Mar 06 2009
Calling All Dramatists and Poets…
I have a very unusual request. If you’ve followed the webcomic very closely, you might remember that Agent Orange is a really bad author. However, he’s even worse at poetry and plays. During a scene I’m working on, Agent Orange uses his poetry (or playwrighting) to torture a confession out of a criminal. However, I’ve never really gotten into poetry, so it’s hard for me to simulate truly, spectacularly awful poetry (or plays). Would you like to take a go? I’ll probably only need 5-7 lines.
My advice would be to not make sense, not have rhythm and rhyme every single sentence – especially with words where there ISN’T a rhyme for them (have you ever tried to find something that rhymes with Julia? It’s not easy).
Also, something that jumbles up sentence structure like Yoda and then UNjumbles it for the next line.
“The thief stole the goblet silver,
what a fine thing it was, to pilfer,
the owner a she, it was to her
a grand old piece, there none of more value were
and now her house is sad and lonely. The end.”
Haha, it’s surprisingly difficult to write deliberately awful poetry. Good luck.
I’m completely drawing a blank. I could give you something random, but I think it would be too random. I really want to help but poetry was never my strong suit. I’ll attempt a scene Orange has written.
Orange reads: [insert gorgeous supermodel] walks into the home lavatory wearing a suit of futuristic armor,. She is the queen of the futuristic society of beautiful woman called the Beautizons.
Queen: Come out of there, you/re under arrest for being over the tooth limit breaking the 32 Pearly Whites Act of 3000. An offense punishable by death, resurrection, and then re-death.
A sexy certain mutant alligator known as The Gator is stepping out of the shower with nothing but a towel on, dripping wet.
Gator: I’m terribly sorry , there must be some way I can– YAH!
The Gator uses his infinite knowledge of infinite murder techniques to slice the queen in half with his towel.
Gator: Sorry toots, I need to be at least partially alive to stop The Evil Stull from eating the presidentianal hoagie and declaring nuclear war on Mars.
How’s that? I guess it’s a bit long, but maybe it can give you an idea.
This reminds me very much of a scene from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in which an alien Vogon reads poetry to two other characters before throwing them into space.
I dug out my ancient copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide and so my advice is similar to what I found there. Keeping with Agent Orange’s bizzarre personality, I’d have the content of the poem be totally weird or even made up.
For example, the title of a poem by Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent was “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning”, and a couple of lines in the Vogon poem go something like “thy micturations are to me / As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee”. So weird stuff is the way to go.
I have to admit that I can’t really write poetry at all, let alone intentionally bad poetry. I’ll try to come up with something by tomorrow.
I think the detail about the Beautizons is pretty hilarious, but I’d like to keep Agent Orange as unsexual as possible. I think that will help readers and publishers think of this as a story like Calvin and Hobbes rather than a furry story.
In fact, that might also be ideal because Agent Black will probably be in the room when the poem is read, so making it about Black could develop the Black-Orange conflict.
One way we could get around that is to have Agent Orange tell a crazy-ass poem about the Beautizons tempting Agent Black instead.
Personally, I favour limericks.
“There was a former ape called Black
Many secret agent skills he did lack
But we’ll turn our mirth instead
To the fact he’s worse in bed
Then a car-jack.”
or
“There was a mutant gator
Wondering what was for tea later
He likes to eat apes
But not lemons or grapes
And dadda dadda dadda ator. What rhymes with later? Instigator? Investigator? I could eat an investigator? That’s a bit, well, bland, isn’t it? What do you think?”
hate her, hater, date her, sate her… “sate her” could be crazily raunchy if the first limerick is about Agent Black’s sexual ineptitude.
My advice would be a haiku. Since it’s only 17 syllables long it’s pretty short. Plus it’s meant to be deep and metaphorical and about nature and all that, but you can make it make no sense. Or have Agent Orange completely mess it up and have 6 syllables per line or something like that.
How much damage could you do with 17 syllables?
Hmm.
B. Mac, the last two sentences of my second poem were what AO would say. I was thinking he could be asking the prisoner for help, and the prisoner could be screaming things like “Oh my God, oh my God, help me, I don’t know!” and AB could say “Call yourself an investigator?” and Orange would be like “Investigator… yeah, that’s good,” but thanks for the choices…