Subject: Comedy is also subjective,
Author:
Posted on: 2022-06-03 02:11:13 UTC

and I'm pointing out that it fell flat to me. Another aspect of comedy, particularly of the dramatic irony type, requires the writer to have more knowledge about a given situation than the characters themselves do. Winfrey's recruitment gave a better sense of Noman talking a big talk without much knowledge to back it up, but the PPC Continuum joke didn't give as good of a sense of that because HQ existing in a weird cascade of plotholes with bits and pieces scattered through various continua within the Prime Multiverse is... kinda foundational.

Basically, it's one thing for Noman to be like "Wait are we our own continuum? That'd explain [noodle incident here]", it's another for him to be "We have a continuum?"

It might seem like small potatoes to you, but it comes off as having not read other PPC writings other than TOS. That's why people keep saying it feels like you haven't fully gotten the gist of the setting.

ETA re "extreme scenarios": You can have extreme scenarios in perfectly SFW fics stemming from bad description. The PPC is meant to be PG-13 with some NSFW missions peppered here and there and perfectly opt-outable. Not being able to get important introductory information about your agents because of squick regarding an "extreme scenario" would be upsetting to any potential reader who wants to know more about what you plan to do here.

ETA2: For what it’s worth, I would 300% read a spin-off about Agent Vojtek Bearington, an actual bear who is fooling HQ into thinking it’s an actual PPC Agent. That’s the kind of comedy that lands with me :P

Reply Return to messages