Zombie Cliche Lookout: A Little at a Time
When it comes to getting to know new people, you never just want to vomit out your whole life’s story in one sitting. It’s very presumptuous, and rude. Of course, we’re only talking about polite society here, not the middle of the zombie apocalypse. After the zombies show up, you’ll have some exciting new reasons for not wanting to reveal too much about yourself to strangers.
The biggest concern is that you don’t know whether that stranger is worthy of your trust. Giving them a complete and accurate picture of you might put you at risk. They could figure out your weaknesses and use those against you.
Of course, surviving the zombie apocalypse isn’t going to be a walk in the park, and many people are going to have to make some pretty hard choices in order to get by. Telling a new person about those things might make them uncomfortable, or even violent with fear.
About this Episode:
Trying to continue with Sam being very coy and reluctant to give up any information, but Tara is no fool either. I guess we’ll see how that shakes out.
Other News:
I have some pretty substantial news that concerns the comic. Please check out the blog post here.
Discussion Question: Zombie Decay
I think we may have covered this one before; but if we did it’s been a while and we’ve got a lot of different readers these days, so I’m going to ask it again.
How does decay affect zombies? Do they decay at a normal rate? Is their decay retarded to some extent, or stopped completely? How does it work, and is there any way that people can exploit it for their survival?
This is something that I’ve seen addressed different ways in different zombie stories, so there are no real rules.
I feel as if the mouseover text should have added in words to the effect of “Plus, you wouldn’t want to know about the shooting incident and the crazy old guy who didn’t think I’d pull the trigger, anyway!” 😀
Hah, lots of good advice for Sam.
Also, I feel Sam should’ve added something to his last sentence, as it seems to border on suggestions of some sort of relationship! 😀 Even in a zombie apocalypse, women will probably still be wary of anything that sounds like some kind of attempt to make out! How would you tell the difference in someone who’s been really stressed out by their apocalyptic experiences so far? 😉
Yeah, that is good point, and one I hadn’t considered.
I like the zombies in this lego set
I like the zombies in this lego set. I think you are cool
I’d have to say that fr the zombies to be effective enough in the genre, they should rot at a very slow rate (World War Z, Ex-Heroes) or actually be alive (28 Days Later), though probably not the latter, as they would die from thirst in 4 days. If they are allowed to rot at a normal rate, they would be gone in a matter of months, or weeks, in more tropical areas. Where I live, which is above the border in Ontario they could take nearly a year to rot, though we have really warm summers which would speed the decomposition process.
I’m quite intrigued by the “living zombies” from the 28 X Later series. It’s a really cool idea and gets around many of the realism problems of reanimated zombies. But there’s that drinking/eating thing that seems to be a real issue.
The decomposition question is a very important one. As Dave said, it’s been answered in many different ways and there is no obvious ‘canonical’ answer. If zombies rot at any rate to the point of non-mobility, then the zombie apocalypse is, in the end, manageable. You have to survive until they start dying en masse, and then you’ll just have to manage the new deaths when they occur. Of course, that will result in a very small human population, but one that can then repopulate effectively, dealing with the occasional new case of zombism or zombies that migrate from other areas.
In fact, if this isn’t a world where every person who dies is reanimated, eventually zombism can be eradicated entirely in this scenario, like smallpox.
It would be interesting, too, to consider the effect of things like irradiation on the longevity of animated zombies, Would they EVER rot to immobility?
In my imagination zombies never rot completely away, I think because that makes them more dangerous and more terrifying.
I like the way you think. I don’t mind conceding a bit or realism if it makes the monster scarier.
Always “fun” to introduce yourself holding an axe… Tara seems really confident not carrying any weapon right now. About today’s question… I’ve always considering zombie standing up on their own is already a sign of giving up on reality, so let’s continu and make them rot very slowy… If not at all.
Oh I completely disagree; I don’t mind suspending my disbelief for zombies.
On your schedule changing from three times a week to less than that, you haven’t given us a timeframe as to when we could expect it to happen.
I’m also curious as to whether you’ve investigated possible alternative means of keeping the same schedule but with different changes. Take a ‘for instance’ – would it be easier for you to put an episode out if you didn’t have to worry about finding a Discussion Question? The more I look into the zombie apocalypse, the more finite the available answers seem to be.
I also wonder, how far ahead do you shoot for the current schedule? I’d certainly suggest keeping it as much in advance as you can get, although publishing it seems to be the main worry.
If your schedule allows for it, can you do a bit of experimentation to see if you can change up the format a little while still maintaining the same relative amount of content? I’ve seen people get pretty inventive when it comes to ‘filler’ content,and if it’s of okay quality, I certainly wouldn’t mind. That being said I don’t really read the reviews much, if at all, and the Zombie Creation of the Week rarely, if something in it catches my eye! 😉
I haven’t given a schedule because I really don’t know how things are going to work. This week should be normal. Unfortunately, I’m going to be playing things by ear a bit.
As far as creating the content goes, the real time consuming part is photographing and editing the comic together. The write-up is fairly easy, and I can even do that on my lunch breaks and whatnot.
Hello Dave!
I was looking for some feedback on the animation I uploaded to YouTube 2 months ago, I’m planning to make another for Bricks of the Dead at some point.
Oh hell. I must have completely missed it. Sorry about that. I’ll check it out.
Not a fan of Anita Sarkeesian?
Ha, not one bit. She has told lots of lies in the past & present, and stolen other YouTube gamers’ gameplay footage without aking permission or giving credit. (As a YouTube gamer yourself, you can understand how frustrating this would be)
I understood the points that she made in her videos, but then I dug a little deeper and found that the games she used as examples were mostly just taken out of context. I stopped watching after that.
But the main focus of my video was The SJW movement in general, and their tendency to co-opt and destroy stuff for their own financial gain.
This guy (MisterMetokur) explains how and why they do this quite well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvYSPxvrq5s
I watched the video, but I’m not convinced. It seemed like an awful lot of strawmen aguments stacked up.
Are there a lot of asshole taking advantage of these discussions? Absolutely. However, I think a lot of people are making good points. I think there is a lot of sexism and homophobia in gaming. It’s one of the biggest reasons I don’t like multiplayer games.
This whole thing seems kind of sketchy to me though. Game journalists being paid off, rife censorship and undisclosed agreements. People like Sarkeesian are raking in the cash on this business, and you can bet they will all move on to something else once attacking video games no longer becomes profitable.
Oh, there’s definitely some shady shit going on. There’s a major lack of journalistic ethics on a variety of levels there. I can’t disagree with that.
Oh, and you video is quite well done. That kind of got lost in the discussion.
Thanks for taking a look at the video Dave!
I wasn’t sure if I got the photography quite right, and the audio sounds a little like it was recorded underwater!
Last question: In your opinion, what was the best part of the animation?
Oh, that’s an easy one: when the ambulance crashes. That’s really well done.
Biologically zeds are dead, no cell reprocutions. No amount of human shedding into a new being every 10-30 years. Therefore zeds are influenced by outside factors, wetness to stiffen cell walls (like plants) being one, normal wear and tear another, and I’m willing to add synesthesia as another factor.
They aren’t industrucable(sp) otherwise no amount of head shooting would work. In a way zeds are like dandelions.
You’ve got to explain your theory about synesthesia. I’m intrigued.
My apologies for not getting back to this sooner, but what I was talking about, was nerves and brain cell wiring gone wrong and taking outside influence/information and not only seeing the outside different than most (rain man, history channel, fractal math personification) but/and/or may also react differently to the outside (crack heads/most drugs, brain damage and retraining, hypothalamus and thalamus issues, and possibly dementia)