Zombie Cliche Lookout: Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
Breaking up, as they say, is hard to do. Even in short relationships (and I’m not just talking about romantic relationships here), you’ve built something together, and tearing that asunder to go your separate ways is fairly traumatic. If your relationship is a little deeper than than, if it’s weathered a storm or two and stood the test of years, then splitting up is all the harder. Then there are the zombies, who tend to make everything more difficult. If your relationship has survived zombies, and guided you all through safely, then you’ve built something seemingly unassailable. Breaking that apart is going to be really tough. It would be, one imagines, like the bonds forged by soldiers in wartime.
About this Episode:
Almost be accident, Murphy has become something of an outsider in this team meeting. While everyone else is sort of clustered around the center of the room, he hands out on the periphery. One of the big reasons for that is that I’ve only build half a room. Murphy can stand up against the wall and still be shot from a variety of angles. The characters opposite him have to move in front of the fridge in order to be photographed from the front.
Other News:
I sort of teased this earlier in the week, but this will be the last new episode of Bricks of the Dead until the new year. The comic will resume our normal schedule on January 2nd, 2013 (provided, of course, that the world doesn’t end at some point today). I will, however, be posting a holiday-themed comic on Monday, so don’t miss it. I hope you all have a fantastic holiday season.
Discussion Question: Holiday Plans
Since this is the last episode before Christmas and New Years, I’m curious what everyone’s plans are to celebrate the holidays (if indeed you do celebrate them).
I’ll be pretty boring this year. I burned up pretty much all my vacation time between the move and the birth of my daughter, so I’ve only got a couple days off. I’ll be spending them with the family, opening gifts and eating way, way too much.
Nice plans. It’s about the same with me. I’m just having dinner with my aunt and cousins on the 23rd and spending Christmas with my family.
Merry Christmas Dave, I hope you have fun with that unexpected gathering Hobbit Lego set
I hope I have fun with it too. Looks like a great set.
Merry Christmas!
Hmmm, I’ve found the best leaders are those that don’t put themselves forward, just kinda get on with the job and aren’t afraid to let the group have discussions etc etc to make sure things are all out on the open, and eventually they get shoulder tapped for a leadership “position”. I’m kind of reading Murphy as that sort of reluctant leader that actually has great leadership talent naturally, and doesn’t want any glory.
Im with in laws on Christmas eve, then with my side on Christmas day… will eat far too much as usual, then resolve to not eat that much again at Christmas… until next Christmas swings around, it’s a viscious cycle!
Merry Christmas to you and yours Dave, and my fellow Bricks of the Dead readers… hope you all have great New Years as well! Stay safe all!
PS: You will enjoy making your Unexpected gathering set… I made mine the other day… one of the most fun and interesting sets I have had the pleasure to build in a long while!
“PS: You will enjoy making your Unexpected gathering set… I made mine the other day… one of the most fun and interesting sets I have had the pleasure to build in a long while!”
Outstanding!
Happy holidays to you, Mad!
They must be thinking short-term, I think they’re going to be together as a group for a lot longer, and over time posessions either get broken or split up. Food contributions initially start out with whatever they threw in, but then after the initial supply dries up and they’re forced to start hunting and farming to subsist on the group’s skills as a whole, the contribution line begins to blur. So what happens if someone wants to leave then? I really hope at least one of these people is going to bring this up, short-term is fine if you think that’s where you’ll be going, but what if it’s long-term? I would imagine a zombie apocalypse isn’t going to stop happening while people are trying to sort their lives out, so inevitably there’s going to be conflict, drawn-out plans, and waiting games – someone here had better have long-term plans in mind!
Excellent point here, BrickVoid.
I tend to think that most people in crisis situations are going to be thinking in the short term, because they expect things to get back to normal before too long. It’s that kind of thinking that gets people into trouble.
Great discussion amongst our intrepid band. I like where this is going. I can’t remember, does the group know whose cabin this is, or are they squatting? Have they looted it yet? If it’s a hunting cabin, Murph may get lucky and find a box of mild .308 he can use.
As for the holidays, I am hoping/wishing/praying that I’ll be starting a new job next week. My folks are coming to see their grandkids over New Years. My oldest boy will be getting a metric ton of LEGO for Christmas (all LotR/Hobbit sets, unfortunately- for me
).
I’ll be doing my best to ride out this turbulent political climate caused by this Connecticut mass shooting. If it doesn’t end up being the Left Wing version of September Eleventh I will be pretty damned surprised.
I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying this. I was worried that a meeting would be sort of boring, but I think it’s important for the characters to hash some of this stuff out. Establish rules, and start building a sort of community, if you will.
I’m jealous of all the sets your kid is getting. Damn.
The Sandy Hook thing? Yeah. Lots of insanity spewing around right now. I’m ducking and covering.
The exposition is why I read this comic. It’s not easy to make action scenes from LEGO. I like to see what you build, to be sure. I am just interested in the more cerebral elements of the comic, as a prepper. How will the group survive? How will they interact? What happens when the situation becomes unexpected (like having a zombie outbreak is expected, for most people anyway).
It’s not a lot by some standards; but I think the invoice in the box my mom sent from walmart dot com was about $150. I think my wife spent another fifty or sixty; so that’s like two hundred bones worth of LEGO. My mom sent me a large padded envelope that is probably random yard sale or Ebay elements. That’s exciting, to me. She also sent me another large envelope with one of the old road sections it (I’m not supposed to know that. I looked in it accidentally). What I really want is the camouflaged minifig head from the dino hunters theme. I never bought any of them and when I started looking for that head I couldn’t find the set that had the head in it. Oh well. Bricklink, I guess.
That Connecticut aftermath is getting crazy. Gun shops all over the country are completely sold out. Even the big online distributors, from whom the FFL’s do their ordering are also sold out. I mean, I have about everything I need (I learned from the Dark Days of 1994 to 2004); but I would not want to be getting started right now.
I find it pretty upsetting about Sandy Hook.
What’s needed is more Mental Health Care to provide help for parents, kids, people and intervention. Not just doping people up on pills because it’s easier.
That’s where the focus should be. Not the guns and outlawing guns.
It might be anecdotal, but I have never heard of a school shooter that wasn’t strung out on SSRI’s. If we’re going to legislarte anything, let’s legislate against GP’s and FNP’s prescribing SSRI’s. Let’s leave them to strictly psychiatrists, and only after hours of assessment, not half an hour at most.
I’ve been toying with the idea of doing up a blog post on Sandy Hook, but I just don’t really want that on this site, if that makes sense.
This is an awful situation, and I can absolutely see how people who don’t like guns want to take knee-jerk steps to do something to try to prevent something like this from happening again. I think it’s absolutely the wrong thing to do, but I understand the hurt and the fear and can see where people are coming from.
Like all things, I just don’t believe there’s a simple solution to things like that. Some people are monsters, and some people are very, very sick. If “fixing” them was easy, then we’d have done that already.
This particular shooter had a lot of problems. As have many of them. No it’s not easy and there is no easy fix and there’s not really a good way to know who’s going to snap and fall off the band wagon.
Exactly. I think anyone preaching a simple solution (e.g. banning types of guns, arming teachers) is either full of shit, hasn’t thought things through, or a politician.
The Second Amendment is like a cake. Before 1934, gun owners had the whole cake. In 1934, the banners wanted to take half the cake, to curb prohibition-induced violence. “What do we get out of this ‘compromise’?” we asked. We’ll let you keep half of the cake,” was their reply.
Then in 1968 they wanted more restrictions in the name of “compromise”, and came for half of the cake we had left. “What do we get from this ‘compromise’?” we asked. “We’ll let you keep half of what’s left,” they relied.
It happened again in 1989 and in 1994. Fortunately, we got a little piece back in 2004, when the ten-year ban sunset (a dark time in my personal history). Now they’re coming for more of that cake, in the name of “compromise”. The fact is that they don’t know what that word means, because we never get anything back in return.
That “cake” is looking more and more like crumbs to me!
And the Government will probably find a way to take those back, too! 
That’s precisely the point. The Fudds will ne happy if they’re left with side-by-side shotguns and bolt-action rifles with less than a five round capacity.
Then after the next shooting, Feinstein and her ilk will lament that those hunting rifles are “high-powered sniper weapons” and that the shotguns have “no ballistic fingerprint” and they’ll tighten the noose. Make no mistake, this movement is about widening the disparity in armament between the citizen and the State.
My vote, Dave, do the blog elsewhere and post the address. This site is unique in that it addresses catastrophic events and potentialities in an amazing creative, safe, respectful manner. And if things get too heated, you have the caveat, “Hey, guys, play nice, it’s just LEGOS.”
Conversely, the much needed convo re: Connecticut and it’s enduring aftermath lends itself, naturally, to all manner of visceral, polarizing conversations. And, thus far, Conversation is too generous a word; more like Dueling Monologues.
No, not about censorship, but about finding the medium that allows for freer conversation and allowing this site to continue to be fun, safe and thought provocative. Yes, you can have your brains and eat them too.
Let’s see… Saturday we’ll be taking my little one to Christmas Village to see Santa and look at the displays and animals.
I believe Christmas Eve, we’ll be heading over to relatives for dinner and then back home to open presents. But before that, it’s taking little one to see Daddy.
I expect to open presents, dinner, food and relax.
Relaxation? What’s that?
My wife just told me that we’re cooking tonight for a luncheon with my in-laws tomorrow. Then I have to cook again for supper at the other in-laws (wife’s aunt and uncle’s place). Then I am cooking again on Christmas Day for the first set on in-laws again.
This is worse than Thanksgiving…
You don’t find cooking relaxing? I quite enjoy it myself. Especially preps. I like chopping up onions and the like.
No, I LOVE to cook. I just wish I had the right kitchen for it. My cooking space is kind of cramped. I have a bit of a reputation among the family; and they’re always asking for particular dishes “Bo, will you make your potato salad. Bo, will you make a carrot cake?” It becomes mechanical when I want to try new things. I will be trying a Yorkshire pudding on Tuesday. Never done that before.
Maybe it’s my perceptions, but this is the first Christmas I can think of in a while where it’s not seemed so fast paced and everything’s been relaxed and not frantic.
The closest I came too frantic was yesterday with stopping at the store to find an Ant Farm for my Mom to give Dad and I managed to get the last one. Basically it’s my job to run interference and bring the gifts in so Dad can be properly surprised and not peeking into his gifts.
This has seemed like an insanely fast-paced Christmas season to me too. I can’t believe the big day is only a couple days away. Holy crap.
For me, that’s where it’s finally come and only a few days away. Now, I may find it moves “quicker” but it could still seem to move at a sloth’s pace.
My Christmas plans are to chill at home, and use whatever money I get on Steam. Maybe play TF2 with some mates. Merry Christmas everyone!
add me on steam: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198020262971
As far as I know I’m not doing anything for the holidays or this time off. I just plan on chilling around like usual and doing absolutely nothing interesting what so ever.
I have an extended weekend (off on EVE) but still going to shoot TJW (lego animation)on sunday night after a visit to in-laws. Work Christmas morning until 1 pm. By then all three of my daughters will be wearing out the floor from pacing and waiting for me to come home. This is going to be my favorite christmas ever. Oldest daughter gets a Canon 4ti, middle gets Guitar Amp with distort pedal and littlest get barbie whatever she doesn’t own already. And Me.. I’m getting about 400 in Lego this year so I can start my own Brick Comic.
Whoa… this year, there was no big buildup to Christmas. Probably because I’m in [THIS HAS BEEN EDITED OUT] school now…
Man, it hit me HARD when I realized Inez was alive.
I like your face
Have a very MERRY CHRISTMAS Dave and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
Re: Christmas, we are a first-generation-going to movies-family; so we are going to try to see Les Miserables.
Mothers Day, Christmas, Labor Day, Kwanza, et al, from the very beginning, 30 years ago, my wife and growing children, we used this time to go see movies. Back in the Decade, theaters were almost empty. Always felt kind of guilty from “taking away time from their families.”
Today, we’ll be lucky if we”ll be able to sit side by side to catch a new release during the holidays. Last year, we went to see Rare Exports. It was great!
Happy:
Hanukkah
Winter Solstice (Yule, Yalda)
Christmas
Kwanza
Boxing Day
Ashura
Bodhi Day
Zarathosht Diso
. . . one and all!
You like my face? Why, thank you. It’s an epicface.
And webcomics need to get updated moar often.
I have to agree with most of the people here about the mental care solution. It just makes sense. Christmas was like the WORST possible time for this