Wherein Tumbleweed teaches you how to be funny. (PART TWO!) · 4:07pm Jun 9th, 2018
Last time, I went over the various 'levels' of comedy-- now, I'm gonna get into the specifics-- namely, tools, principles, and building blocks you can use when writing your own comedies. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but hopefully it'll be helpful, one way or another. So without further ado, let's get started!
Punch Up, don't Punch Down.
This is an important rule of comedy-- one that it took me awhile to really figure out myself when I was younger. Basically, one of the greatest things about comedy is how it can be used to speak truth to power-- one need only look to the likes of John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, et al.
This said, I'm not about to tell you that silly pony fanfic is the best medium for political commentary. It's not impossible, mind you, but the thing about satire is that it can often come off as heavy handed (or, uh, heavy hoofed, as it were). Rather, the important takeaway here is to keep in mind why you're laughing at a particular joke.
Honestly, as fans of the pony cartoon (I find myself somewhat loath to use the term “brony,” given the baggage it carries), we are easy targets. It's trivially simple to just point and say “hey look! A grown-ass man who likes a show for little girls! Haw haw haw!” (Cue the part where indignant bronies start penning lengthy screeds in 'defense' of their fandom, which likely doesn't help).
So, this is something to keep in mind when writing your own comedy. Because it can be too easy to fall into “aha, I will make fun of a toyline cartoon for little girls!” Which makes you something of a jerk, to be honest.
Basically, it boils down to whether you're laughing at the characters, or with the characters. Does the humor come from making fun of something that was never intended for you in the first place, or does the humor come from an actual understanding of the characters?
Juxtaposition.
Here's another big one-- perhaps one of the foundations of comedy in general. Basically, it boils down to the unexpected: put Thing A in Place B, where you normally wouldn't expect to see it, and it instantly becomes absurd.
This is even more of a thing in MLP, as it's inherently ridiculous to see a pastel magic horse living in a house, throwing a party, reading books, or any number of things that actual horses never do. The show gets a lot of mileage out of this-- and in turn we fanfic writers can get even more out of it. This is honestly where a lot of my comedy comes from, in adding stuff that could never be shown on a little kid's cartoon to magical ponyland. Heck, modern animation has been doing this for awhile-- one only need look at the likes of Bojack Horseman, or Aggretsuko for fairly recent (and incidentally really good) examples.
This whole juxtposition thing is something you should keep in mind even when you're not writing a comedy fic. I mean, if you write a super grimdark Halo/Pone crossover where Master Chief kisses Rainbow Dash or something, you should expect people to look at it askance for ... well, several reasons.
Still, it's not all about ponies who drink and swear-- the other nice thing about MLP is that it has a consistent (ish) setting to work with and build on. For example, turning a high-energy pony like Pinkie Pie loose on a more 'refined' character like Rarit is a scenario that's ripe for comedy, and the writers know this..
Timing
This one's a little harder to tie down, especially in written form. It's very important to the cartoon (especially when every gag & every second of footage costs time & money to make), but it's something to keep in mind when you're writing. Everyone reads at a different pace, so the 'time' part of timing isn't quite accurate. Rather, it's a matter of structure-- building the paragraphs and line breaks and stuff to control the flow of your story, so as to highlight the joke. For example, building up a couple of dense paragraphs, only to cap it off with a single sentence punchline-- or, alternately, the patter of rapid-fire dialogue. To be honest, I'm not a hundred percent certain how to explain this, other than it's something that you learn over time, with lots of practice. So read a lot, and write a lot, and you'll get the hang of it.
Eventually.
Character
Ah, here's the rub. Like drama, the best comedies are firmly rooted in character. And we're lucky that Lauren Faust did such a bang-up job creating a cast of wonderful characters for the lot of us internet weirdos to latch onto. Again, it's why there are hundreds of thousands of fanfics about MLP and not, like ... Paw Patrol or something.
Now, one of the interesting things about the history of comedy is that, over thousands of years of human history, we've developed certain cultural archetypes that we regard as funny. And by “we” I mean “western civilization,” but still.
It makes sense, from a practical standpoint-- for the vast majority of human history, plays and other entertainments were performed live-- and in turn, various actors in various touring companies would have “Lines of Business” in which they had certain roles that they specialized in performing.
The interesting bit is that you can map a some of these comedic archetypes to ponies, so long as you have a couple of beers and squint. (For the record, I have had a couple of beers. Fancy beers). I'll just go ahead and use the Commedia del'arte terms because they sound super fancy and I'm going to use my degree in literature for something, dammit.
Il Dottorre, “The Doctor.” (no, not that Doctor, you nerds)-- Twilight Sparkle, pretty much. A self-styled intellectual prone to lecturing anyone around about just about anything at the slightest excuse. Of course, Twilight herself is far more competent than most Dottore-types,
Il Capitano, “The Captain.” A swaggering braggart, again, in love with the sound of their own voice. Only where Il Dottore drones on about how smart they are, Il Capitano never shuts up about their so-called bravery and physical prowess. So, y'know, Rainbow Dash (though at least she can back her claims up, more often than not). Or Flash Sentry (HERO OF EQUESTRIA), because I can't help but keep plugging my own stories.
Meanwhile, Pinkie Pie maps to Columbina: You thought I was gonna say Harlequin (well, technically Arlecchino in Italian) weren't you? They're similar characters, often being paired together as lovers. Either way, the role of Columbina & Arlecchino is to act as clowns-- and as servants to the higher-class characters, helping or hindering them as needed. Given Pinkie's cheery, helpful (for certain definitions of helpful) nature, she's a pretty good fit, as she's usually more concerned with making sure other ponies have fun. Usually.
Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rarity also draw heavily from various comedic archetypes (the bumpkin, the wallflower, and the fop, respectively), but they don't have any fancy-named equivalents in Commedia Dell'Arte. Shame. Though one could perhaps make an argument for Rarity as one of the Innamorati (“The Lovers”), part of the central lovelorn couple that drives the plot. One of the things about the Innamorati is that they're often more in love with the concept of love rather than the real thing, which is certainly something that one could apply to Rarity. That is, unless you're writing a Rarijack story 'cause that shit is canon I tells you.
But I digress.
In any case, once you have well-defined characters, it can be a simple matter to jumble them up to have them play off of each other for comedic hijinks. And again, this is where juxtaposition comes into play. Somebody wearing a pair of muddy overalls isn't, in and of itself, very funny. But when that somebody is Rarity, who we know to be someone whose entire life is devoted to the concept of fabulousness, that becomes hilarious.
Of course, what makes FiM so watchable and fan-able is that the characters (Rarity, in particular) are well developed BEYOND the various archetypes they're based on. So that's something to keep in mind as well. This can be where the “punch up, not down” rule comes in-- making various redneck jokes about Applejack is easy, but if that's all you're going to do it just comes off as tone deaf and mean spirited.
So yeah. There are a couple (very) basic rules of comedy, especially as applied to horsewords. I'm sure there are more I'm missing, and entire books have been written on the theory of comedy by people a lot smarter (and presumably funnier) than I. Still, it's a start ...
... and I'm not even done yet! As I'll go ahead and wrap this series up with one more blog post, highlighting some comedic authors who are far, far better at writing than I am.
I personally wouldn’t list Samantha Bee as a comedian, unless you consider “loud, screechy harpy with no class” funny. The rest you listed are fine.
But I digress, thanks for these tips and listing the various archetypes.
Speaking of tropes (and a slightly comedic one at that), there's one that absolutely confirms canon Rarijack. Two characters are set to a difficult task and only one of them works hard at it. The other fussily tidies-up the first as they go. The thing is... the only characters that can naturally get that intimate without comment are parent and child, or lovers. Rarity and AJ have been there at least twice that I can recall off hand.
Punching down can be absolutely hilarious and is extremely common in comedy. In fact, I'd say that a huge proportion of comedy is punching down - even humor that pretends to be punching up, because oftentimes, "punching up" humor is done by people who look down on the target that they're "punching up" towards.
The thing that people get upset about is punching down at their group, or groups they're too closely affiliated with. But punching down at other groups is 100% a-okay. Hence why stuff like "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist" works (which of course, even includes a bit about racist jokes that pretty much says this in cruder terms):
Or hell, why The Boondocks can be funny.
The real key is knowing your audience's Acceptable Targets.
Also, I think part of the key is not having too much malice towards your target - if you have too much malice towards your target, it tends to have a very negative impact on your humor. It's why jokes about Bush tend to be funnier than jokes about Trump - the comedians hated Bush a lot less than they hate Trump.
The other thing is that if you seem too much like you're bullying someone, it can stop being funny even to your target audience, except for the people who are real assholes.