Comedy AARs

[Junius]

I think a good topic to discuss here would be comedy AAR's. Personaly, I find the vast majority of them tedious and repetative. Especialy the 'Quest for...' ones. The only one Ive bothered to read was the Cuman Cake Confederacy by Musthavename. But whats your oppinions?

This was brought up in the CQ forum, and I would just like to get the wider communities thoughts on this.

My response:

I hate them. I would not mind if they were actually funny, but AARs are not the medium for humour or comedy. Has a comedy AAR ever won MAARC? I don't think so. Rather, we have the serious, character and plot heavy stories win. They are more entertaining, we can engage with them. It takes a serious effort to produce a good AAR, while the comedy writers think they can make one by introducing wacky and zany comments, with a few dick/sex jokes thrown in now and again. Plain and simple, they just don't work. I think this is something that the community at large would like to contribute too.

Thoughts, discussion?

[Plank of Wood]

Comedy AARs should be witty and satirical, not a bastion of randomness which most are. It doesn't even has to be extremely eye poppingly funny, just give a good chuckle every now and then but not exclusively focussing on the comedy side.

FYI I am a HIGNFY watcher and read Private Eye more times than I eat so my sense of humour is going to be pretty different to other people's.

[molls]

The times of epic Comedy AARs are over (at the moment).
No offense, but if people only know Musthavename's AARs, they have been missing a lot. (And I'm sure Musty agrees with me here.)

Let me help you out:

the all time number 1: The Wasteland
sadly some parts are gone, but trust me, this AAR is one of the best ever.

Peace and Prosperity - An Observer RS AAR
Robosarry
Oh dear - a turkish Sultanate story

[Double A]

Oh dear had me laughing in tears by the time I finished the first post!

Now only if people would write more like that than "OMG THEY DRANK SOME FIREWATER AND THEN THE CANNIBALISTIC HORSES RAPED THEM!"

Guys, if you don't think it's funny YOURSELVES, don't post it.

[Kátz]

The problem with them would be the standards the readers wanted. If all AARs are kept at a high standard and the fans like only AARs of high standard. Things would have been fine. So. . . as time passes, people would only stick to their idols. I think some of them do not care whether they read it or not, just post 'good update'.

Check the AARs by The Fuzz for example, he's good. I took a laugh with his Bessoi AAR. Sadly, it's not completed due to save reasons . During those times, most AARs are at an enjoyable time and pace. I really love AARs from those old times. Sad that the standards have deteriorated since some time ago.

I really love during the first times I have clicked this site, precisely during the times Benz is doing his Scipii AAR. I really love those AARs during that times. Maybe almost 9 or 11 months ago I still love how things turned out. But not today.

Now, we got those one-liner AARs without story and just a retelling of the campaign everywhere. It has been devastating to the industry of AARs in TWC. I like a change, but not this kind of change.

Okay, let's talk about comedies. I love the Bruce Lee vs Kasparov one by Prince_Of_Macedon and some of the rest (hint : the ones molls had shown). I did enjoy Musty's AARs. But the two latest comedy AARs from him (Legend of Cakmak and the latest one) does not suit my type. I'm sorry, but now I usually just take a scroll and see another one.

Then, I will talk about the ones referred by twking, reminding you. Saying the specific names of the AARs may lightly offend the author a bit. Nobody likes having their AARs called bad. But with the audience right now AARs have low standards in its current state. Alas, there's nearly nothing that we can do to help it.

And so, fergu. You said you built TCQ for this kind of thing. Which means, to make sure AARs are of higher standards. Then, try reviewing them and have your words right there. I would love to see the next issue.

Don't worry, I have written an ode to these kinds of things in my own publication. You should see it by next week or by the next fortnight .

PS : I'm the one who said I'll review those AARs before my leave. We must review AARs, whether they are good or bad.

[Musthavename]

No offense, but if people only know Musthavename's AARs, they have been missing a lot. (And I'm sure Musty agrees with me here.)

Definetly. Robbossary and Oh Dear blow my AARs out of the water.

Okay, let's talk about comedies. I love the Bruce Lee vs Kasparov one by Prince_Of_Macedon and some of the rest (hint : the ones molls had shown). I did enjoy Musty's AARs. But the two latest comedy AARs from him (Legend of Cakmak and the latest one) does not suit my type. I'm sorry, but now I usually just take a scroll and see another one.

Reluctantly i'm agreed. When I wrote CCC I was chuckling at my own jokes, that just wasn't there in Cakmaks. The Empire version I thought was alright, but not as good as my original.

The one thing I think is that after CCC, loads of people wanted to write comic AARs, and a lot of them are pretty brash, blunt and don't have much of a structure. But, i'm not really interesting in writing anything comic anymore. The best has gone and anything else would just be a poor copy of the original.

EDIT: Also, just reread your opening post to find this.

Has a comedy AAR ever won MAARC? I don't think so.

Three of my AARs have won MAARC.

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

Mmmmm...I've read a total of two comedy AARs that truly made me laugh, "A Turkish Sultanate Story" and the Thera AAR by Musthavename. I'll probably read the CCC at some point (it seems to have gotten so much hype).

But I'm a bit prejudiced against these random outbursts of capitalization and lack of punctuation that are supposed to make me laugh. I recall the one and only time I entered Tale of the Week, I put a lot of thought and emotion into my tale. I thought it was rather good. But I ended up getting beaten by the some story that was just a sad overuse of smilies and exclamation points.


If more comedy AARs were witty and thought-out, I would have more respect for that AAR genre as a whole. But, they're not, so I don't.

[Viking Prince]

Maybe the baby steps to train on would be a TotW every now and then. A small group of writers would announce their intentions and go at it. No need to "require" all submissions to be comedy, but then a bit of practive might help create the atmosphere for better AAR's

[Don't Tread on Me]

For what it's worth, the "Hair" submission to ToTW recently made me laugh out loud at the end.

[Selifator]

Tale of the week has more breadth for comedy, but that is, I think, due to the differing approach they take. TotW is based on a picture, one event around which you can build your own story.
AAR's usually are about a long and continuing story, which in my opinion, makes it difficult to write comedy. Comedy in real life depends as much on the joke as on the person who makes it.
And for some reason, comedy simply works better in TotW than in AAR's. However, I acknowledge that there are good comedy AAR's, just that most are all the same. With the, in my opinion, shallow types of humor.

[molls]

ha, this topic reminded me of my own comedy: A Lost Cause.

I think I will upload the pictures again, put the whole thing in one OP, provide some commentary and repost the comic in the M2TW AAR forum.
It's been some time, and I updated that AAR back then way too fast so it got not that much attention.
And a real comic (not comedy, - Comic, the picture story) AAR is always lacking these forums

[Musthavename]

I had contemplated doing some Comics before... but then I remembered i'm crap at image editting. Think that's the only reason why there's not many out there, most people in the AAR fora don't really have image editting skills.

[Kabudhan]

Eh, to each their own. If the masses want dick jokes, let them have their dicks. But for those of us who appreciate better stories...it's easy to avoid them. You just don't click. There are quite a few good AARs going on right now. It seems people aren't really writing for themselves, but for rep or 'LOL!!1' responses.

*shrugs*

[bomberboy]

The best comedy AAR writer was Drtad he truely made me laugh but he hasn't done an AAR in ages.
The rest are just and don't make me laugh I have only chuckled once in an AAR so far and it seems that the M2TW AAR section is the source of all these AAR's with the ETW AAR forum also giving us some.

[Edward lV]

Yorkshiremans AAR is a great example. It was serious but there were a few mature jokes thrown into the mix which made me chuckle, like the sharpe reference.

[Juvenal]

Most of my TotW entries are humorous (although generally of the black and ironic variety).

They don't seem to do very well, I think people prefer the Heroic mode of writing. Maybe I should add some smilies and random punctuation?

[Edward lV]

I think the best comedies are the mature ones. A serious AAR with a few jokes is better than a block of crappy dialogue and a glictch picture.

[Selifator]

Most of my TotW entries are humorous (although generally of the black and ironic variety).

They don't seem to do very well, I think people prefer the Heroic mode of writing. Maybe I should add some smilies and random punctuation?

I think that your humour contains too few dirty jokes, blatant outside references, references to the game, appearances of outside characters and genitals. Alas, but it seems that you are confined to the public that has a more sophisticated sense of humour.

[Edward lV]

The only comedy AARs I will tollerate are the ones which take the piss out of france.

[Jingles]

The first genuinely funny one I read was one of DrTad's old ones on ChivTW. I can't remember for the life of me what it was called though.

Does anyone remember the Scotland one someone wrote recently, where he did all the dialogue in a heavy glaswegian accent? It was called 'English Bastards' or somesuch thing. That AAR made me rofl.

Edit: Here it is: "English Bastards; the Quest for pants" Though, please don't be put off by the title, from what I remember, it has very little to do with pants anyway. The opening paragraph (and one of the best parts, I might add):

On the morning of June 12th, 1080 in the year of our LORD, a strange
orange disk was seen in the skies above Scotland.

After sacrificing a goat to it, and the subsequent reprimands from the Fothad mac Ideid, Cardinal of Aberdeen, it was declared to the people an omen of God instead, as is common with mis-attributed divine phenomena.

This strange celestial disc of light stayed in the sky until mid-morning, whereupon the rain began again and Scotland returned to normal, but the people would never forget that brief golden favour from God.