Zombie Cliche Lookout: Actions & Consequences
I’m going to get a little personal in this discussion of zombie cliches, and it’s going to veer a ways away from horror movies for a bit, but I’ll get back to it; just bear with me. I have two young children, and my wife and I work very hard to raise them well. Obviously, we take care of the essentials first: all their needs are met. Beyond that, though, we want to prepare them to be successful in a world where that’s not always easy. One big thing that we try to deal with is getting them to link their actions with the consequences that come from them. This is fairly doable when it comes to immediate and short term consequences, but the long term is something we’ll be continuing to work on for a while.
This isn’t unique to our kids, or even kids in general. I know plenty of adults who have trouble tracking the results of their actions over any extended time frame. I’m guilty of it myself at times.
So what does this have to do with zombies? I would say that it’s an extremely valuable, and often under-recognized survival tool. We all understand the immediate consequences of, say, missing a zombie’s head with your last round. But what about the long term effects of something like trampling your garden in a rush to take out a zombie that managed to wander onto your property? Survival is a tricky thing, and one small misstep could doom you weeks of months down the road. The worst part is, you won’t even realize it until you’re too late.
About this Episode:
I know the color is off on the third panel; I did the same thing with this one as the last one. I’ve got it in my backlog to fix it, along with last Wednesday’s comic. I was just sick this weekend so I didn’t get around to it.
Discussion Question: We’re Screwed, Eventually
Sticking with the cliche lookout above, what is your favorite time something like that happened in a zombie story? What little thing did a character do or not do that put them in harm’s way later in the story?
I’m having a hard time thinking about something in particular for today’s question, but to stick with your cliche lookout, I hate when repercussions hit the characters right after his action (or missed action). I like more subtle plot.
Zombie movies are quite binary when it comes to consequences. You do something wrong, you’re dead. Good stories always offer multiples possibilities.
Typo alert: “weeks of months” of–>or 😀
I’m on my mobile phone because my PC broke down on Monday so typo alerts will be sporadic for a while until I can get it back from the repair shop.
I’ll try to visit when I have sufficient battery power on the mobile phone. Wish me luck! 😀
I too struggle to come up with a viable example in zombie media. I can think of 2 however.
1. In the FTWD series near the end 2 rather morally bankrupt characters neaely get themselves killed. They free themselves from the prison camp inside the base, and the choose to save themselves rather than risk alerting the guarss by saving everyone else trapped with them. Cue their friends breaking into rescue them 5 minutes later and find them not there.
Or spoiler alert how they unintentially murder everyone in the base by leading a horde of zombies to it. This prompts the rescue chopper from landing, this in effect kills every wounded soldier waiting to escape and probibly most if not all the other hostages…incuding getting a character infected by doing so.
Score one for the good guys cause everyone bad died though xD
Also the Left for Dead series which will almost purposly punish you for making wrong choices. Some of the few that dont result in an immidiet if amuzing team wipe out, like straying 10 feet from the party, are:
Topped off your health too early? Opps! Your now injured and need a health pack.
Choose to save yourself rather than a team mate? Oop! You dont have enough people to survive the next event.
As for the PC it first had a “windows critical error” then after I tried reseating the RAM and graphics card it went into repeated starting and stopping with no sign of stopping. The technician is looking at it sometime this week hopefully. The BIOS also was not working properly so I think it’s something seriously wrong inside. Could be a month or more if I have to pay lots to get it fixed.