Humor, dangit

[Lorpius Prime]

Bursting at the Seams--Act I

Icarus Hicks, Cho Yamakazi, James Welthammer, Sherif Tian-yi Adams, Chan Lee, David Weathers, and Marcus Johnston are sitting at a table in a bar.

Marcus: [tapping a glass with a fork] Good afternoon, everybody, I've called you all here to--

Cho: [half-opens eyes] Wait, where are we again?

Marcus: We're still in the bar, Cho.

Cho: Huh? You better not be funting with me, or I'll magick your ass, yeah...hey, you got any stuff?

Marcus: Er...no. As I was saying, I've called you all here because I find myself disappointed in your performance in the story so far.

Hicks: Performance?! What do you think this is, a game?

Marcus: Yes.

Hicks: I'll have you know, young man, that this is a war! Emperor Chiang--

Chan Lee: [turning into a werewolf] Raaaawwwwrrr! I'll kill him!

Marcus: Order! Now listen people, I don't want to hear excuses. If we're going to continue here, you have to start taking this seriously.

Hicks: M. Johnston, I assure you that--

Marcus: Oh come on, Doctor Hicks, you're as bad as any of them. There, what are you drinking?

Hicks: Er...I'm not drinking anything, what's this about?

Marcus: That's the problem! "Not drinking anything". If you want to keep that photographic memory of yours, I expect at least a gallon of coffee consumption daily, I haven't seen a single cup for weeks!

Hicks: Oh, but I'm travelling.

Marcus: No excuse! The function of your brain depends on regular caffeine infusion.

Hicks: [Rolls up his sleeve] No, I mean I don't drink coffee when I'm about, I devised a direct intravenous-caffeine drip device for when I can't get to a StarWok's.

Marcus: Right...I guess that's ok, but you need to mention things like that.

Hicks: Well, I was planning to kill a couple ImpSec spies with it in episode four, but we haven't gotten there yet.

Marcus: Gah! That's another thing, I wasn't kidding when I said we need to cut back on the ImpSec spies, they're not the only baddies the Middle Kingdom has.

Weathers: But I can still force 'em out the airlocks, right?

Welthammer: That's it! [Slams down his Yangtze River Pirate] Copyright Violation! Intellectual Property Theft! dangit, Marcus, I can't stand this any longer. Please restrain this man.

Weathers: What? What'd I do?

Welthammer: You, sir, are an impostor! I spaced the imps, that's my MO. I was the story's ship-captain. But then you have to come along, steal my position, steal my executions, steal my region of space, steal my bloody last initial! Marcus, you cannot let this continue!

Weathers: Stole your last initial?! You're out of your mind. As an officer of the Fleet, and a danged powerful mage, I advise you not to push me.

Welthammer: Some officer, you're not even in your own story! Isn't that Dereliction of Duty or something!

Weathers: What?! I will not take such insults from a petty smuggler!

Welthammer: Petty Smuggler! Where's my squad, I should sic them on you.

Weathers: Why, because you're too poor a shot yourself? Are you sure the bullets in that antique were really fake? Perhaps you were just too drunk to see straight.

Welthammer: Ooh, I oughta blast you right now.

Sherif: [standing up] Silence! End this quarelling at once! As the Lord's messenger and presence in this mortal universe, I shall serve as judge and reach a settlement.

Welthammer & Weathers: What?

Marcus: Uh...

Sherif: A settlement! David Weathers, you are judged guilty of copyright violation and piracy, you are to surrender your last-name to citizen Welthammer, a new name has been selected for you. Hereafter you shall be known as David Williams.

Weathers: You can't--

Welthammer: That's still a funting double-u, what the hell--

Sherif: James Welthammer, you have been judged a drunk, as penitence you must flay yourself daily and beg your Lord's forgiveness.

Hicks: Now see here, passing out "judgements" like that, you're as bad as Chiang--

Chan Lee: [knocking over the table to stand] Chiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang! [runs from bar]

Cho: Yeah, that reminds me, can anyone spare some dust, I'm gonna be skinned at dawn, and I think I need some--

Welthammer: "Skinned at dawn"? Look, with a sentence like that, there's no way you can die, I think it's against the laws of physics or something like that.

Marcus: [throwing up hands] That's it, I'm going back to work, you people can do what you want, but I'll be using my divine thunderbolts more liberally from now on. Don't forget orders.

Weathers: Yeah, you'd better go, I'm still waiting on that episode 2 newsletter, what kind of lazy ass are you?

[Marcus leaves]

Weathers: Jerk.

[Lorpius Prime]

Ok, I know I'm not that great at comedy, but I wanted to start something like this, somebody else please continue it, with better satire.

[Big Brother]

Well, last game, to illustrate the observed traits of each of the characters, I came out with a series of "How the Characters Would React" emails. Might as well do one for this game too.

HOW THE CHARACTERS WOULD REACT
PART ONE
A DARK ALLEY

The Situation: While walking down the street, the character happens to glance down a side alleyway as they pass, and sees three men beating up and raping a woman. What do they do?

Icarus Hicks: Pulls a hypospray full of fast-acting anaesthetic out of the medikit he always wears around his waist, quietly (with a surgeon's reflexes and eye-hand coordination) sneeks up behind the rapists, and puts them all to sleep before they notice what's going on. Then, since he's on the run from the law and can't attract attention to himself, he also tranquilizes the rape victim. He then injects her with a mental emetic to wipe the last several minutes of her memory, and dumps her unconscious body out in the main street where someone will surely notice it and help her. Then he leaves, and doesn't notice the second group of rapists who show up and ravish the poor unconscious woman after he's gone.

Cho Yamazaki: Runs up to the thugs, and yells at them: "Hey, gang! I've been looking for you! I'm out of the hospital now, we need to finish planning that assassination! And do any of you have some spare opium?" Only then does she notice that the rape victim is her sister Shoko.

Chan Lee: Is so preoccupied with thoughts of revenge toward Emperor Chiang that he doesn't even notice the disturbance down the alley, and just continues walking and muttering to himself about how he's gonna "kill that old bastard".

James Welthammer: Sends in his team of elite ex-TI mercenaries to grab the rapists, then turns them over to the nearest Civil Police detachment, as a thank-you to Senator Ian Samothrace, his childhood friend and the Senatorial Police Commissioner for the entire Middle Kingdom, in gratitude for all the times the good Senator pulled strings to get James out of trouble.

Sherif Tian-Yi Adams: Despite being the Messiah, he doesn't use his near-divine powers to save the woman or anything like that. He waits until the thugs are finished and leave her for dead before nursing her back to health...and then dropping her from his storyline completely, never to be heard from again.

David Weathers: Checks to see who is Asian and who isn't. If it's gaijins raping an Asian, he cheers them on. If it's Asians raping a gaijin, he angrily intervenes to save the woman and kill the Asian thugs. If everyone involved is Asian, he kills them all. If everyone involved is gaijin, he wanders off and doesn't get involved.

Dame Cynthia: Being an Imperial Regulator and thus technically part of law enforcement, she's duty-bound to intervene and arrest the rapists. However, she's currently having second thoughts about her loyalties, and is being partially mind-controlled by two different palace-intrigue factions, so she's probably too busy being more interesting than David Weathers and hogging his storyline to do anything about this particular assault.

[Kiv]

I would just like to say that I did give orders for Weathers this time around, but as the school year just started and I have 150 "regular" students (you would be amazed what no child left behind puts in the "regular" classroom) my time is far to busy being "Rogered to death" to allow me the luxury of writing out my orders in storyform. So, I gave simple instructions. Marcus, who is taking it in a similar fashion right now, albiet not in the public school fashion (without lube), he was probably too busy to write a story for me..hence, the regulator-bitch got the press! As soon as my year settles down enough that I can breath (valium in the school lunches) I will bring Captain Weathers back with a vengence! I promise...I hope...I pray...God...please...help!

P.S. I do not mean to suggest that Marcus should have writtin my story for me. I just wanted yall to know that I did not consciously move away from Weathers. It is just a BUSY time of year.

[Ash]

At last, we will reveal ourselves to the players... (ahem)

First off, great job to Lorpy and Big Brother (using their pseudonyms to protect their true identities as creators of the second universe... oh, whoops), who both wrote an excellent humor sketches. I was rolling in my seat.

Second, yes, Kiv did give me full orders which I honestly didn't have time for, as I had to grade around 90+ essays that week. (Ick.) Normally I have plenty of time on my hands to work on the story, but that week hit me in the ass hard. So my apologies. Later, y'all!