Zombie Cliche Lookout: Weaponized Swagger
Once again, today’s cliche is not unique to the zombie genre. In fact, it’s something that we see in real life quite frequently. Look no further than the posturing and saber rattling going on between the United States and North Korea at the moment. No rational person wants these two countries to get into a shooting war, much less a nuclear one. The alternative? It’s pretty simple, the more powerful of the two just needs to put on a big show of force and hope that the other one isn’t crazy enough to simply ignore it.
Of course, this tactic won’t work on a zombie. They’ll attack an injured, unarmed living person with the same approach as ten thousand healthy people with weapons. Zombies don’t get intimidated. That said, one of the hoariest tropes in the genre is that living people are the true monsters, and those living people can certainly be intimidated.
About this Episode:
It’s been interesting distributing lines to our normal characters. I’ve been trying to stick with each of their characters as much as possible. Cheryl is tough and skeptical, but willing to listen. Russell is a bit bitter. Murphy thinks about black and white solutions. But what about Tara? She’s a very new character we haven’t seen much of. She’s also been relatively sheltered during the beginning of the outbreak by having the luxury of sheltering in her home. But she also took a big chance on Sam, making her cautious but curious and willing to take risks in the right set of circumstances.
Discussion Question: Act Like a Big Man
Put yourself into a situation similar to what Henry describes. You run into a group of hostile people, and don’t want (and probably can’t afford) to get into a violent confrontation. What could you do to get them to back down peacefully?
Only one typo for today: “They’ll attack a injured” a–>an 😀 This is a case of using “an” before any word with a vowel as it’s first letter.
It occasionally depends on whether the vowel would be silent but mostly if there’s a vowel as a word’s first letter, “an” is to be used instead of “a”.
Only one again, not bad.
You know this means Monday’s comic will be almost unreadable due to all the typos.
One thing I would like is for Henry to give out some numbers regarding just how many are in his group, and how many are in this hostile opposition group. Of course, he might be cagey about and not want to give figures out, because he’s delusional and thinks even the zombies are wired for eavesdropping! 😀
He doesn’t seem the type to get into specifics, does he?
Trust NO ONE whom withholds information in a life and death situation.
It’ll never end well… 🙁
As for getting the other side to back off peacefully, just one word worked for Helen of Troy: “if”. 😀 (IIRC)
I haven’t read the Iliad in years, can you expand on this?
The one I’m thinking of comes from Sparta. They received the following threat: “If I win this war, you will be slaves forever.”
Their response? “If.” Pure badassery.
That might be it, I wasn’t sure I recalled it properly, anyway. 😀
Of course, the more logical first question is, “What have they done?” And the follow up should be, “Why should we believe you when you tell us that?”
Those are indeed pretty relevant questions.
Russell…bitter? He seems pretty happy go lucky to me.