say “How do I find the code?” or is that just a lot of unnecessary grammatical dressing? Everyone knows what you meant and much in the same vein as passive voice fell out of favor, isn’t this possibly just the next step in the name of efficiency? It’s arguable that the invention of the telegram is what led to the marginalization of florid verbosity (usin’ lots o’ big words) in favor of more succinct communications. Nowadays one of the main ways people communicate is by texting, which is like telegrams in real time. Data plans don’t make you pay per text any more like they used to but speed and compactness of message are big priorities, so who am I to look down upon a message like “where r u?” This may well be the future, like it or not. Today the smartphone, tomorrow the OED and the style guides. Though in the meantime, you may continue to look forward to complete sentences from yours truly. Mostly. How to make webcomic?