Zombie Cliche Lookout: Don’t Shoot Until You See the Whites of Their Eyes
In battle, I’d imagine you’d want to be able to shoot at the enemy when they’re as far away, especially if they can’t shoot back at you. Of course, I’ve never actually been in a battle, but that makes sense to me. Suffice it to say, it takes quite a lot of courage to just sit there, not shooting, as your enemy gets closer and closer. That’s true whether it’s British soldiers, a horde of shambling zombies, or an unknown threat slowly approaching from the inky depths of the forest.
Soldiers and survivors don’t hold their fire just to prove how brave they are. Well, maybe some of them do, but they’re not the norm. No, they’re holding their fire to give themselves some sort of advantage. Whether that’s to allow them to spot specific enemies, to compensate for lack of marksmanship or ammunition, or simply to ensure that whoever is approaching isn’t actually friendly.
About this Episode:
I have to say, I really enjoyed reading the comments for the last episode. It seems that no one really trusts Joy and Michael, and there were some really cool theories about what they’re up to. My personal favorite was that there are actually three people in the group, and that the third member is breaking sticks to help out his or her buddies.
On an unrelated note, there are probably lots of typos in this episode, because I’m absolutely exhausted right now.
Discussion Question: Zombie Survival Mentorship Program
We got another great selection from the comments: “We all have played video games, seen TV shows/movies, read books/comics,… featuring zombies. If you have to pick a character from all of these to be your mentor/model, who would that be? Why?”
Well, there were some very slightly iffy sentences in there, but nothing I would flag as blatant typos, fortunately for Dave! This one gets the 100% error free tag of approval from me! 😀
Wow, I’m shocked.
Hmm, Michael says friend, Stewart says friends, earlier. Hypothesis: Michael misheard Stewart and thinks there’s probably only one person or zombie out there! 😀
An alternate theory could be that Michael isn’t actually too worried about the number of people or zombies out there he just wants confirmation. 😉
Nice close reading there, BV. Could go either way.
I don’t know how long it’ll take to get to whoever or whatever they’re dealing with, but I would think if they were friendly and didn’t actually mean any harm, that they would not walk them back to Stewart at gunpoint, they’d just have them at the ready. Whether they do that or not will really be telling as to just how friendly they really want to be. 😀
Very good point. Their body language should be very telling.
I think that it will be one or two of the others from the cabin, who came to investigate the gunshots. Since Dave said these would be temporary characters he just might have Murphy snipe them both. Either way, I’m excited for Thursday to see what happens next.
Hah, you never can tell.
impossible scenario : Mickael is ready to shoot at… Sam! After he left Abe’s church, Sam was just wandering around, looking for his group.
Hah! Sam really hustled out of there.
I’m curious why no one has taken a crack at the discussion question yet. I thought it was a pretty good one.
Me? I’d go with Ash from Evil Dead. Us Michigan boys need to stick together.
I thought arguing here would be more philosophical… I’m really interested in which side of a hero people pick on this one too.
It always surprises me how people read and respond to some questions. It’s awesome to see people thinking about things in ways that never even occurred to me.
I had some conversation about that with Foolish Lego earlier this year about one picture of his 365 project.
One picture could mean so many things for posters that was really awesome!
I have plenty of TV shows I could pick from, I just don’t have anyone I’d particularly fancy right now because a lot of the shows had characters that wouldn’t really be all that good in a zombie apocalypse anyway. Or they’d be way too overpowered. 😀
If you stuck with someone overpowered you could just sit back and take it easy. Sounds pretty great to me.
My “zombie culture” isn’t so big, but so far as a mentor I’ll pick Hershel from TWD (the TV show).
I like his process through the ZA, 1st in denial, still hoping humanity can overcome this, then he loses nearly everything, but still manages to find hope, another way but still hope.
He understands the value of a good leader in the group, knows his place. Even in the darkest moment of the group he always tries to help others people.
Sure people like him are nothing without a group, but groups are nothing without man like him.
Good choice and excellent reasoning, sir.
I had more time to think about this one… :-p
Hah, you certainly did.
Joel from The Last of Us. He’s a tough guy with a heart of gold, and I think that after the initial awkwardness of ‘hey put down the gun I’m friendly,’ we’d be pretty fast friends. He may make mistakes, but he tries to amend them, and he does his best to do right.
Oh wow, that’s a cool choice. Joel is one of the best developed characters in a horror story I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t think I’d agree with you about the “heart of gold” part though. I think he’s a good man, but very flawed and selfish. I’ll stop here so I don’t spoil anything.
Hmmm… I think it should be Alice from resident Evil… I want to have some fun my last days on Earth 🙂
Hah! Not a bad idea.
As I said in the comments to the last episode… these two are setting Stewart up! Now he said where his friends are… *sigh. These two are up to something, and it’s not good! The crack has been made by a friend of Joy and Michael!