Flying high above the sky, the battle down below looks simplified
Oh, hey, I still have this livejournal, don't I? Well then. Let's talk about The Political Machine.
Today is the 400th strip. It's also the strip that I came up with before plotting this chapter; in fact, this entire chapter was written as an excuse to get this scene (start here and read forward through today) out of my head, because it made me chuckle so much.
Buchanatron, as you may have noticed, is dumb. Really, really intensely dumb. He also tends to be everyone's favorite character. So he also winds up getting the most attention from my head, because I like to know why jokes are making people laugh. So I've been thinking about the jokes I make with him, and about things I laugh at where another person's character is dumb. And I came up with: a likeable dumb character has to be a shaman.
When Buchanatron has an insane idea, it has to work. When he has an odd quirk, it has to make sense to someone. Even when he's confused, what he's saying has to reflect information he can't possible have.
And he definitely has to be the only character who's allowed to make fourth-wall busting jokes like this, this, or this.
In short, to be an effective dumb character, he has to actually be the smartest character in the room; one who seems dumb from our point of view, because he's operating on a bafflingly incomprehensible plane, which leaves him not so hot with the plane the rest of us are on.
Anyhoo. 400 strips! Yay. If you like 'em, then hey, maybe you can go ahead and buy the first book here to show the world that years of hard work pays off in the end.
Today is the 400th strip. It's also the strip that I came up with before plotting this chapter; in fact, this entire chapter was written as an excuse to get this scene (start here and read forward through today) out of my head, because it made me chuckle so much.
Buchanatron, as you may have noticed, is dumb. Really, really intensely dumb. He also tends to be everyone's favorite character. So he also winds up getting the most attention from my head, because I like to know why jokes are making people laugh. So I've been thinking about the jokes I make with him, and about things I laugh at where another person's character is dumb. And I came up with: a likeable dumb character has to be a shaman.
When Buchanatron has an insane idea, it has to work. When he has an odd quirk, it has to make sense to someone. Even when he's confused, what he's saying has to reflect information he can't possible have.
And he definitely has to be the only character who's allowed to make fourth-wall busting jokes like this, this, or this.
In short, to be an effective dumb character, he has to actually be the smartest character in the room; one who seems dumb from our point of view, because he's operating on a bafflingly incomprehensible plane, which leaves him not so hot with the plane the rest of us are on.
Anyhoo. 400 strips! Yay. If you like 'em, then hey, maybe you can go ahead and buy the first book here to show the world that years of hard work pays off in the end.