beanytuesday
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Damaged Goods (or: "I Can Fix Him")
🕑 Added 2021-04-27 17:04:10 +0000 UTCNormally, I would think this sort of comic veers into a level of self-deprecation that is annoyingly excessive, veering from comedy to jokey self-pity. But, I think for the joke to work I need an immediate visual shorthand for "guy who sucks" by implication, without outright saying it, so my options were:
A) go with an immediately recognizable male archetype that people associate with sucking, like a frat bro, "neckbeard", podcaster, whatever you like-- in which case, people would recognize that the archetype sucks, but also be primed to look for an additional pattern that wouldn't be there-- trying to decipher what a billy bigmouth bass with a broken battery has to do with podcasting, gaming, whatever (nothing)
B) or use myself, who has been used the butt of the joke in so many differing and bizarre circumstances that, when paired with the billy bass, there wouldn't be any attempt to find additional patterns-- and the primary joke would come through easier-- that is, unlike a handsome, sensitive, but troubled figure above who is so ready to be loved, so desirable and sweet, innocent, like that poor abandoned teddy bear, if only someone were to provide a little TLC-- my metaphoric "damaged good" in question is, rather, a bizarre and infamous toy that is perhaps most well known as being near universally detested (except by a certain type of older person) and is second most well known for sounding absolutely DEMONIC when the battery is low or broken. The unstated, implied punchline here would be the girl, offscreen, saying "even if that worked perfectly, I wouldn't want it."
Again, this can certainly be interpreted as veering a little hard into self-pity territory. But in my view, the heavier crux of the joke isn't "woe is me" but rather, "girls find me supernaturally annoying" which isn't the sort of thing you would say about yourself if you were fishing for compliments (and in isn't even really true, exactly, in the majority of circumstances).
In case anyone is unfamiliar, this video provided the main reference point in my head for the punchline-- specifically the sound it makes 22 seconds in.
