Zombie Cliche Lookout: Learning to Trust
After a person has survived a little while in the zombie apocalypse, they begin to get tougher. This has a lot of benefits. Obviously, they’ll be much more able to deal with the myriad stresses and challenges of daily life after the zombies show up. There are, of course, drawbacks to this as well. Of primary importance is the impact of this toughness on interpersonal skills. Building relationships with other survivors is going to be very different from building relationships in the normal world.
Trust is going to be a key issue. While it’s true that only a fool would trust anyone, even in our stable world, the ability to trust someone is going to get a lot tougher when everyone still alive is going to be competing for limited resources. To survive, people may have to do things that they would consider evil in normal times. While we need to work together, ultimately survival is a very personal thing, and people can get very desperate indeed if their survival is threatened.
About this Episode:
When I built this set, I made the top part (sand blue) easily detachable to allow me more angle to shoot the action. I can remove the white area too, but with more difficulty. This has worked quite well – especially for reverse-angle shots in dialog – and I’m going to find ways to improve on this in the future; possibly with hinges and other elements.
Discussion Question: Going Too Far
Let’s say you meet another survivor, and you’ve both been completely honest with one another (yeah, I know that’s not terribly likely). They’ve done some morally compromising things to continue surviving, as have you. The question is, what sort of thing would you consider too far? What’s something that they could do that would make you never be able to trust them?
Typo alerts: “toughness of interpersonal skills” of–>on 😀
“To survive, people are going to have to do a lot that they wouldn’t normally. They might have to do things that they would consider evil in normal times. ”
Concatenate the above two sentences into the following to make them read better:
“To survive, people are going to have to do a lot of things that they would consider evil in normal times. ”
It’s shorter, makes the paragraph flow smoothly, and gets the point across in a much shorter time. 😉 Plus it turns two sentences into one, which is always a good thing.
“remove the white are too” are–>area 😀
“possible with hinges” possible–>possibly 😉
Again, there seems to be no mouseover text for the comic. How’s Dave’s new work schedule doing? 😀
I put it in the wrong field for some reason.
Yeah, work has been a bit crazy.
Man, that’s a lot of typos.
Sam has been holding onto his axe and shouldering his backpack for what seems like a while now. Whenever I was invited into someone’s place, it almost always meant I could put down whatever I was carrying, and was considered impoliteness if i didn’t do that whenever visiting family or friends. I’m pretty sure Sam would like to put his gear down for a bit, maybe Monday?
Who knows, perhaps he is just going to go apeshit on this poor woman and run screaming out the door into the night, never to be seen again? 😀 It does seem like Dave’s got more planned for him, anyway! 😉
Hah; time is a funny thing in the comics. This has been a pretty brief conversation, and Sam is only beginning to drop his guard. Give him a few minutes to set his stuff down (or, you know, go apeshit).
Also, if Sam does tell her his story, and is truthful, do remember to include the fact that it started with him totally losing it and becoming the proverbial elephant in the room way back when! 😀
He was under a lot of stress.
By the way, Dave, I know it’s on your todo list and all, but when are you going to get around to putting the Archives link back into the site navigation menu? It gets kind of boring to have to randomly hop around using the ‘random’ until I get close to the episode I’m after. I can also never find it easily, even if I bookmark it, I have so many bookmarks bookmarked I might not find it until the next bookmark cleanup. 😀
It’s on the list, and I’m doing me best with my limited free time. I’m focusing more on adding more content, but I know there’s still a lot to fix in the theme. Don’t worry, it’ll get done before too long.
In the meantime, have you tried the search?
Wow. The discussion question is a good one actually. One that can be used in real world disaster scenarios. Disasters have a tendency to ‘unmask’ people and test their moral character.
I would say of course that obvious degrees of insanity, evil, or plain old cruelty would cause me to flat out leave the survivors for another group, even if my chances of survival are better with the person using an orphaned puppy grenade launcher to smite the zombie hordes.
Because One. Its they can justify doing horrible acts of cruelty just to save their own life then its a safe bet that they will put their own safety first over yours.
And Two. Because people like that have a chance to drag you down with them to their level and try to get you to go along with them, be it looting, theft, or worse.
Rule 1 of any Zombie flick. Dont depend on the clear and present jackwagon character. Well… rule 2 at least.
Rule 1 is not to get stranded anywhere with out toilet paper. Rule 3 is don’t get bit. :3
“Disasters have a tendency to ‘unmask’ people and test their moral character. ” – Well said!
“And Two. Because people like that have a chance to drag you down with them to their level and try to get you to go along with them, be it looting, theft, or worse.” This is an excellent, spot-on point.
I would consider it too far if they killed all of their last group, while none of them were bitten, or if they murdered their way through a police station to get guns and ammo (which I would have a problem with, and probably put them down), or if they were the type who kept a zombie (or three) chained up in the basement because they were once loved ones.
Yeah, those are all problem people right there. Good lord.
also, everyone has been complaining about Sam’s face in the comments, and now he is smiling… too much… he may have snapped! 🙂
Hah, I tried to pick a really obnoxious smile for contrast.
I think Steampoweredspam said it all pretty well. And I cant help but notice that our boy Sam has a knack for meeting pretty ladies in the middle of the ZA
He said it very well indeed.
And good call on Sam. I guess everyone has their talents.
I think that I wouldn’t forgive a survivor who had done something horrible that wasn’t for the sake of survival (a rape, for example).
Regarding the comic, what’s with Sam and his creepy smile?
Wow that’s a pretty tough question to answer IMO. And I’ll try to answer it by… not answer it. I don’t know (yet…) what will make me start mistrusting anyone during a Z apocalypse, but one thing I know, is that I’ll do my best to be miles away before my future ex-partner notice I don’t trust him anymore. Like Martinez and Shumpert left the Governor in the middle of the night.
4 me the farthest i would go would be i think is would be killing anyone 4 any reason (ether self def or otherwise). but 2 things i would nvr do is enslavement and eating people (those are HUGE in my books)
Before you mentioned it here, I never really thought about how you produce the comic Dave. Things like set building, and how you shoot the scenes.
I’d like to hear more sometime, when you’re less busy.