Well, at least one of my readers knew a good hook upon hearing it, recognizing thatYou’ll sail eternallywas something that could be manipulated. But the fact that the same could be said for the big detail of the sad old dad? Why does it always have to be me?
Basically, if your readers correctly figure out where you are going, they will spoil surprises for themselves, and if they guess wrong, well, what does that do anybody? I can say these things from my own experience, especially about wrong guesses. Below are stories I have on the topic. After them, at the bottom of the page, is a shorter summary, which you can skip ahead to if you wish.
In the name of keeping surprises, I rarely told my readers anything about what I would or would not do - but in hindsight, perhaps I should have. They lost sight of important things, were unsuspecting of what I had moved on from, and those things had the following results.
It started with my predictable characters, the Comic Five, and then later came my generally less predictable characters, the Black Pearl Crew. At first, the two sets of characters could work together, and be difficult to distinguish. This was reflected by the fact that one of my readers had expected I would change Lights to frights
or blights,
and indeed the very first parody written solely by the Crew was Blights.
He also saw Worst Time
and Blue Hat Man
coming.
Not so predictable, however, was Icky.
Although that was only the fourth parody written solely by the Crew, it is, to this day, an excellent example illustrating how these characters have lives in a way that their LEGO counterparts never did. Had the Five woken up before the mutants, they would have either complained they had nothing to do or gone out of their way to start the battle, but the pirate in this parody enjoys the morning while he can. And when the icky do wake up, his reaction is not to remove them from his presence, but the other way around. These are common kinds of things in my parodies now, but not then.
Therefore, the first example of my parodying knocking that reader for a loop resulted. After reading Icky,
he said he thought I might have done Squidbeard, now, don’t you run, I wanna whack you with a torch for fun,
but we immediately agreed that was probably both too many syllables and too obvious. Also, although my parodies had much fewer rules back then, I had already decided that the song title should stay as recognizable as reasonably possible, and Squidbeard
does not sound like Eddie.
father?
The real surprises started when the Crew took over completely. I got a new thought process, but the very fact that it was new made it inscrutable to my readers.
On the one hand, the transition was gradual and subtle. Even before the parodies of Equinox were edited to be compatible with the current rules, they were not dramatically different from what I did with Styx II. I did some things I had not done before with the latter album, but what really made my parodies different from there on out was what was not in them.
On the other hand, let us look at the things that could throw my readers. Under the Comic Five regime, there had never been any interest in Bootstrap Bill other than as a motivator for Will to get his revenge, and the subject of a parody was decided at the last minute, drawing from what had happened in recent strips. The parodies went off of what the LEGO video game taught about Pirates of the Caribbean and, since that was not much, used my own fan fiction to fill the blanks. When Styx II arrived, all that changed.
A song about the sorry state of a father became the center of parodying attention, so Bootstrap Bill started appearing in my strip. The parody Will’s Father
confirmed that the correct conjunction in this case was so
and not and,
but until it arrived, my readers had no idea that there was a connection between the two events. They just sort of subconsciously expected that I was going to change father
to bother.
(I never even realized I could have done that. It would have just been so wrong. The fact that I did not need to change father
had been clear to me the whole time.)
When the Crew are in charge, as it turns out, nothing is a coincidence. Of course, many good things have turned out with them, too. (After Bother
did not happen, one of my readers remarked that she liked what I did instead, written about Bootstrap Bill. I thus knew I had made the right decision. Not that I would have doubted it in any case.)
In the weeks following the above story, I got two more bloopers from this one reader. One, when I played You Need Love, and after hearing the lines about flying to a spot where there was not any sorrow, he turned them into We’ll go to a spot where I know Squidbeard’s not.
Little did he realize I had used that name in a parody for the last time! (Of course, I had only just made that decision. He had yet to have any reason to suspect it whatsoever.)
The other was upon my playing Back to Chicago. Upon hearing of the true love in the song, he suggested dumb love. As much as I generally employ spoiler control, I just had to go ahead and tell him what he came up with there was not what was coming. (It should be noted, however, that Back to Chicago has the distinction of being the one love song I did not turn dark, so it was easy to get the wrong idea that time.)
When I parodied Kilroy Was Here, a year had passed since the whole father-bother lesson, but some things had not sunken in. That became clear first when I showed Mr. Sparrow
to a reader, who was thrown that I did not change Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto
to something along the lines of Hate you very much, Mr. Squidbeard.
When it ran in my strip, the reader who only then saw it laughed, because he was not expecting Jack to be in the song. He admitted that he probably would have guessed Mr. Tentacles
or Curse you very much, Mr. Squidola
or, at the very least, no matter what name you call, he thought that villain would be in the song, but he never was. (He did later admit that it probably should not have been so surprising, because the original song was not about the enemy.)
Continuing with Kilroy Was Here, it also became clear that my readers were wise to not think about what might be coming, because when it came to parodying Double Life, one of my readers admitted that she definitely would have guessed Troubled Life.
Although for different reasons, that was, to me, just as unfunny and unthinkable as changing father
to bother.
Again, never even realized I could have done that. Ugly Life
was the first thing I thought of, and I stuck with it, apparently for good reason.
Then came American Idiot. All Extraordinary Girl could make one of my readers think was about how Elizabeth was an extraordinary girl. But song parodies should generally change the title, and the relationship between Elizabeth and Will is not a bad one, so she does not suit the song anyway.
Boulevard Along the Searan in late June 2016. Because of Boulevard of Broken Dreams being kind of dramatic, he had thought the parody might be some existential thing like what Jack was going to do with his life now that he was not killing Squidbeard. I suppose he made some progress in realizing killing sprees were no longer, but considering it had been two years (give or take six weeks) since the parodying revolution, this was getting ridiculous. A lecture about how we were now in a different canon ensued, needless to say. I had to make clear, all parodies had to be accessible to a general audience now, and despite claims the former had made to the contrary, Jack Spasm and Jack Sparrow were not the same person.
But, as I have discussed elsewhere on the site, I had my reasons not to keep following the trends, as they did not have to do with what the album itself was like, and therefore how suitable it was. They admittedly never spared a thought for the content of 21st Century Breakdown, nor how much work it would take to memorize. Besides, if that album had to be next because it was the last thing we had in two trends, how was I supposed to decide what to do after that?
Dookie was not a concept album. That should have been their first clue, as the pattern was already starting to fall apart. That one reader just thought I was taking a break from concept albums at first, but when the parodies arrived, admitted that it probably should not have been so surprising that 21st Century Breakdown was not next, because Dookie is a very different album, with some really simple lyrics, and did not at all build up to said concept album. Not only does the whole album not have a story, some of the individual songs barely qualify as stories. We agreed that if 21st Century Breakdown was ever coming, it would have made much more sense immediately after American Idiot.
It should be noted, however, that Green Day was the first artist the Crew got started on that they did not ultimately parody every album I own by, so it was easy to be thrown by this turn of events.
I am pleased to report that the major bloopers ended in 2016. That appears to be when my readers learned what they really needed to.
However, things will always be complicated. One has a lot to keep track of, and forgetting any of those things could result in your getting your foot caught in a hole. Examples of this can happen at any time, and here comes one now.
A friend of mine who knew the Best of The Motels compilation better than I did helped me settle for that album. She certainly knew better than to try to predict by this time, and that probably made the situation better.
But she went far enough to make one mistake. She saw the song title of Shame as having potential, forgetting that the title should change to make the parody distinguishable from the original song, as well as that it takes more than one word to decide who to make the parody about. The song did turn out into the parody Blame,
but with none of the Davy Jones that she was expecting. One does need to think about these things when suggesting fodder to a parodist, but it is tricky.
Basically, a number of parodies that were sort of, in a fictitious way, mine (but certainly not of the real me) only ever existed in the heads of my readers. Ones that played on the right parts of the original song for me to be able to give them titles are:
Squidbeard(Original song: Eddie. You will have to take my word for that. Two lines was as far as it got.)
Bother(Original song: Father O.S.A. One word and it was history. I dropped a hint of what was really going to happen and they still got the wrong idea.)
Mr. Squidbeard(tentative title) (Original song: Mr. Roboto. The extent of its progress was figuring out what one line would generally be saying.)
Troubled Life(Original song: Double Life. Never got past the title.)
Extraordinary Girl(No change to the song title, just a choice of subject, no details of change decided)
18th Century Breakdown(What was supposed to be done with the entire album of 21st Century Breakdown only achieved a working title)
And, towards all of these, I have one thing to say: How is that funny or clever? No offense to my readers meant, these were all things they honestly thought I might/would do, but, well, you can imagine the face palming I was tempted to do. (I suppose a side effect of being an expert is that most people cannot do as good a job as you and therefore you can easily be embarrassed by them.)