Why good writing is ignored in comedy

[Ryallen]

Did you actually not think of Nuzlocke as a comedy? Seriously? And I don't remember much of Season 3 of Red vs. Blue, mostly because when I first got into it, I binge watched it. But I don't remember any bad seasons or bad jokes.

Genre-wise, it's adventure. Given the amount of characters that die, the tragedy of the main characters motivation and the ultimate goal of the narrative, it fits very neatly into the "adventure" genre. Think of Indiana Jones; it still had hilarious moments in it (like the gun vs sword fight) but it had plenty of action and drama as well.

I've been watching RvB since the end of Season 1, and I still thoroughly enjoy it, but the narrative was never that good. Season 3 was where they introduced that ludicrous time-travel business that still taints the series to this day and started trying to focus on plot rather than jokes, and was poorly received for it, before falling back into the groove in Season 4. It wasn't until Freelancer that they thought they could write storylines again, and demonstrated that nothing had changed at all.

And I never said the jokes were bad; the jokes were always good. The plot was where it fell apart. For example, remember the "scared quest"? There was no point to it at all. It was summed up by "Treasure gone. Alien dead. Quest failed". This is not the hallmark of good writing.

I never saw Red vs. Blue having a serious plot until the Recollections saga onward, as Season 3 was more comedic in its execution than, say, Season 7 was. I don't remember much of it, but I can say that I still enjoyed it, as I don't recall thinking to myself "Wow, this is BAD." I'm specifically talking about Season 6-10, when things in the plot starting picking up a whole lot and it got really good.

As for Nuzlocke, I can see how you'd say that it's an adventure comic, but, at least to me, adventure has always been sort of a subset of a genre, and comedy was its main focus. And, also, the first series, Ruby, WAS comedy. I don't know what you were reading, but Nuzlocke, in its first incarnation, WAS comedy. It had its serious moments, but it was comedy for the most part. Red was less so comedy, but I still categorize it as comedy considering its roots and its attempts at actual comedy a fair amount of the time.

 

[Riotguards]

its not always true that good writing is ignored in comedy, there's a lot of factors that are present in a comedy which can hinder any story, how much emthesis is placed on the humour, how often jokes are told and what format (pc, movie, etc) its being viewed on

for example borderlands 2 Handsome Jack is the most memorable character in the game and he's pretty much jokes all around but with the rest of the game being just as wacky however most of it is pretty memorable because we are actively partaking in this comedy, unlike a movie such as films like the naked gun trilogy you'd be hard pressed to remember anything of the story (as with any other comedy movie)

i can remember a lot more of borderlands 2 than Airplane, even though i've watched a lot more Airplane than borderlands (and a few other games)


to be honest however it is possible that while the human mind can accept borderlands 2 and remember it, we might be unable to remember things that are just "too wacky", the brain putting it to the sidelines because it defies logic (thus remembering it being harder because it doesn't "fit in"

although that's just speculation on my part

i'd wager however that when you watch a movie you pay more focus on aspects of the humour rather than the plot (a connect the dots of humour) whereas in game your forced to experience the drama and storyline

 

[Ihateregistering1]

It's pretty much the same reason that it's so rare to see a comedy movie win any academy awards, or to see comedy actors actually recognized as being "good" actors or actresses. When you're trying to praise something as being art, you don't want it to be associated with comedy, because people's perception is that art should be "serious", and obviously comedy generally isn't serious.

I remember hearing a quote one time from (I think) Chris Rock when he was talking about Jim Carrey and all the praise he was getting for doing a "serious turn" in "The Truman Show": "Who cares? Anyone could have played that character, but only Jim Carrey could have played Lloyd Christmas". That sort of explains a lot of it to me.

 

[Nomanslander]

Because western society views comedies as being below dramas. They're sub par work and are always treated as such. How often do you see a comedy being praised in movies or given academy awards, never almost. In movies, people will choose melodrama - bad melodrama - over comedy in it's artistic merits. Comedies are so looked down upon they might as well be smut flicks, therefore it's alright to riddle them with toilet humor.

I personally loath the concept of the western comedy, and whenever I see movies that are just supposed to be "funny" and nothing else, I avoid them knowing there isn't much to be expected there.

Although sometimes comedies do break the mold and are actually transcended into being more than just "funny" works. Ghostbusters. Did you know it's really just a comedy? Well, I don't watch it for the laughs, I know the creators of the wanted it to be so much more than some idiot trying to fuck an apple pie to get a feel of how the real thing might feel like.

Ugh!!

As for video games? I don't think game writers are mature enough to understand anything yet. They'll make works like Gears of War, and completely miss out on the whole absurdity of the games aesthetics, and try to pass it off as a real serious drama (too bad the games didn't fall into the "so bad it's good" camp, they made the story bland too to make sure it wouldn't do that). Yeah! The game industry is that clueless when it comes to storytelling and its tone.