Mellowframes Review: Is it Funny?
@mellowfilmmaker: This is not meant as a diss on you or your opinions on the show, and I can tell you do put work into making these high quality- this is just meant as some criticism, as I don’t think parodies are immune to it either. And if Steven Universe deserves it, so does a parody of Steven Universe! So let’s jump into it!
Now, just to make things fair so I don’t seem like I’m just using this as a rant, I’m going to be referring to examples of funny Mellowframes comics in my eyes and discuss why I think they succeed, and then refer to some that I find to not work on that level. It’s all my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt, but tell me if you agree or disagree.
A parody should be able to be understood and enjoyed not just by the people who watched the original, but by people who have never seen the original too. If you’re relying to heavily on the readers/watchers knowing the source material, it’ll just come off as you using the mere fact that the characters are there as a joke. It’s sort of like how a lot of CinemaSins clones call themselves ‘parodies of CinemaSins’ even though they aren’t parodies at all, they’re just using the Everything Wrong With brand to get some views and clicks.
That doesn’t mean that there should be no enjoyment to be found from fans of the source material, or even people who aren’t fans, but it just means that you have to try and make the jokes you make work in a way that’ll both be a funny premise on its own and a funny twist on the original.
As an example of a joke that works both for people who are unfamiliar with the source and for people who are, here is a comic that was parodying the episode Rose’s Healing Tears: http://mellowfilmmaker.tumblr.com/post/125408363589/mellow-frames-roses-healing-tears
The joke of the comic (if you didn’t get it) is basically explaining why Steven has healing spit by saying that Rose actually had healing spit instead of healing tears; I present this as an example of this because it’s both a funny premise (as you can totally see why someone would prefer to tell people they have healing tears instead of healing spit) and because it gives a fun twist to the original episode. Even the joke with Pearl is funny in a non sequitur way without needing to know about Pearl’s dedication to Rose in the show!
Now, what’s an example of a comic in this series I think fails at this? Well, look none other than this recent one: http://mellowfilmmaker.tumblr.com/post/175525041409/mellow-framesrose-is-not-bad-we-swear
Some people didn’t like this because it ‘misinterpreted her character,’ and admittedly I had an overreaction to it before regretting it minutes later, but now that I’ve settled down, I dislike it for a different reason: for me, it just fails comedically.
While it is true that you shouldn’t exactly be jumping into this comic series this late and expect to understand everything, you shouldn’t need to know everything about the show to find some humor from a parody. Look at SAO Abridged- I never watched the original, and it’s still hilarious because of its stellar writing, plus it adds in serious moments when needed which is rare for an abridged series!
On that respect, this comic (and many others) lacks in any appeal it could have for people who aren’t familiar with Steven Universe. Just look at the panel where Pearl talks about her plan to overthrow the Diamonds with their army: if you went into this comic with no knowledge of Steven Universe and you read that, would you find it funny, or just confusing? And even with the knowledge of Steven Universe, you’d need to also agree with what the writer (mellowfilmmaker) is saying, and then find it funny to hear him say it. You’ll probably be too focused questioning what you’re reading and if it makes any sense (both as an SU Fan and as someone unfamiliar) to find humor out of it.
That doesn’t mean the whole comic fails- the joke where Ruby starts saying she understands Sapphire needs space only to be cut off was pretty good even out of context- but it generally doesn’t work, and it’s not the only one to have this problem. It won’t be productive to list every comic he’s made to suffer from this issue, because at that point it isn’t really helping, it’s just pointing out things I dislike.
Coincidentally, that’s an issue I have with a lot of the comics in Mellowframes- they can sometimes be less about telling jokes and more about pointing out things he dislikes in the episodes, while using the characters as a way to talk about them easier. Yeah, it’s not always the case, and as he’s said in response to my ask about The Question, “an episode doesn’t need to have flaws to have material.” That’s a very good way to look at it, and it gives me the idea that he’s most likely already aware of some of the issues in some of his older comics.
I think one of the biggest things that holds back Mellowframes from being great is its medium- since it’s a webcomic that just uses screenshots of the episodes to parody them, there’s little room to diverge from the original episode’s plot to make jokes about ‘what if’s. That’s actually why I believe some of the funniest comics in Mellowframes have been the non-canon ones, because they delved into very funny ideas to twist around the originals. For instance, what if the floor-triggered escape pod we see Peridot use in Jail Break turned out to be a big issue for the people who were on board the ship? You don’t even need to know who Peridot is to find that funny! He can’t exactly delve into those ideas often though, because he still wants to tell a cohesive story, which essentially means he’s stuck on a railroad track where he can just change around some dialogue. That doesn’t open doors for a lot of great humor to me.
In conclusion, I think Mellowframes isn’t a bad webcomic, but it often has problems with relying too much on the readers knowing the source material for the humor, sometimes spends too much time criticizing and not enough time writing jokes, and is limited by its medium and its lack of freedom to change things around. He can either use these criticisms of mine to change his comic, or change nothing, and either way I’m not going to get mad. It’s his comic, I can’t boss him around about how to write it. I hope he still appreciates the criticisms either way!
