Two is company, three is a crowd, four is a zoo, and five turned out to be a mess that needed to be fixed.
On this page, I describe some specific things I have done to address certain issues with my bad old characters, the Comic Five, in no particular order.
The Five came up with the suggestion that the crew of the Flying Dutchman were ruined in body and mind by a disease, perhaps one caught from the Kraken. However, because they were obsessed with trying to be funny, they would not let the story be tragic as it likely realistically would be. Instead, they decided that the disease could have been cured and blamed the mutants for not having their condition treated while they could.
How I acknowledged this: By having Death for Loss
point out that some diseases, notably viruses, cannot be cured. Also, Rule 15 was established to ensure this can no longer happen.
The Five were based on a game where the players could never truly be defeated, only set back in some way. This meant they could proceed about anything with no suspense, as well as being unfair to the antagonist by giving him no possible victory.
How I acknowledged this: By having the pirates fail in We Got Sunken.
In real life, I found a funny way to deal with Pirates of the Caribbean merchandise that bore the images of sailors turned to hideous sea creatures by sticking pieces of paper over them saying they were no longer available for public viewing in accordance with the Optic Protection Act.
Great for me, except for the fact that because it was known to my personal audience, the Comic Five decided that made it as accessible as they needed, and they rendered several parodies unpublishable by referring to this complete personal in-joke.
Tentaclesstate that
Tentacles will get into images anyway,thus making clear that there is no Optic Protection Act where the canon parodies take place. Also, Rule 14 was established to ensure this can no longer happen.
The Lego caricatures were always going on about one old thing. Obsessions always got the better of them. It would be the same thing every day.
How I acknowledged this: By having Stranger
acknowledge that Davy might weep about his lost love nightly, but has plenty of other things to do, too.
The Five claimed to wonder how Davy lost his mind. But they never asked him, and then they would say the fool did not seek help to prevent his mental apocalypse,
even though there was no evidence for this. Thus, it was given away that they did not want to know his side of the story at all. Their wondering
was just an excuse to make up an insulting story about him.
How I acknowledged this: By writing parodies like What Cost Your Mind (Pure Enemy)
that clearly express an honest interest in knowing more. Also, Rule 3 was established to ensure this can no longer happen.
No moment with the Five was ever happy. I have my doubts as to whether they even knew the meaning of the word.
How I acknowledged this: Establishing Rule 1 ensured it is no longer like this.
The video game origins of the Five made them killing machines - and in a way that was too topical at that.
How I acknowledged this: By writing Rule 2 to outlaw killing sprees.
The Five had preferred words, names and phrases that they thought more accessible to my readers, but they were less accessible to everyone else and could also be too modern.
How I acknowledged this: By writing Rule 4 to ensure this can no longer happen.
The typical Comic Five parody was one that only made sense if you had read my strip, which only my closest friends had done. Rules 5 and 15 were established to take care of this.
The Five were notorious for doing things because they could. An example was that because the parodies appeared in a comic strip, they might mention the cartoonist.
Which, of course, made recording the parody in any other media problematic.
How I acknowledged this: By writing Rule 6 to ensure this can no longer happen, and by hiring characters who generally do things because they should, not because they can.
It was not uncommon for a Comic Five parody to use many words that did not even try to rhyme with the ones they replaced, or to get the number of syllables wrong.
How I acknowledged this: By writing rules 7 and 8 to ensure this can no longer happen, taking more time on parodies, and hiring characters who care about their works.
The purpose of a Comic Five parody was usually to do something as different from the original song as possible, no matter what it was. As a result, they often changed things they did not need to.
How I acknowledged this: By writing Rule 9 to ensure that change only happens where it needs to, and coming up with the repurposed song.
The Five would just take any song and shove their material into it. This could result in, say, odd phrases, or evidence of making things up just to suit the song.
How I acknowledged this: By establishing Rule 10 to prevent this sort of thing, and changing my method of plans so that I do not choose a song until I know what to do with it. (I highly recommend other parodists do the same.)
Going off of the Lego game was fun at the time, but it is much more inside-jokey than the movies, and has much less material to offer.
How I acknowledged this: By establishing Rule 11 to ensure that no Lego stuff appears, even if it seems the obvious thing to do with the song.
Always hogging the spotlight, the Five were not above making in-jokes to things totally unrelated to the video game they were supposed to be of, as long as my readers would get it.
How I acknowledged this: By establishing Rule 12 to keep things on topic.
Back to the Five doing things because they could, they might rely on you being able to see which randomized character(s) were singing a parody to understand it.
How I acknowledged this: By establishing Rule 13 to ensure that if there are any specificities as to who is singing the parody, the choice was made for a reason.
One of the ways the Five kept getting attention from my readers was by having it so that nobody else my readers might be interested in were appearing. This bunch of monomaniacs, of course, only ended up having a reason to go, for they just covered the characters my readers and I like the least over and over.
How I acknowledged this: By writing an occasional parody like Monster in Blue
and Heart’s Apocalypse
that covers much more of the PotC franchise.
Nothing could ever get the Five to stop and think. They simply did not seem capable of seeing or making good points.
How I acknowledge this: I am planning a category for parodies that admit to things, like how harsh I can be, or that a captain has to be some kind of expert.
The Five always had to be the ones singing the parody. This could mean giving other characters short shrift, but also tended to cause instances of them finding ways to specify it was them singing that just made the works less flexible.
How I acknowledged this: By writing rules, as already noted, to prevent talking about the cartoonist,
discourage specificities as to who is singing the parody, and otherwise outlaw the things that would let you know the Five were singing this. I also let the antagonist have a chance.
The Five had endless prohibitions but no rules on what should be done, which is one of the reasons they kept thinking of the same thing over and over. It was also part of what allowed their melting pots of things that did not go together.
How I acknowledged this: By establishing a firm sense of what is on topic and what is not, and getting characters who are good at staying inside the fourth wall, which means not knowing all those irrelevant things.
The Five based their judgment of when they had said enough not on how much they had said, but on whether they had said Squidbeard,
Homo
or cartoonist
yet. This was not only the very definition of obsessive, but also made them prone to wandering away from their point so they could mention one of those things.
How I acknowledged this: By getting a cast of characters who knows not to use two or three sentences when one will do, thus allowing them to get more said within the space of a song, and who knows better than to do artificial segues.
Probably the single biggest problem with the Five was that they needed me to come up with all their ideas for them. Most, if not all of their flaws can be traced to this root cause.
How I acknowledged this: By getting characters with lives of their own.
The Five decided what to parody in a restricted way, typically going by all the songs I really like in a given album. This meant no regard for how suitable a given song really was, among other things.
How I acknowledged this: By doing fewer parodies in the albums, as songs with low fodder ratings are eliminated more and more, and doing more parodies that are not parts of albums.
protagonists
Even after all this, the Five somehow had to always be right, just because they were playable characters in a video game.
How I acknowledged this: By getting characters whose alignment does not depend on whether a controller tells them what to do.
I know my limits, which is why I am stopping the page here.