Nothing like a good opinionated spout-off to generate more opinionated spout-offs, n'est-ce-pas? According to the hallowed "And That Reminds Me..." rule.

(And, before I begin, I'm not really as vitriolic as the mood implies. I'm feeling just bitchy enough to want to rant about something, but not bitchy enough to scream and yell and throw things. So I figured I'd get it out of my system and maybe generate a discussion. All disclaimers apply: these are just my opinions, I'm not picking on anyone in particular, there are exceptions to everything, et cetera.)

What reminded me on this occasion was the Lauren's comment about a lack of humor. On which point I think she's quite right, although I think it's partly explicable by the sheer ponderous melodrama of the source material. (The light bits are so few and far between that when they went to make it a musical they turned the Thenardiers into utter clowns, presumably to keep from depressing everyone out of the theatre before intermission. And that's another rant and shall be ranted another time.)

And this is a problem that's compounded by its apparent opposite: there's too much damn "humor" in Mizfic.

There's a subgenre variously called "sillyfic" or "insanity". What I'm thinking of here is a very specific type of thing -- I'm dubious about saying fic, because most of them are done in "play format", not in prose -- which is not to be confused with parody (a la Jenelin), or with bizarro plot premises (a la caudelac), or far-out crossovers (a la any number of people). Sillyfic as defined for purposes of this discussion is not merely any fic that is in any way silly. That covers a lot of territory, much of it original and funny and well-executed.

Sillyfic, as I am using the term here, consists of characters thrown together, usually in an indeterminate setting, with no regard for chronology, and doing something random and often anachronistic. Sometimes there's an author-insertion "puppetmaster" calling the shots. The characters put on a show. The characters go to McDonald's. The characters play with Play-Doh. The characters sit around mouthing off. There is almost never a plot; the entire point of the exercise is to watch characters you're familiar with do ridiculous things.

Very, very occasionally this is amusing. Cillabub pulls it off with moderate cleverness, and "A Reunion" by Someone-with-a-pen-name-variant-on-Joly was, in fact, bloody hysterical. I can't think of one other person who has written this particular type of thing and caused me to giggle instead of gag.

Obviously, this is not because the style can't be used to amusing effect. It's just that nine out of ten people who write this kind of thing decide that since they're writing "humor", it doesn't have to make any sense at all. That's what makes it funny, right? This is what I think of as the legacy of Douglas Adams to the legions of people who aren't (and never will be) Douglas Adams -- the assumption that off-the-wall = funny. You can certainly be both, but one does not equal the other.

The people who feature in most of these sillyfics have nothing in common with the people in Les Miz, except for the names. Most often they're supposed to be Les Amis, sometimes Eponine and Cosette, sometimes Gavroche, sometimes Javert and Valjean, but they usually all act like the same person: some loudmouthed idiot. (The Thenardiers rarely appear, perhaps because they already act like loudmouthed idiots in the musical.) They'll spend the entire sillyfic standing around sniping at each other, pulling fourth-grade pranks, or having catfights.

And I just don't get it. I read fanfic to read about Hugo's characters -- not a bunch of random buffoons bearing the same names and wearing the same clothes. If I want to see belligerent high-school boys trading insults at McDonald's, Christ, I'll go to McDonald's.

Cilla's "the characters perform X" sillyfics work because they're parodies as well as sillyfics. They're standing around in limbo together, singing anachronistic songs for Cilla's benefit for no apparent reason -- but they're at least remotely recognizable as themselves. Enjolras and Javert balk at acting out romance, Jean Valjean tries to keep to the background, Gavroche gets into trouble. "A Reunion" works for the same reason: they're in an absurd situation, but they're the people they're supposed to be -- exaggerated, but recognizable.

When I read something that has no bearing on events in the book, and where -- for example -- Grantaire is a bully, Enjolras is whiny, Cosette is a selfish bitch, and Javert makes scatological puns that might crack up a nine-year-old boy, I don't laugh. There's nothing to laugh at, because I don't recognize these people and they're not being witty; they're just being obnoxious.

I've never asked the people who write this stuff to justify themselves. It never seemed worth the effort, ficcers being notoriously touchy about every word they lay down, and me being notoriously bad at tact and diplomacy, and the sillyfics in many cases being completely irredeemable. (It doesn't help that a lot of them are rife with typos.) And the one time I left an honest comment on one of them, the dear child hauled off and flamed me.

But if I did, I venture to predict the answers I'd get:

"Well, I thought it was funny." Which is fine as far as it goes. Whatever builds your barricade, baby. But does it justify sending the stuff to archives and inflicting it on random people? I think the word "weasel" is inherently hilarious, but I don't write something in which Grantaire says "weasel" all the time for no apparent reason and then post it for general consumption. People would quite rightly think I was a dork.

"It's just supposed to be silly, not make any sense." But silliness by itself is not amusing and not clever. My kid brother used to go around repeating nonsense syllables endlessly. It was extremely silly, but let me tell you, I wanted to slap him. And I'd have been even more annoyed if he'd gone around mispronouncing "Javert" ad nauseam. You get my drift?

"My friends all laughed." My friends grin when I say "weasel" for no apparent reason. See above.

I don't really have a point to all this, a conclusion. I just felt like getting it off my chest. It's one of those things -- I don't know. It just seems like it's energy that could be better spent writing something touching, or innovative, or even, you know... funny.