You don’t know TheRussianBadger. I don’t expect you to. You should, he’s hilarious, and I’ll be posting some of his work below, but the point stands. Calling him funny is only half of it. His style inspired me to write a specific kind of story. It’s a workplace comedy – another thing I’ve not written before. Still, fingers crossed.
Really the idea came to me because I wanted to write about a cool women that had a gun that launches spikes. Again, this is going back to that idea of superficiality. I wanted to write it because it was cool, not because I wanted to make a point about the human condition. Give me a prompt for that kind of thing and I’ll do it, but I’d sooner default to cool things and something entertaining.
TRB’s work is irreverent and talkative. You’d hope it was talkative given it’s him and his mates having a laugh. Otherwise, it’s several men sitting in silence while they play video games. And no one wants to watch that. If you think you do, you’re wrong. It’s like saying you like listening to audiobooks with half the characters missing!
To go into detail, I think it was his Left 4 Dead video that gave me this idea. Though his work is usually centred around cooperative shooters or multiplayer games, so it could be any. It gave me an idea: a protagonist and their team hunting monsters.
Then this turned into, the protagonist being an exterminator with a suit of armour and an AI assistant that keeps nagging her about bargains and a job where she’s nearly killed by giant bugs most of the time (because a spike launcher wouldn’t be used on human-sized opponents). The plan was fleshed out from there, but it’s not a full plan yet. A few things inspired me (Biomega for an AI companion, to name one), but TRB was the main one. That style, the jokes, the shitpost nature of it. I wanted to write something like that.
The issue is my work tends to be quite grim and it’s hard to get that tone to work in text versus audio and visual comedy. I find it easier to write grim things. Or at least, they’re more substantive because suffering is part of what makes a story compelling. Not that comedy isn’t also based on suffering. A man stubbing his toe is suffering, technically, but if you’re not him it’s hilarious. Meanwhile, if you’re having to sit through The Big Bang Theory, you’re suffering and it’s not funny at all (low-hanging fruit, I know, but my parents like the show and I can’t stand the characters).
Edit: I’ve been rereading it, trying to find a funny bit to put at the top for a quote. Nothing. It’s not funny and I want it to be funny! I’m going to give it another draft, if only for my own peace of mind.
The humour in my story would be dry wit and banter (or it should be), something based on character interaction and chemistry (yes I’m adding this from another draft. Fuck you past me, I’m mad about this now). Once again, this is something I’ve not really done before. Other than a short story no one wants to publish (with good reason, I’m finding). I might post that on here while I’m at it (NO!). Mind you, the story’s on the back burner. Rather, it’s in the Do Later Bin, the folder on my Dropbox for things I’ve not started yet. I’m already working on one writing project and this blog. The comedy can wait (for me to make it funny). Like a punchline you have to walk to (crawl to at this rate).
As usual, thanks for reading. Here’s the link to TRB’s work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc62H_sT6rw
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