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Not a changeling.

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Dec
15th
2012

Hitchhikers, Buffy, comedy, and theme · 1:58am Dec 15th, 2012

So: I just posted the most recent chapter of Princess Luna Picks Up Hitchhikers. Like the first chapter, it's very funny (if I do say so myself). But I found myself defensively saying to a prereader last night, in response to a criticism that never even existed: "PLPUH is not a comedy."

Whoo! Touchy subject, apparently.

The strange, sad part is that I'm not even technically correct. Even setting aside both the existing chapter and the new one — I can't in good conscience call those anything but comedy — my overall goal is to have the story be a lighthearted and clever look at characters growing and learning, through occasionally ludicrous situations, with hope and wit and a sense that everything will turn out alright in the end. Any dramatist would tell you that that makes it a comedy by definition.

That having been said, the chapter I'm currently writing is very much NOT funny ... and that's by design.

What I really wanted to tell my prereader was that PLPUH is not just comedy. It's not mindless sitcom humor. The overall story's purpose is not to provoke laughs. It does that, but I want those to be laughs in service of the story.

On occasion, it won't be humorous at all. Sure, it'll get funny again afterward. It'll also get unsettling later, and go for the throat later. This is a story about characters growing and learning -- dealing with life, in all its raw and glorious and unexpected ways.

This is a very fine line to walk. Mood whiplash has killed better tales than mine.

Why walk it at all, then?

In response to that question, let me tell you about a great comedy you might have watched on TV. It's called Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

This is a story about a high school cheerleader who happens to have a side job staking evil beasts of the night. She and her totally-unqualified-for-heroism friends wisecrack their way through a succession of improbable villains turning up in ever more ludicrous situations. One of the greatest episodes revolves around a demon visiting their town whose powers turn life into a literal musical; in the opening moments, Buffy sings about her restlessness, along with a backing chorus of the vampires she's fighting (one of whom solos: "She's just going through the motions / faking it somehow / She's not even half the girl she, ow" as he gets staked).

Let me also tell you about a great TV drama called Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

This is a story about a young woman uniquely chosen by fate to fight a grim, desperate battle to save the world from the forces of Hell. Characters get hurt and die. They make bad choices and permanent sacrifices. The stress of their mission drives the protagonists into passionate and unstable relationships that flame out amid deep regrets. One of the greatest episodes is entirely about the unexpected death of one of the story's beloved supporting cast members.

Wait, wait. What kind of story is Buffy? Comedy or drama? Neither.

One might argue it's an incoherent mess, trying to be too many things at once. This might be true if it were trying to be a comedy, or trying to be a drama. It's neither. It's funny, and it's dramatic, but it deliberately wanders between the two. If it were in FIMFic it would probably be tagged "Adventure/Romance," but even that doesn't encapsulate it. It's not about the moods or tones it invokes.

Of course, with that, I take my step onto the minefield of trying to define what stories are about. (Does meaning come from theme? Tone? Mood? Plot?) It's a tricky question. The Serious Stories group discussed it for weeks without reaching any solid consensus. Recently, Bad Horse took his own attempt at that question, by saying a story is "about" X if "the story makes me feel X or think about X." He makes a lot of thought-provoking points, but I think he's ultimately wrong.

Instead, I submit: What a story is about is what it wants you to walk away with.

From that perspective, a "comedy" is a story that wants you to walk away laughing. (And that's okay! Laughter is fulfilling. That's a noble goal.) An "adventure" wants you to walk away with a quickened pulse and vivid pictures of extraordinary accomplishments. Genre isn't the end of it, of course; a story can be about portraying a character, presenting a moral, offering a question to consider, painting a mood, or exploring the consequences of a choice. In fact, the genre we call "drama" — also represented by mainstream written fiction — is a catch-all rather than a meaning: its stories can be about any of those things.

It's a shame we don't have a tag like that on FIMFic. "Sad"/"Tragedy" are specific subsets implying moods, in the same way that comedy or adventure do. "Slice of Life" is closer, but has its own caveats: the FAQ says it's for stories "of a mundane, everyday experience." (What does that even mean? I've taken it as "the opposite of an adventure," but that's a horribly malformed grouping.)

Back to Buffy. By deliberately defying genre categorization, Buffy is denying you the chance to pigeonhole it as a comedy or drama (or adventure). It doesn't want you to walk away with its jokes, or its tragedies. It is making a bold statement: This show is bigger than that.

What Buffy is about is growing up. Becoming an adult. Making mistakes and taking responsibility. Don't take my word for it; the show's writers have explicitly said as much in making-of interviews. And they were so passionate about that theme that they let the show wander all over the place. Along the way it, too, grew — into something that its fans love passionately, even though they have a hell of a time summarizing it.

Could Whedon & co. have set their sights lower and made a cheerleader-stakes-vampires comedy that happened to use that theme of growing up? Sure. I suspect it might have shared some similarities with Arrested Development, which also deals a lot with family and maturity and growth. But people don't praise AD for its theme — they praise it for its style, its narration, its witty writing. It fell into the genre trap.

At any rate …

This is all to say that, in future chapters, I'm going to take some strange turns with Hitchhikers — but it will only ever be with a greater goal in mind.

If all you want is comedy, there will be other stories that do that better.

But if you're willing to stick with me, I'll do my best to make the journey worth your while.

Best,

H

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Comments ( 5 )

Using Buffy as an example is going to fall flat on people who don't like Buffy.

Buffy isn't a comedy. It's a straight up drama. The occasional presence of laughs doesn't do anything to change that.

Every single book, movie, and TV show contains a few lighthearted moments. There are smile-worthy moments in Grave of the Fireflies, for goodness sake. A comedy is a story where the primary purpose is to deliver laughs, usually at the expense of some other element (screwball comedies sacrifice coherency, for example). Straight-up comedy is actually a very limiting category.

612184
Whedon in general is polarizing. However, his oeuvre is full of low-hanging fruit for the point I'm trying to make. So much so that I'm not sure what other example I could have so concisely used. (Tarantino's films are similar in some ways, though a movie has a lot less time to stray than a 7-series TV show.)

Ah, of course: Cerebus (warning: TVTropes link). Though that one went even farther off the rails, and I can't comment on it quite so well because ... well, I simply couldn't stick with it beyond about book 4. I'll say it again: "This is a very fine line to walk. Mood whiplash has killed better tales than mine."

612236
> Straight-up comedy is actually a very limiting category.

Exactly my point.

The example of Buffy seems particularly relevant here because, drama or no, it didn't get serious about getting serious until around Season 2 — and even once it buckled down the drama straps, it never completely left behind the essential absurdity of its premise. I don't think any fair person would call Buffy a comedy (unless they're trying to make a point like I was), but it managed to be remarkably comedic for the drama it contained.

612238
And he cites Cerebus. Pony really does bring kindred souls together.

(I stuck it out until just before the last book, when I undid the hook keeping me in the story. I just wish I could have kept it until the end, for the experience. I love psychoactive fiction.)

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