[LNH] [META] Metaphysical Meanderings

[Saxon Brenton]

Andrew asked:
 
> A random idea, culled from reading the entire archived run of
> Limp-Asparagus Lad over again:
 
     Okay then. Before we start, Jamas and myself were having an email 
discussion a few weeks ago about how big a readership RACC net.comics 
would be getting, and in the specific case of Blue Light productions, where 
they were reading them from.  So: where you reading them at the LNH 
archives, or the BLiP page specifically?
 
> Say the Writers were somehow rendered unable to transmit Drama to the
> Looniverse.  Could Humor and Comedy be used as a substitute?
 
< blinks >
     You know, I've never thought of it that way.  I should have, just like 
I should have picked up the fact that you were the one who Librarian Lad 
and Weirdo Boy, but both of them went straight past me.
 
     Hurm.  Quick and dirty answer: maybe, but I suspect that they 
wouldn't do as good a job at it.  Keep in mind that a lot of my ramblings 
of this topic are in conjunction with ideas and stuff that appeared in 
Legion of Occult Heroes and Dvandom Force.  In particular, Dvandom wrote 
a good paper on it in the Stomper Files #4 - Logic vs Drama, and to a 
lesser extent in #5 - Science vs Fiction:
         http://archives.eyrie.org/racc/lnh/Background/
 
     Now, we could conjecture that as far as keeping a universe *coherent*, 
Drama is a far more workable tool than Humour, simply because Drama is 
more likely to produce extended storylines and history while Humour is 
more likely to produce short lives gags.  Those are generalisations, of 
course, but I think the adequately summarise the overall tendencies of 
both forces.
     Since they are both ways of Writers/Authors intervening in a 
universe and shaping it towards a certain shape/story, they may well be 
interchangeable in a pinch.  But they work in different ways, and aren't 
going to be as efficient as a substitute for one another as the original 
would be.  Kinda like running a car on leaded fuel when it's been built 
for unleaded, or even ethanol - sure, it's all fuel and it all burns, but...

> Likewise, would cutting off the flow of Humor have disastrous results
> similar to cutting off Drama?
 
     Hmm.  Dunno.  It might seriously damage the universe, or it might 
simply become more serious.  Or going off in the other direction, possibly 
the void left by the absence of Humour would become filled with Angst, 
which would be a fate worse than death.
 
-------
Saxon Brenton     Uni of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au

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