#I speak a lil Welsh from growing up here

[eutaerpe]

in nuce (in fieri pt 2)

→ genre: The raven cycle!AU | a little bit of angst, a lil bit of fluff 

→ pairing: reader/Taehyung ft jjk

→ word count: 4k

→ description: Kim Taehyung knows that kissing his one true love means you’re inevitably going to die. He knows he shouldn’t even bother because he sees how Jungkook looks at you and him both, but that doesn’t stop him from calling you at midnight and picking you up and letting you feel his hot and uneven breath on your face.

→ a/n: hello!! i’m so sorry this took a while, but sophomore year happened. along with many other things. as usual, forgive me for any mistakes :( i hope you like this piece as much as i do!! :) x 

Jungkook hates driving your black BMW. He absolutely despises how well his calloused hands feel on the leather wheel, he loathes how comfortable it is, how silent and classy and rich it is.

You, on the other hand, love seeing him plopped on a seat that’s not the passenger one – shotgun, Jimin would have shouted in every other occasion, failing to occupy that desired seat, though today is an exception: there’s only the two of you in your expensive, hateful, practically never used car.

A small side of you – well hidden under all those layers of restless obliviousness - dreads to tell him it’s because you’re always in Taehyung’s car and your heart flutters when you see the older man drive, his hand in yours. Yet you don’t. Jungkook’s forehead is already wrinkled as it is, and you hate it. Sometimes it’s easier to picture what it would be like to ask Glendower for Jungkook’s happiness, instead of having him tired and broken around you.

“It’s just two hours,” you murmur, your right hand covering your left one, burnt by Namjoon’s culinary impracticalness. He almost cried, the other night, when he dropped the boiling water all over the kitchen – and casually almost cut you with his knife, but you don’t share this tad with Jungkook. You and Namjoon decided to stick to microwaved ramen after that, while you promised him you weren’t hurt. You’re not wholly hurt, at least. Just enough to make Jungkook drive because he knows (and you know) that this makes him feel powerful but not crucially enough to make Namjoon worry.

“I know,” Jungkook replies, rolling the sleeves of his black hoodie above his elbows, “don’t worry about me. Try to get some sleep while you’re at it, you know you’re the one who has to lead all our conversations later”.

Of course, you must, inevitably. That’s the perk of growing up in a well-mannered family, mother aspiring to be elected as senator in the next elections, father quiet, complying and greatly focused on his children’s future, a sharp-tongued brother who dressed like a Dior model and… you. Thriving to find your dead Welsh king.

Sometimes you wish angry-and-bothered Jungkook would stop looking at you with a distaste for your surroundings – “Envy”, Jimin once said. “It’s really not his fault, you’re the sweet little girl that has everything he has ever dreamed of, yet you steer as further as possible from your family” – because, given the chance, you’d give it all to him. You even told him, which, in retrospect, probably wasn’t a good idea, because he flinched, passed his hand in his dark hair and laughed so darkly you’d feared him. He had hovered you, looked at you, stroked your cheek and said “I don’t want to talk about this ever again. Please” and, somehow, that cracked your relationship. You wish you’d stop hurting him with your words.

“Alright.” you manage before you close your car’s door.

In two hours, you’ll be in Seoul – well, your parents’ luxurious mansion – facing your whole family and the whole city, being the good daughter that they’d raised you to be. It’s not as bad as it sounds, because this time there’s Jungkook with you. His scholarship-student, boyish, attractive face can charm off everyone you know: it’s a win-win situation for you two, as he can gain connections while you avoid making small talks with every person known by your parents.

It’s the only deal your parents expect from you – if you want to live in your apartment with Namjoon and Jimin, refrain yourself from attending their social gatherings during summer so that you can devote, once again, yourself to your quest (Glendower Glendower Glendower)… if you don’t want to give up your independence, well, you have to be there.

Jungkook is a steady driver. Precise, careful, safe. His eyes are fixed on the road above him, veins bulging in his arms, hoodie carefully placed over his black high waisted jeans. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to guess what’s on his mind. On the outside, he looks unfazed, one could think he almost never thinks or never worries, but. You know he faces his fears on his own, in due time, as he does with all those matters that he bears on his shoulders. One by one, he takes them off his body, deciding to win strategically, to defeat with logic and daunting calm his enemy. He’s indefinitely stubborn, that you know for sure. But… You want to stop thinking about what he might be thinking of. What he might be feeling. He barely sighs. Crossing your legs on the passenger seat, you’d wish he’d tell you.

“Guk,” your voice says before you even realize it, “’m glad you’re here with me.”

He swallows, hard, hands still fiercely gripping the wheel.

“I know,” he says at first, “I’m glad to be here with you.” then adds, voice much softer.

That makes you fall asleep peacefully. 

You remember less champagne and slightly more suits. You’re glad to see dozens of women owning their couture clothes and classy jackets, even though they’re wearing their best academic success, next in line CEO, future sad wife, better daughter-than-you smiles. Ah, what a daring exhibition. Very two-thousand-and-something of your parents. On a second thought, how rich of you to almost disapprove of the growth of alcohol in the room. Yoongi taught you better.

You give Jungkook your best help-me-forget-I’m-here smile. You like to think you gave life to this one, owning the patent and all. Not on sale yet, so no one even dares to wear it on their perfect and not-chapped lips, but Jungkook acknowledges it and his hand brushes yours to lower the frantic anxiety in your body. Thank God for Jungkook.

“Frankly,” a voice on your left startles you, “if I were you, I’d have chosen another dress”. The corners of your mouth threat to lift themselves up, and that’s how you know – with the raging chaos of the dining room – that Yoongi is talking to you.

“Yeah, but you know, avoiding Dior is my first priority along with showing up to mum’s birthday with a glass plate as a fucking gift”

He snorts. “You did like my gift, though, so you’re in no position to neither judge nor question my ability to lighten the lives of the people with loving presents.”

“Stop talking like mum” you hiss, crossing your arms on your chest.

His blond hair looks even more platinum these days. “Glad to know we’re resembling our parents more as we grow, kid. That worried look on your face gave off a dad vibe, if you know what I mean,” he gestures as he speaks, before eyeing Jungkook on your side, “Or maybe a vague daddy one? I know for a fact that you’ve been called daddy in the past- “

“Kids sometimes call each other mom and dad when they’re five”

“-unless I’m mistaking all this entirely and Jeon here is your daddy?”

“Oh my god,” you groan, covering your face. “How many times do I have to tell you? He’s not my-”

“Not fucking your sister, sorry to disappoint,” Jungkook interrupts, making your eyes bulge. He looks perfectly calm with his hands in the pockets of his black suit he changed into as soon as you came here. His forehead is showing, and you know for a fact that this simple detail is enough for making girls go down on their knees for him. But Jungkook is not like that. He’s usually calm, peaceful, charming, respecting Jungkook. Aglionby Jungkook is your Jungkook seventy-five percent of the time. Then there’s wild Jungkook – though not wild enough to drink and engage in your activities when you forget you’re yourself and remember you’re your brother’s sister. Wild yourself would terrify Taehyung. Or terribly amuse him. Honestly, you don’t know what’s worse. You don’t even want to find out the answer.

This Jungkook, though, is… altogether a whole new persona that comes to life when he has had enough of people like these in this room; or, you now realise, when he talks to Yoongi. All cocky, dry humored and sarcastic, and for that you curse your brother’s nature.

“Not for lack of trying, though,” Yoongi, in fact, insists.

“I mean, you’d have to visit to know, right? You’re just guessing we’re joined at the hip and spending our lives together—”

“And fucking in her BWM”

Jungkook promptly ignores him and smirks, the devil himself. “…but it’s all talk unless you come to check on her and take a look for yourself, uh?”

Your brother gets closer to Jungkook, eyes dark and looming in the younger’s ones. “No, no, you’re right,” he begins, playing with his ring, “My sister is philanthropic, charitable. She’d settle for…” he seems to weight his words, “I don’t remember, how’s he called?”

“Shut up. Yoongi,” you warn him, grabbing his wrists. “Just shut up”

“The new one? Taehyung?”

Jungkook goes rigid beside you and you snap. “Fuck off,” you push him away, “fuck off. Stay away from us unless you’ve sobered up. Give this jerk attitude to mum and dad and everyone who hurt you in this life, I couldn’t care less. But not to me. And not ever to Jungkook.”

Yoongi has the maybe-I-screwed-up face, his features twisted in a badly hidden fear. You focus on him for a second, but it’s enough for Jungkook to slide out of his position next to you and, in a swift move, he’s gone. Just like that. Lost among the guests. His erratic heartbeat almost quiet as opposed to the noisy chatter of the room.

“Y/N…”

Your brother’s voice falters.

“No, Yoon. I have to find him.”

Yet, fate is a funny thing. It tells Taehyung not to kiss people if he doesn’t want them to die while it brings Jungkook in his life. You in his life. Fate demands you to be your honest self, and you wish you could comply, but being Jungkook’s friend – that runs after him, takes care of him, shares pain with him – is hard to do when you can’t do any of those things. You can’t take care of him because he’s his own person, and he doesn’t need you like that. You can’t share his pain with him – nor take all his pain away – because he never shares. He never takes. He’d never take anything from you.

As for the last thing you wish you could do for him, well—you can’t exactly run after him if he’s faster than you, quicker, smoother, swifter.

(Better)

You physically can’t, if your own mother positions herself between you and the crowd Jungkook dissolved into.

“Daughter of mine!” she beams, eyes now crescents. “I missed you terribly.”

The last thing you see before she engulfs you with her warm hug is your brother’s stare – dark, quiet, not at all menacing. It terribly resembles Yoongi’s smile when he was younger and carefree. But it only lasts a fraction of a second. Yoongi gives you his back and disappears into the crowd.

A part of you, you think, holding onto your mother’s waist, wishes he’d go looking for Jungkook. But one can only hope, right? You wish Taehyung was here. He’d hold your hand. He’d knew what to do.

Jungkook, you reckon, a twinge of pain hitting you all at once, would want Taehyung here, too. 

The hauntingly beautiful mansion—yours, you remind yourself – is packed. Jungkook is still gone, out of sight, so as you exhale a silent sigh you run your eyes, for the nth time, once again through the people—the aged, rich, people that fit better than you in this daunting place. You scan through all the black cocktail dresses, you skim through the delighted expressions, past above the lingering faux happiness they decided to show to your guests. Yet, there’s no trace of Jungkook. What would you give to leave your mother and go look for him, his doe eyes fixated in your mind, lacking beside you.

Your mother winces at the volume of the conversation she’s now holding with an old politician in front of you—she grimaces for a split second, hands still covering her filled glass of champagne. Honestly, though? You couldn’t care less about the media strategies set to unfold the enigmatic yet, dear Mrs. Min, disruptive truth about—

“I think you’ve been right all along,” Professor Shin interrupts your trail of thoughts, a smug grin on his face. You excuse yourself – finally – and turn to him, suddenly excited. Professor Shin – Kim Shin, a charming university History professor that yes, has seen you grow up but, well, seems like doesn’t know what aging means – is probably the only one who firmly believes you’re right. (Glendower saved you. Glendower’s body is still out there. This is your call, for god’s sake.)

The fact that, upon hearing about your arrival, your father’s close friend has decided to meet you and grace you with this… assumption (statement, your mind decides. Truth, your heart suggests.) sends a small jolt through your body. You’ve been right all along. The words echo in your ears. You’ve been right all along. God. God, how you wish Taehyung was here.

This feels weirder than imagined. Closer to a dream, your brother’s vivid and blinding dreams, closer to when Jungkook sat next to you, eyes beaming, bunny smile in full display, and said: “I’m out my parents’ place.”

“I’m sorry,” you begin, a timid smile growing onto your lips, “Could you please repeat what you just said, Professor?”

He snickers, hands in his pockets. “I think you’re right about the ley line in Tokyo. The Tokyo SkyTree building?” – he vaguely gestures in front of your face – “It lies onto a Ley Line, which means that it has disrupted its flow of power into Tokyo itself. But the truth is, the building is… a lot more than just that. I can show you. You’d be delighted to read what I found out, miss Min. That curious friend of yours…ah, Jungkook, right? He’s already looking at my sources right as we talk. What do you say?”

A small pang of pain hits your heart—almost non-existent, you want to say, yet it’s growing and exploding through your limbs because Jungkook—your Jungkook, once again not your Jungkook—is already a step before you. Already thriving, already choosing, already living and smiling without you—yet you smile. You say yes. Just like Jungkook said yes.

The very same Jungkook that has his sleeves rolled on his elbows, his hair mussed and his eyes sparkling. Charming. Handsome.

(Living. Thriving. Smiling. Seeming at peace in your parent’s office, the libraries tall and imposing onto your figures, you two insignificant though blooming at the news.)

He spares a glance at you; his smile doesn’t falter, and this warms your pained heart.

“In simple terms, miss Min,” Professor Shin begins, “We should think of Tokyo as more than a ley line… ask yourself, what would happen if a ley line was to burst and exceed its physical limitations? The answer’s not its power would shatter into a million pieces, miss. The answer, as a matter of fact, is funnier. Wilder. The laws of nature are compact, precise, yet immensely fluid. Japan itself is a force of nature… let me explain; think of it as the feng shui rules. Think about the importance of placing certain objects in specific places. Think about the positive energies a right placement implies.

Now, the Tokyo SkyTree is standing tall, harshly, into a place not appointed for a building. The laws of nature act, at this point. Something so trivial, so languid as a building meant for humans, that will sooner or later cease to exist, broke the synergy of the ley line. The ley lines, eternal, right, powerful. Meant to exist for longer than we can imagine.” He pauses, a glint in his eyes. “The ley line disrupted its power everywhere near the building, imprinting it to Tokyo itself, I imagine. Perhaps even more than Tokyo itself. Now, a young student of mine suggested that this didn’t happen. That the building didn’t lacerate the ley line. That it just… cracked the ley line. Creating a portal. A mass of energy – an unfathomable flow of energy – concentrating in a point, asking for help, connecting itself to the rest of the ley lines in the world. That could lead to anywhere… anyone. To whichever body that lies into a powerful place.”

“To… Glendower.” Jungkook says, licking his lips.

“To Glendower.” You repeat, a conviction in your tone. “Whatever happened, we—I want to see it. I want to feel it. I need to go there.”

“I expected you to say that, miss.” He laughs. “I’m onto a new journey, and I wish you’d take part of it. Lead it, actually. You’re young—” at that, you snort, “But you have tons of experience. I’d like to conduct other experiments in Tokyo, in order to understand what happened, but as soon as I’ve gathered all the pieces of information, I’d like you to go there. So, I now ask you to wait. And prepare yourself. Can you do that for me, miss Min?”

Jungkook’s eyes fall on you and, sensing his disturb – he’s not in the picture. He’s suddenly not part of this game – you avoid his inquiring, hard gaze. “Yes, sir. Take your time. But I want to know—”

“—about everything I’ll discover. Of course.”

His phone rings. You’re sure it’s his because Jungkook lost his (did he really, though?), and you left yours in your room, away from yourself, away from the tempting though to call Taehyung and ignore the gathering altogether. You swore you wouldn’t jump at the first occasion to ditch the party—so here you are, longing for a connection with Taehyung, yet impossibly far from him.

“Excuse me, please.”

God. You want out. You want out before Jungkook says—

“You can’t do this alone—I’m in this, we’re in this together. What about—” his eyes are angry, his features scream madness, “What about Namjoon? What about Jimin?” he exhales, “What about me?”

What about Taehyung?

You can’t answer that, because he begins almost shouting again, “You can’t just think about yourself—this is about all of us. This involves all of us. So what? Just because you were there from the beginning—just because you can travel whenever the fuck you want, it’s easier to cut us out, huh?”

“Jungkook,” you plead, hands on his forearms, “Jungkook, listen to me…”

“If it’s a matter of pride—”

“It’s not!”

“—or worse, money—”

“You have to stop this.” You groan, hands in your hair. “You have to stop this, please. It’s killing me.”

Something in him must click at your words because he’s frowning and unbuttoning his shirt’s top button. “It’s not killing you,” he laughs, a sound void of sympathy, “It’s not.”

“It is! Stop invalidating my feelings—”

“You are, though! You’re crushing mine!”

You ignore his words, hands on your heart, tears threatening to come out. “I-I feel like I can’t talk to you! I always try to choose my words around you and—and it’s killing me. Knowing that you won’t understand—knowing that I’ll choose wrongly, that the next time is gonna be worse, because you’re slowly getting out of reach, you’re running away from me!”

Jungkook’s mouth is agape, his eyes wide. “That’s not true,” it’s his whisper.

“I don’t know what to do. I love you, but… this is killing me. I love you, but it’s useless because you’re getting farther away from me. And I don’t know… I don’t know how to keep you close.”

It’s hard to swallow when he looks so concerned, so out of control, so shocked at your words. But it’s the truth, isn’t it? He isn’t yours anymore. It’s sad to think that maybe he never was in the first place.

“You don’t love me.”

Those words throw you off.

You frown, you lick your lips, exasperated. “Yes, I do.”

This is excruciating. How can he not see? How does he not know? Jungkook, you want to scream, how can I make you believe?

“If you had to choose,” he begins, uncertain. You alert despair in his words. In how slowly he’s letting the words out. In how this is going to end badly—how easy it is for him to ask to choose him? Would you choose Taehyung? Choose me. Love me. “If you had to choose between me and Taehyung…”

“Jungkook, no.”

“Me and Taehyung.” He repeats, taking a step in your direction, gaze on yours, desperation clear, discomfort oozing out of his mouth. “Don’t think. Say a name.”

“I would never do this to you, and you know it.” His thumbs touch your cheeks, and you wish you were stronger—you wish you weren’t crying, you wish you could answer him. “Jungkook, please.”

He looks at you again—that’s the last thing you see before closing your eyes, letting your tears wet your whole face. You’re sobbing, forcing your mouth closed, even when he keeps caressing your soft skin.

“Y/N…”

“I do love you.” You force out, instead. “I do love you, Jungkook. But what about you?” your words are nothing more than a hushed whisper. “Do you love me? Or…”

You open your eyes. Jungkook’s still looking at you, eyebrows frowning. This mere sight makes you want to scream. Your words make you want to weep, uncontrollably. This is not fair. This isn’t what you had planned.

“Are you in love with me? Or are you in love with Taehyung?”

That’s the right question to ask, you want to cry out loud. That’s what’s nurturing you and him both—you’ve lived since birth a privileged life. You’ve always asked questions, you were always praised for your curiosity. Most especially, you were always given answers. But what about now? Why can’t he say—can’t he share the truth? Can’t he say he loves you, deeply, so terribly deeply, yet Taehyung makes him feel different? Makes he feel normal? Alive? Just a boy?

You do know it. You do know how does he feel.

As he blinks, pulling away, pupils desperate, you wish you could say: I know how he makes you feel. And again: I feel the same way. The truth: he makes me feel the same way.

You take a step back, drying your wet cheeks.

“We’re leaving tomorrow.”

Another truth: I love him.

As you give him your back, you leave him alone in the office. But Jungkook doesn’t follow you.

(The truth you didn’t say out loud: you love him, too.)

It’s past midnight when Taehyung misdials.

He says it right away, first thing when you pick up, and you don’t believe him for a second.

“I misdialled. Didn’t mean to call you. To wake you up—”

“It’s fine.” You murmur, drowning in your warm bed. “I don’t mind. Wasn’t sleeping anyway.”

“Mhm.” He sighs, “Was the party okay?”

“As okay as it can be.”

“Vague.”

“I learned from the best.”

“Were the people okay?”

“Bearable as drunk Namjoon.”

“So, as bearable as my brother Seokjin when he hasn’t had his fair share of daily compliments.”

Your lips can’t help but curve into a smile. “Seokjin loves you, though.”

“So does Namjoon.”

You breathe out. “Yeah,” you swallow. “Yeah, he does.”

“What about Jungkook?”

Your heart is in pain. Damned Jungkook.

“What about him?”

Taehyung pauses, and you imagine him blinking, nodding to nothing. “I hope that, at least, the food was good.”

“Of course. Our chef has never disappointed the Min family.”

You faintly hear him chuckle.

“You okay?”

Here it is, the million dollars question. “I am now. I’m glad you misdialled.”

Taehyung doesn’t exhale. “Might do it again, dunno. Can’t really say I’m a fan of technology.”

“I’d answer,” you admit, voice lower than before, “If you ever were to misdial again.”

“Good,” he sounds pleased, “Wouldn’t want to waste the call.”

Taehyung bites the inside of his mouth, eyes checking into the dark kitchen he’s in.

“Sweet dreams.”

He waits for your tender “Night, Tae,” before hanging up.

That night, you sleep like a child. 

#taehyung #bts scenarios #bts x reader #bts scenario #bts #bts fanfic #bts fanficiton #taehyung fanfic #taehyung fic #taehyung scenario #taehyung au #taehyung fluff #taehyung angst #bts imagines #bts imagine #v x reader #the raven cycle #trc au #bts fake texts #bts moodboard #taehyung moodboard #in fieri

[somekind0fmagic]

Chapter 9. Time To Go Back

I do not own Harry Potter or the Characters created by Rowling, if I did then they would actually listen to Ron

This is the last chapter for 1st year. Summer should last 2-4 chapters if all goes to plan

I really didn’t mean to put this off, school has been stressful so I’m very sorry 

( Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14 )

Chapter 9. Time To Go Back

“I always heard that the end of the year exams at Hogwarts were hard, but I’ve found them to be rather easy.”

Albus scoffed, “Easy for you to say, I felt like I was dying in there.”

“We still have the physical test.”

“That’s so much better Scorpius, wow, I feel so much better.” He tried to keep a straight face, but ended up laughing. Anneliese and Scorpius began to laugh too. “How do you keep a straight face while being sarcastic, L.”

She shrugged, “I don’t know, I guess it’s just not hard for me.”

“Well, I’m hungry and would like some food.”

“I can agree to that!”

She rolled her eyes at the guys, “You guys are always hungry.”

“I’m part Weasley so that’s my excuse.”

“I’m a growing boy, I need to eat.”

“You’re a growing idiot Scorpius.”

--------

Scorpius and Albus watched as Anneliese walked out of the room. “How was it? What do we have to do?”

“You’d die without me.”

Scorpius shrugged, “Yes, but that’s not the point.”

She rolled her eyes, “1.) I’m not going to say what you have to do because 2.) it’s easy.”

Albus ran a hand through his hair, “C’mon L, you want us to pass, right?”

“Yeah,” She sat down next to them, “On your own.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Whatever guys.”

--------

The three first years watched as the 5th and 7th years continued to study since their exams weren’t done. “I feel sorry for the 5th and 7th years, they have two more days of this.”

“Yeah, I don’t wanna be them, ever.”

“Same Al.”

“Children!” They looked over to Lorene Zabini as she jumped over the railing of the stairs that led up to the girls dorms. 

“You’re gonna hurt yourself one day.”

“Potter, please, I’ve been doing this for 13 years, I’ll be fine, but, that’s not what I want to talk about.”

“Then what is it?”

“How’re you guys gonna deal with the summer?”

“What do you mean?”

“The Quidditch World Cup is this year! You guys gonna go to the game, wherever it ends up being?”

Scorpius shrugged, “Depends on what my parents want.”

“Yeah, pretty sure mum is doing a report on it again, so it will probably be mandatory for me to go.”

“Well what about you miss ‘I don’t understand quidditch’?”

Anneliese laughed, “I’ll probably go, will I be dragged to it by my brothers.” She moved her bangs from out of her face, “Why?”

Lorene shrugged, “Was just curious cause mum sent a letter saying we have to go since Uncle Reece may play.”

“What team?”

“Welsh, they made it to the Quarterfinals last week. The week we get out, aka 2 weeks, will determine if they make it to the Semifinals and if they make it to that then we’ll find out if they make it to the finals. Plus, it’s being held by Britain this year.”

“Makes sense, but I’ll try to convince my parents to take me.”

“Killer, I guess Aunt Astoria will inform us whenever our parents decide to meet up.”

Scorpius nodded, “Yeah, I guess.”

--------

Anneliese laid her head on Albus’s shoulder as Scorpius sat across from them. “You know, if I do end up going, perhaps our parents could meet Al. So then we can hang out without blondie.”

Scorpius and Albus laughed, “Yeah, maybe.”

“Weird to think we’re going home for more than 2-3 weeks.”

“Yeah, and after what happened over Christmas, I’m scared.”

They didn’t speak of Albus’s Christmas incident much, but when they did, they tended to tiptoe over it. “Yeah. Well, I know my mum could care less on if someone comes over, as long as she knows about an hour in advance. And if she says yes then my father will say yes. Grandmother tends to agree with mum on things like that.”

“Would they mind me living there for a while?”

“As long as they like you they’re perfectly fine with that.”

“Well then, I just might.”

“How’s Lily, Albus?”

He shrugged, “She’s fine as far as I know, she made new friends after those last ones. They don’t make fun of her or anything.”

“That’s good.”

Albus nodded, “Wait, if your parents don’t like you going to someone's house if they don’t know them or their parents, then why did they let you stay the night at mine?”

She shrugged, “I guess it was ‘cause Scorpius was there and they know his family, please, my parents logic on why they do anything, is crazy.”

They laughed as the compartment door opened. “Looks like we did find a compartment boys, we just got to rid it of its...stink.”

The three twelve-year-olds glared at them, “I agree Oliver, we need to get rid of the snakes.”

Albus stood up, “Oliver, Jason, Brock, go bother someone else.”

“How dare you say our names you filthy little snake!”

Albus glared at them, “What’re you gonna do Oliver? Hit a poor and defenseless first year? I mean, your brother did beat one up.”

“She deserved it, her father was a death eater! Just like their parents!”

Before anything could happen they all heard the voice of Jerimiah Ecerson, “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing, snake!”

“Nothing? Well, from what I saw and heard, you three were threatening a group of kids that just finished their first year, that’s pretty low. Now go find another compartment to be in or I’ll give you all a detention for next year!”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

He raised an eyebrow, “Try me.”

Brock pushed out of Jerimiah’s way, “C’mon guys, let’s just go.”

Oliver and Jason followed after him. Jerimiah looked at the three, “You three good?”

They nodded and he walked away, closing the compartment door. Albus sat back down next to Anneliese. No one spoke for a while until Scorpius whispered, “My mum wasn’t.”

“What?”

Scorpius looked at Albus, tears softly falling down his face, “My mum, she was never a death eater. Neither was my grandmother. My father didn’t even want to become one.”

“I know, from what you’ve told me, that seems beyond something she would do.”

They both looked over to Anneliese as she laid her head against the glass of the window.

--------

The three kids stood on the platform. Anneliese wrapped her arms around Albus, “Promise you’ll write?”

“Everyday, you’ll get annoyed by how much I’ll write.”

She laughed, “I highly doubt that.”

“Anne, I see two little blondes running over here.”

Anneliese looked over to where Scorpius was pointing and sure enough, her little sisters, Elena and Eden were running over here. “Anne-lease! Anne-lease!” The two yelled as they ran over to her.

She smiled and kneeled down, “Eden, Elena, I missed you!”

“We missed you!”

She kissed both of their heads, “Hey, I want you to meet my friend, Albus.” She stood up and pointed to Albus, “Eden, Elina, this is Albus. Albus, this is Elina and Eden.”

“Hi Albus!”

“Hi A-Al-Al. Hi Al!”

Albus smiled, “Hello!”

“Hey, what’re you two doing over here?”

“Mama sent us!”

“Yeah, like Eda said, mama sent us!”

“Well, if mum sent you two, I better go with you.” She turned back to Albus, “I’ll let you know if I end up going to the World Cup. Bye Al,” She turned to Scorpius, “Bye Scorp.” She then took hold of her sisters hands and ran off with them.

“Those were her youngest sisters, right?”

Scorpius nodded, “Yep, Elina and Eden, Elina is, I believe at least, 5 and I think Eden is 4, but I may be wrong. I know her younger brother is 2.” He pointed over to her family, “See that little kid she’s holding?”

“Yeah?”

“That Nicholas, he’s the youngest of her siblings.”

“He looks like a miniature version of A.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard from my family.”

Albus nodded and turned to Scorpius, “Well, I better get going before mum sends Lily. See you later!”

“Yeah, I better get going to. I’ll probably see you at the World Cup.”

“Yeah,” The two boys went their separate ways and when Albus neared his family he saw his mother glance over and smile, “Hey mum.”

She put a hand on her hup, “Look who finally decided to join us. I thought we would have to send Lily off to get you.” She then moved her arm and wrapped her arms around him, “I missed you Albus.”

He hugged his mum, “I missed you too mum.’

His dad smiled at him, “Ready to go?”

He nodded, “Yeah, I guess.”

“Then let’s go.”

They said goodbye to their family or that they would see them at the Burrow next week. Lily wrapped her arm around her brother's side and he wrapped his around her shoulders protectively. She looked up at him, “Welcome home Albie.”

He smiled down at his sister, “I’m glad to be back Lils.”

He turned back to stare at his parents and James’s backs and question. Was he really happy to be back? He couldn’t avoid James as easily as before. But he did always have ways to get out. He always could just help his grandmother out at The Burrow or hang with Dominique at Shell Cottage or hang with Scorpius and Anneliese someday. He sighed, he would figure it out as time went on.

#Harry Potter #harry potter next generation #harry potter next gen fic #harry #potter #albus potter #albus #scorpius malfoy #scorpius #malfoy #oc #lily luna potter #lily #luna

[macdnalds]

hey everyone!!! it’s so lovely to meet y’all & i’m really excited to be here! this is going to be a bit of a mess i’m sorry but i’ll try keep it concise ( or, at least, coherent ) ! i’m jane, i live in new zealand and we’re currently in nzdt ( gmt +13 ) but usually it’s just +12. i’m twenty, turning twenty-one in a few weeks ( december nineteen!! so close to christmas yikes ) aaaand just finished my b.a.? except i might be doing honours next year so we’ll see! anyway this is miss mary mac and she’s... a mess lmao. a disaster. i love her, but, A Mess™

( CHLOE BENNET, SHE/HER ) — MARY MACDONALD? oh, you mean the TWENTY-ONE year old MUGGLEBORN. they’re working as a BARTENDER now, aren’t they ? I’ve heard they’re really LOYAL, but i know for a fact that they can be RECKLESS at times. No wonder they’ve decided to SIDE WITH THE ORDER.

this is a ramble but i have an about for mary which sort of covers some of her general stuff + some specific things about her at hogwarts and it is here ( if you would like to read that, i would maybe read this first bc that stuff is more detailed so this might be a better initial overview? )

i’ll try to do some quick points here though to both expand on that + be a more concise guide

mary’s welsh! from a lil seaside town called rhyl. she can speak welsh but she doesn’t often have much occasion to, but if your character knows any welsh at all... hit her up. she’ll be delighted + it’s a GREAT language to make secret plots in and talk about things in front of people w/o them knowing bc it’s not so common

she’s a muggleborn & people who were at school w her ( not all, but some ) will probably remember an Incident™ involving mulciber and either dark magic or a harmless prank, depending on what side you fall on ( honestly probably somewhere in between — a sadistic prank which utilised dark magic which is still Terrible ), because lbr hogwarts is dreadful at keeping secrets so i imagine at least most of her year group heard at least something about it, if not specifics, and also probably some gryffindors and slytherins in other houses

( sidenote but pranks at hogwarts are fucking dark, at least during marauders’ era, damn )

mary is a reactive creature which is Not Good for her bc she combines that with some pretty poor emotional processing skills ( she’s good with other people’s emotions, generally; it’s just hers that she’s useless with ) and that leads to.... Poor Coping Mechanisms, though they can be hard to pin down

mostly she just became ?? more ?? she’s always been impulsive and had trouble with authority, but following that incident, she became even more recalcitrant and volatile and it’s just ?? it’s noticeable ( though it’s been a few years since the shift occurred and hasn’t reversed and doesn’t look like it will ) but hard to define because she’s always had those traits, now they’re just magnified

stubborn and unflinching and loyal and her patronus is a wolfhound but one of her friends used to joke that maybe it should have been a mule and honestly ?? rude but probably not fake

she’s a bit too unflinching when it comes to death eaters and stuff because she’s sorta like... well i mean they already tried dark magic, what else are they gonna do ?? which is... a bad survival instinct but she’s never claimed that was her strength

too compassionate and empathetic. it’s a real problem. messes with her head a lot bc she still doesn’t really believe anyone isn’t worth saving and she’s so mad about that bc she really feels like she should have been able to learn from what happened at school and write people off and she just... can’t? it’s not that she doesn’t think death eaters are the worst — she totally does and she’s not particularly shy about it — but rather that it still doesn’t mean she’d be okay with leaving them in a burning building. she would try to save pretty much anyone ( definitely a stranger because she doesn’t know them and can’t judge them, though definitely not voldemort because genocidal maniac ) tbf. though, jury’s out as to whether that would hold if someone she held dear to her heart was killed

loooooves rock and punk music. wizarding or muggle, she’s super into it. she likes music in general, and grabbing a friend and dancing around the room or something, but rock and punk are her favourites

allergic to cherries but a whiz at mixology and cooking breakfast foods. french toast is her four am comfort food. she also believes in mixology being about instinct and stuff, so if you’ve explicitly said so or she reckons you’d be down for it, she may be a little instinctive with the mix of your drink, but she’s usually pretty good at getting it down

she’s fast, both reflex-wise and physically ( she was also a very fast flier — chaser at hogwarts, and notable mostly for her immense speed and her willingness to push the limits beyond what was reasonable and be reckless with her safety in order to make the play; with speed like hers, she probably should have been a seeker, but she’s always worked better with people around her, so chaser was the best position ), and given that she’s useless with healing magic, it’d be v smart if she would use that speed to run away from dangerous situations but, alas, running away has never been a strength of hers

she just !!! she cares so much !!! and she makes so many bad decisions and her preferred way of handling problems is to avoid them and she’s always down for a laugh and a drink but she’s also a pretty good listener and she loves the banter and can absolutely be snarky and irreverent but she just cares so much and she’s not very good at expressing that in any way other than laughing affection and sidestepping any discussions about her own feelings but do not be fooled !! she cares !! it’s why she’s in this fight — not because it pertains to her, although it absolutely does, but because it pertains to her friends. she’s never been any good at letting someone go in alone

she also really likes comics from when she was a kid growing up ( escapism in your own reality, i guess, though it eventually turned out that she had magic which was the ultimate escapism and, more importantly, it was real ) and still references superheroes sometimes and her biggest regrets in life are that she currently owns neither a dog nor a motorcycle but at least she has a tattoo of a dragon on her ankle. she likes dragons and comc in general. she spent way too much time in detention at school but it didn’t even feel like a punishment when it involved work with the groundskeeping or comc. ( cleaning, however, was another matter. )

ANYWAY i’m not sure how coherent or helpful that was but there’s my lil mac! she goes by mary, mac, pretty much any nickname that’s understandably hers and not offensive is fair game tbh. please feel free to IM me if you wanna plot or like this post and i’ll come to you!!! x

#darkest;intro #attack tw #[ it's about mulciber and it's touched on v briefly ]

[ace-of-games]

UK Mythology Hypotheses on Gen 8 Starter Evolutions

By now, you've probably heard the idea that the Generation 8 starters have a sports or entertainment theme. I like those, and I see where they're coming from; in fact, I came to the music/band/entertainment conclusion on my own before I heard it floating around. However, I would like to add my thoughts on that to the mix as well as another factor: specific UK-area mythological figures, and NOT the ones I've seen mentioned (Loch Ness monster, etc.). Buckle in, nerds!

Desperately wanting Scorbunny to do literally anything other than become another Fire/Fighting type later, I started searching for what else it could possibly be. Some in the “entertainment theme” camp have said that they expect Scorbunny to be the dancer based on how it's quick, energetic, and always hopping around. To that, I say “Yes!” Because…do you know what mythological critter fits that description?

The Salisbury Hare

This benevolent fictional rabbit dances in the full moon with “ever increasing speed”, parallel to Scorbunny's exaggerated swiftness and positive mood. I don't have much to say here; it's a simple connection, but it fits well enough. While I still think Fighting is a strong possibility for this bun, Electric (or even Flying, the average fastest type, or maybe Fairy) is still in the running and better suited to some theories like this one.

Inspired to find more, I dug through the rest of the Wikipedia lists for English and Irish mythological creatures. (I didn't have time to cover Scottish or Welsh, but there's a good bit of overlap. So many black dogs.) Despite being what started me off in a different direction thanks to its name in other languages, Grookey was surprisingly more difficult to find ideas for in the lists I checked. I finally stumbled upon something decent, but I'll admit that I'm least confident in this one.

The fachan

If you go in the foggy mountains alone, beware the fachan. It carries a thick iron flail-club with 20 chains and 50 poisonous apples on each. I don't claim to understand that, but it sounds pretty intense. Imagine this lil Curious George monkey growing larger and more sinister (with a more threatening stick to match) until it's this menacing, death flail-carrying monster of a primate in its final form. How does this fit in with the tempo/beat/rhythm theme Grookey seems to have? Great question! Beats me. (Ba dum tiss) Among other creepy features like too few limbs, the fachan also has a single tuft of hair that's harder to bend than pulling up a mountain from its roots; I feel like Grookey's cute little leaves could turn into such a tough tuft with evolution. On that note, with Grookey's grass-growing ability, I figured it could be more druid-, fairy-, or shaman-like, leading to a future Fairy or Psychic typing, although something that speaks sings? walks? softly and carries a big stick lends itself to more of another type. I could see Dark for the creepy angle, Rock for the pun on being hard rock and if it starts using boulders to attack or something, or Fighting for clubbing/flailing/otherwise smashing foes.

And then…I found answers for Sobble.

Most water-related cryptids for that area seem to be inspired by horses, which I didn't think would be the match for Sobble's chameleon-like base form. However, there were a few to break the mold, and they seem to fit beautifully with most of what we know of Sobble.

The caoineag, caointeach, and Teran or the Sea Mither

First, the caoineag: she is a (1) weeper, who is (2) normally invisible, and foretells death in her clan by lamenting in the night (3) near water! This triply matching being gives the Sobble line more of an Absol spin with the foretelling of something ill, so I could see this leading to a similar Dark typing as Absol or perhaps Psychic like other seers, or even Ghost for its death theming. (Or Fairy, as I can see an argument for each of these three starters, with the mythology ties I'm making.) The caointeach is related, but more violent: she also cries, but this time at the doorstep of a dying person; she wears a (wet, I guess?) green shawl that she'll use to strike someone into paralysis if they interrupt her. This retaliation-for-interrupting reminds me of Jigglypuff, but it also works with the trend of having evolutions be more dark or aggressive than their base forms, so I could see perhaps the first evolution gaining a shawl or at least an ability to paralyze foes. Finally, I considered Teran and the Sea Mither. Both are invisible to humans (again, like Sobble can be), and they are arch enemies who fight over control of weather and the sea, causing storms and “howling gales”. Consider that while sometimes when Pokemon evolve, they become more exaggerated forms of what they already are—which fits if Sobble becomes some kind of weepy lizard inspired by lead singers—sometimes they instead transform into something else. Imagine this crybaby chameleon turning into a rebellious teen newt and then becoming a ferocious, angry pseudodragon reptile beast with the power of storms. Its invisibility is used no longer for cowering but for stalking. As it grows, its cries become roars. Woe be to those who provoke its wrathful tempests. …I got a little carried away, but you've gotta admit it's good.

Do I think I'm right? Eh, maybe. Like I said, there are several ideas out there that have decent arguments behind them. Besides, to me, this makes it so the trio is Grass/Fighting or Dark, Fire/Electric, and Water/Dark or Psychic or Ghost, and none of those combos is all that nicely balanced. If they do go for balance again, I can see it being Grass/Dark (becomes the fachan or a power rogue), Fire/Fighting (yeah, I know), and Water/Psychic (still works for caoineag & co. as a seer figure). There's a lot of possibility out there; I just had to share my hot take. (Side note: here’s a link if you want to see my take on the starter evolutions' names as well.)

What do you think?

#pokemon #pokémon #gen 8 starters #pokemon swsh #pkmn swsh #pkmn #pokemon starter evolutions #gen 8 starter evolutions #pokemon theory #pokemon sword shield #pokemon sword and shield #pokemon sword #pokemon shield #scorbunny #grookey #sobble #thanks for coming to my ted talk #sobble to lamentorrent 2k19 #i'm so glad this is in text and i don't have to worry about goofing up pronunciations

[aefensteorrra]

Thanks @arabskaya-devushka and @princess-turandot for tagging me! :) 

(2 different lots of questions so I’ll put the second lot under a read more)

1. When did you realise you had fallen in love with your target language? For French it’s actually quite recent.. I just realised how comforting it is to me and how beautiful it can sound. For Russian though, probably when I realised it was getting me out of bed in the morning. 

2. If you could choose to have any animal for a pet, which one would you pick? I already have a cat but, a cat

3. What is a grammatical concept you found/ find difficult to understand? CASES omg. I started learning German in 2014 and the reason my interest faded was because I couldn’t wrap my head around cases?? The passion I have for Russian is what made me persevere with trying to understand the concept in the end but I swear I could physically FEEL my brain straining to understand it  

4. At what time during the day do you feel the most productive? The morning and stupidly late at night 

5. Describe your hometown using one sentence. It’s known as a rough area but if you just move out of the centre there are some really beautiful spots

6. Have you ever felt at home abroad? Not entirely. I remember in France sitting on a grassy hill outside the hotel, looking around and just feeling very comfortable. Also one morning in Sorrento, waking up with my best friend at the time and stepping out onto the balcony and into the sun felt Right and Good, but overall I was very homesick in Italy lol 

7. What is a habit of yours you find annoying? I have a habit of leaving things lying around, my mum often tells me she knows exactly where I’ve been in the house because it never looks quite the same lmao

8. What do you consider to be your best trait? I’m very very open minded  

9. Is there a song/ movie/ animation that you can’t help but associate with your childhood? If so, which one(s)? There’s sooo many but Winnie the Pooh was my favourite thing for a long time

10. You get to tell your favourite celebrity a single sentence. What will it be? (and who would you tell it to) I don’t have a favourite celebrity, I’m not really fussed with any of them 

11. What is the first thing you notice about a person you meet? I think just generally how they present and hold themselves

~

1. What was the last language you started learning? (Even if you dropped it) Dutch because as much as I love and enjoy it I really don’t want my progress with Russian to suffer or slow down too much

2. Do you play an instrument? I can play piano/keyboard but I don’t do it often, although I’d like to get back into it

3. Where in the world would you be most happy? Somewhere by the sea that isn’t humid, close to people I care about  

4. Do you think that your TL will help you get a good job? Or do you prefer them to be a by-side thing? I’m okay with not having a job revolving around languages because I’d still have my spare time and hopefully friends to speak them with, but it’d be nice to have the opportunity to use them at work.  To be bilingual here is heavily praised and people are like “wow!!” but idk if my target languages will actually help me to get a job  

5. If you ever have children, will you teach them your target languages? Yeah!! I’d def raise them bilingual (English and French). Whether or not I taught them Russian would depend on my level at the time but I’d still teach them lil bits at least

6. Did you grow up as monolingual or bilingual? Do you wish that it had been different? Ehh mostly monolingual. One of the dinner ladies when I was in primary school would speak French to us so I was exposed to French from around the age of 5 and started learning it when I was 9 but I’m not sure that really counts as growing up bilingual? Partly?? I just wish I’d had more resources/opportunities when I was younger because I was really eager to learn another language

7. What’s the last book you read and what language was it in? L’étranger by Albert Camus, in French

8. Do you have friends near you who speak more than one language? I only have one truly bilingual friend (if we’re talking irl) whose native language is Polish but a couple of my friends know bits of other languages such as German, Irish, Arabic and Punjabi. One of them is learning BSL so teaches me little bits of that sometimes! 

9. What is/are the official language/s of your country? English, but there’s lots of minority languages (Welsh, Cornish, Scottish Gaelic etc) 

10. Have you ever been to a city where they speak one of your TL? Paris

11. Have you ever tried to teach your native language or one of your TLs to another person? Yeah!! One of my exes started learning French so I taught him for a while and I teach my Polish friend bits of Russian cause we like comparing Polish and Russian 

I’m gonna tag: @whimsical-torches, @bonbonlanguage, @francaisla, @aspoonfuloflanguage, @language-amante (if any of you guys wanna do it u can just choose from either set of questions!!) 

[samanthasroberts]

ReflexLOLogy: Inside the Groan-Inducing World of Pun Competitions

From the moment he spoke, I knew I was screwed. On the surface, the guy wasn’t particularly fearsome—pudgy, late thirties, polo shirt, plaid shorts, baseball cap, dad sneakers—but he looked completely at ease. One hand in his pocket, the other holding the microphone loosely, like a torch singer doing crowd work. And when he finally began talking, it was with an assurance that belied the fact that he was basically spewing nonsense.

“I hate all people named John,” he said with surprising bravado. “Yeah, that’s right, that was a John diss!” The crowd roared. John-diss. Jaundice. A glorious, groan-inducing precision strike of a pun.

Welp, I thought. It was fun while it lasted.

If you’re an NBA rookie, you really don’t want to go up against LeBron James. Anyone’s trivia night would be ruined by seeing Ken Jennings on another team. And if you find yourself at the world’s biggest pun competition, the last person you want to face is four-time defending champion Ben Ziek. Yet that’s exactly where I was, on an outdoor stage in downtown Austin, Texas, committing unspeakable atrocities upon the English language in front of a few hundred onlookers who were spending their sunny May Saturday reveling in the carnage.

The rules of the 39th annual O. Henry Pun-Off World Championship’s “Punslingers” competition are simple: Two people take turns punning on a theme in head-to-head rounds. Failure to make a pun in the five seconds allowed gets you eliminated; make a nonpun or reuse a word three times and you’ve reached the banishing point. Round by round and pair by pair, a field of 32 dwindles until the last of the halved-nots finally gets to claim the mantle of best punster in the world and what most people would agree are some pretty dubious bragging rights. It’s exactly like a rap battle, if 8 Mile had been about software engineers and podcasters and improv nerds vying for supremacy. (Also just like 8 Mile: My first-round opponent had frozen when his turn came to pun on waterborne vehicles. Seriously, yacht a word came out. Canoe believe it?)

Eventually, there we stood, two among the final eight: me, a first-timer, squaring off against the Floyd Mayweather of the pun world. Actually, only one of us was standing; I found myself doing the world’s slowest two-step just to keep my legs from trembling. I’d been a little jittery in my first couple of rounds, sure, but those were standard-issue butterflies, perched on a layer of misguided confidence. This was the anxiety of the sacrificial lamb. I was punning above my weight, and I knew it. Once the judges announced that we’d be punning on diseases—hence Ziek’s joke about star-crossed livers—we began.

“Mumps the word!” I said, hoping that my voice wasn’t shaking.

Ziek immediately fired back: “That was a measle-y pun.” Not only was he confident, with a malleable voice that was equal parts game show host and morning-radio DJ, but his jokes were seemingly fully formed. Worse, he was nimble enough to turn your own pun against you.

“Well, I had a croup-on for it,” I responded. Whoa. Where’d that come from?

He switched gears. “I have a Buddha at home, and sometimes”—making a rubbing motion with his hand—“I like to rubella.”

I was barely paying attention. Diseases, diseases—oh! I pointed at people in different parts of the audience. “If you’ve got a yam, and you’ve got a potato, whose tuber’s closest?”

“There was a guy out here earlier painted light red,” Ziek said. “Did you see the pink guy?”

“I didn’t,” I responded. “Cold you see him?”

Again and again we pun-upped each other, a philharmonic of harmful phonics. From AIDS to Zika we ranged, covering SARS, migraines, Ebola, chicken pox, ague, shingles, fasciitis, streptococcus, West Nile, coronavirus, poison oak, avian flu, gangrene, syphilis, and herpes. Almost five minutes later, we’d gone through 32 puns between the two of us, and I was running dry. As far as my brain was concerned, there wasn’t a medical textbook in existence that contained something we hadn’t used. Ziek, though, had a seemingly endless stockpile and tossed off a quick alopecia pun; I could have bald right then and there. The judge counted down, and I slunk offstage to watch the rest of the competition—which Ziek won, for the fifth time. Knowing I’d lost to the best cushioned the blow, but some mild semantic depression still lingered: Instead of slinging my way to a David-like upset, I was the one who had to go lieth down.

Author Peter Rubin doing the punning man.Ryan Young

When I was growing up, my father’s favorite (printable) joke was “Where do cantaloupes go in the summertime? Johnny Cougar’s Melon Camp.” This is proof that—well, it’s proof that I grew up in Indiana. But it’s also proof that I was raised to speak two languages, both of them English. See, there’s the actual words-working-together-and-making-sense part, and then there’s the fun part. The pliant, recombinant part. The part that lets you harness linguistic irregularities, judo-style, to make words into other words. It’s not conscious, exactly; it just feels at some level like someone made a puzzle and didn’t bother to tell me, so my brain wants to figure out what else those sounds can do.

A lifetime of listening to hip hop has reinforced that phonetic impulse. Polysyllabic rhymes aren’t strictly puns, but they’re made of the same marrow; when Chance the Rapper rhymes “link in my bio” with “Cinco de Mayo” in the song “Mixtape,” I get an actual endorphin hit. Besides, rap is full of puns already: instant-gratification ones—like Lil Wayne saying “Yes I am Weezy, but I ain’t asthmatic” or MF Doom saying “Got more soul than a sock with a hole”—as well as ones that reveal themselves more slowly. Kanye West might be more famous for his production than his lyricism, but he endeared himself to me forever on the song “Dark Fantasy” by spitting the best Family Matters pun of all time: “Too many Urkels on your team, that’s why your wins low.”

I was punning above my weight, and I knew it.

Whether this is nature or nurture, though, the end result is the same: I’m playing with language all the time, and Kanye and I aren’t the only ones. “I can’t listen passively to someone speaking without the possibility of puns echoing around in my head,” says Gary Hallock, who has been producing and hosting the O. Henry Pun-Off for 26 years. He’s seen the annual event grow from an Austin oddity to a national event and watched dad jokes, of which puns are the most obvious example, take hold in the millennial consciousness; a dad-joke-devoted Reddit board boasts more than 250,000 members. “I’ve often compared punsters to linguistic terrorists,” Hallock says. “We’re literally stalking conversations, looking for the weak place to plant our bomb.”

And we’ve been doing it for a long, long time—verbal puns date back to at least 1635 BC, when a Babylonian clay tablet included a pun on the word for “wheat”—and the world has been conflicted about them for nearly as long. (Linguists can’t even agree whether the word pun derives from French, Old English, Icelandic, or Welsh, though there’s no point heading down that scenic root.) On one hand, puns are the stuff of terrible children’s joke books. Oliver Wendell Holmes likened punsters to “wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism.” On the other, God, how can you not feel a little thrill when you make a good one or a begrudging joy when you hear a better one?

Humor theorists generally agree that comedy hinges on incongruity: when a sentence or situation subverts expectations or when multiple interpretations are suggested by the same stimulus. (Also, yes, humor theorists are a thing.) That stimulus can be visual (looking at you, eggplant emoji!) or auditory (what up, tuba fart!); most commonly, though, it’s linguistic. Language is slippery by nature, and of the many kinds of wordplay—hyperbole, metaphor, spoonerisms, even letter-level foolery like anagrams—nothing takes advantage of incongruity quite like puns, of which there are four specific varieties. In order of increasing complexity, you’ve got homonyms, identical words that sound alike (“Led Zeppelin’s guitarist was interrogated last week, but detectives weren’t able to turn the Page”); homophones, which are spelled differently but sound the same (“I hate raisins! Apologies if you’re not into curranty vents.”); homographs, which sound different but look the same (“If you’re asking me to believe that a Loire cabernet is that different from a Napa cabernet, then the terroirists have won.”); and paronyms, which are just kinda similar-sounding (“I have a ton of work to do, but I ate so much cucumber chutney that I have raita’s block”). When we hear a pun, the words we hear aren’t the words we think we hear, and the burden’s on us to crack the code.

Granted, there are people out there who hate puns, and maybe rightly so. But for many of us, that decryption process is a reward unto itself. “Humor happens when something important is being violated,” cognitive scientist Justine Kao says. “Social norms, expectations. So for people who are sensitive to the rules that language follows, puns are more entertaining.” In other words, if you work with words on a daily basis—writing, editing, translating—you’re simply primed to appreciate them more. Behind every great headline, any editor will tell you, is a great pun. (I have a colleague at WIRED who once looked at a page about chef’s knives and gave it the headline “JULIENNE MORE”; people lost their goddamn minds.)

Still, even among the nerdiest of word herders, there are some rules. Two years ago, Kao and two colleagues at Stanford and UC San Diego decided to prove empirically that incongruity was the root of humor. They tested people’s reactions to hundreds of sentences that varied from one another in minute ways. Some used homophones; some didn’t. Some added detail supporting the nonpun interpretation of the sentence; some stripped detail away. They were able to demonstrate that ambiguity of meaning is necessary for a pun to be perceived—but it’s only half of the equation. (And literally, there’s an equation.) After all, “I went to the bank” is ambiguous, but it’s not a pun. The true determining factor of a pun’s funniness is what the team calls distinctiveness.

Take the sentence “The chef brought his girlfriend flours on Valentine’s Day.” It’s a homophone, so it’s not the most complex pun. But if you turn the chef into a pastry chef, that added vocation property makes the pun more distinctive. “When you’re able to identify keywords from different topics,” Kao says, “it clues you in on the intentionality of it—you’re forcing together two things that don’t often co-occur.”

Of course, “The pastry chef brought his girlfriend flours on Valentine’s Day” still isn’t funny. It’s the kind of pun a bot would make, and maybe has made in the decades since programmers created the first pun generator. There’s no storytelling to it, no drama. A good pun isn’t just an artless slab of sound-alikeness: It’s a joke that happens to hinge on wordplay. A truly formidable punner knows that and frames a sentence to make the pun the punch line. The longer you delay the ambiguity, the more tension you introduce—and the more cathartic the resolution. A pun should be an exclamation point, not a semicolon.

But was I a truly formidable punner? I’d thought so—hell, my lifelong dream is seeing Flavor Flav and Ellen Burstyn cohosting a talk show, just so it can be called Burstyn With Flavor—but after Austin, I had my doubts. I’d cracked under pressure once; until I tried again, I’d never know fissure. As it turned out, a second chance was around the corner.

The Bay Area Pun-Off, a monthly philharmonic of harmful phonics.Ryan Young

Compact and jovial, Jonah Spear is a dead ringer for Saturday Night Live’s Taran Killam—or at least for Taran Killam in high school: Spear recently shaved off a grizzled-prospector beard and looks about half of his 34 years. He’s also a professional play facilitator and counselor at an adult summer camp (no to phones and drinking, yes to sing-alongs and bonfires). That loosey-goosey vibe has carried into the Bay Area Pun-Off, a monthly event Spear began hosting in January that’s just one of a handful of competitive punning events popping up across the country.

If the O. Henry Pun-Off is the Newport Folk Festival, then its Bay Area cousin—like Punderdome 3000 in Brooklyn, Pundamonium in Seattle, or the Great Durham Pun Championship in, well, Durham—is Coachella. The audience is younger, and the raucous atmosphere is fueled as much by beer as by unabashed pun love. It started in the living room of a communal house in Oakland in January 2016 but quickly outgrew its confines; in June the organizers even staged a New York City satellite event.

But on this Saturday night, a week after O. Henry, it’s a high-ceilinged performance space in San Francisco’s Mission District where I’m looking for redemption. The pool of contestants at the Bay Area Pun-Off is small by O. Henry standards, and we commence with an all-hands marathon on tree puns designed to winnow the field of 12 down to eight. “I’m just hoping to win the poplar vote,” one woman says. “Sounds like birch of contract to me,” says someone else. A lanky British guy whom I’ll call Chet rambles through a shaggy-dog story involving a French woman and three Jamaican guys to get to a tortured “le mon t’ree” punch line. The crowd eats it up.

“Keep the applause going. It takes balsa get up here and do this.”

When you’re waiting for 11 other people to pun, you’ve got plenty of time to think of your next one, so I try to Ziek out a good-sized reserve of puns—and when it’s my turn, I make sure that my puns build on the joke that came before me. “Keep the applause going,” I say after someone boughs out. “It takes balsa get up here and do this.” After someone delivers a good line, I admit that “I ended up being pretty frond of it.” They’re not distinctive, but at this stage they don’t need to be, as long as they’re ambiguous. Things go oak-ay, and I’m on to the next round. (What, yew don’t believe me? Olive got is my word.)

After I indulge in a muggleful of Harry Potter puns, I find myself in the semifinals against a Quora engineer named Asa. Spear scribbles the mystery topic on a small chalkboard hidden from sight, then turns it around. It says … diseases. The same category that knocked me out in Austin? The category I dwelled on for the entire flight home, thinking of all the one-liners that had eluded me?

This time, there’s no running dry. Not only do I remember all the puns I used against Ben Ziek, but I remember all the puns he made against me. So when Asa says, “I’m really taking my mumps,” I shoot back with “That’s kinda measly, if you ask me.” I reprise puns I’d made in Austin (“Did you see that Italian opera singer run through the door? In flew Enzo!”); I use puns that I’d thought of since (“My mom makes the best onion dip. It’s HIV little concoction you’d love”). Asa fights gamely, but I have immunerable disease puns at my fingertips, and it’s not much longer before the round is over.

And then, again, there are two: me and Chet. The difference now is I’m locked in: no nerves, no self-consciousness, just getting out of my brain’s way and letting the connections happen. When Spear announces the theme—living world leaders—I don’t even start trying to stockpile puns. I just wait, and they come.

Chet opens the round: “Ohhhh, BAMA. I don’t know anything about world leaders!”

This time, just hearing him mention Obama conjures up a mental image of Justin Trudeau. Before the laughter even dies down, I nod my head encouragingly: “True, tho—that was a decent pun!”

It’s Austin all over again, just in reverse: Now I’m the quick one and Chet’s the one who has to scramble. He fumbles through a long story about rock climbing that leads to a pun about his cam-bell. (And before you ask: Chances are he wasn’t actually talking about Kim Campbell, who was prime minister of Canada for all of six months in 1993, but in the heat of the moment no one realized he’d just screwed up David Cameron’s name.)

My turn? No problem. Just keep flipping it back to him. “Another patented long-ass Chet story,” I say. “I am Bushed.”

“Well,” Chet says, then pauses. “He thinks he can just … Blair shit out.”

It’s his one solid blow. I talk about the “bonky moon” that’s shining outside that night. I confide in the audience about my own alopecia problem, and how I needed to buy a Merkel. And each time, the audience is right there with me. They don’t necessarily know what’s coming, but they’re loving it. Chet’s used three US presidents and two prime ministers; meanwhile, I’ve been from South Korea to Germany, by way of Canada.

Even better, I’ve got another continent in my pocket. “Have you guys been to Chet’s farm?” I ask the audience. “He has this group of cows that won’t stop talking.” I wait a beat. “They are seriously moo-gabby.”

What happens next is a blur, to be perfectly honest. I can’t even tell you what comes out of Chet’s mouth next, but it’s either nothing or it’s the name of someone dead—and either way, the Bay Area Pun-Off is over.

I might not have been able to vanquish Ben Ziek; this may be my only taste of victory in the world of competitive paronomasiacs; hell, I may never know the secret to the perfect pun. But as long as I’ve got the words to try, one thing’s for sure: I’ll use vaguely different words to approximate those words, thereby creating incongruity and thus humor.

Or maybe I’ll just plead raita’s block.

Phrase the Roof!

Author Peter Rubin set up a Slack channel here at Wired to crowdsource the punny headlines for the opening illustration to this story. He compiled more than 150 of them. Here are the ones we couldnt fit.

1. PRESENTS OF MIND

2. SHEER PUNDEMONIUM

3. VIRULENT HOMOPHONIA

4. OFF-SYLLABLE USE

5. PUNBELIEVABLE

6. HEADLINE BLING

7. LIVE A CRITIC, DIACRITIC

8. FEAST OF THE PRONUNCIATION

9. VERBAL MEDICATION

10. THE BEST OF BOTH WORDS

11. SUFFERING FROM INCONSONANT

12. DAMNED WITH FAINT PHRASE

13. THE SEVEN DEADLY SYNTAXES

14. THE NOUN JEWELS

15. PUNS THE WORD

16. CONSONANT READER

17. FARTS OF SPEECH

18. PUN-CHEWATION

19. GRAMMAR RULES

20. POISSON PEN

21. PUNS AND NEEDLES

22. DEATH AND SYNTAXES

23. THE WRITE STUFF

24. MAKING THE COPY

25. SLAIN LETTERING

26. PUN AND GAMES

27. VALLEY OF THE LOLZ

28. NOUN HEAR THIS

29. WHATEVER FLOATS YOUR QUOTE

30. PUT A VERB ON IT!

31. CRIME AND PUN-NICHE-MEANT

32. TIC TALK

33. ECCE HOMONYM

34. DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXTS ASS

35. WRITES OF MAN

36. VERB APPEAL

37. THE RHYME DIRECTIVE

38. SLOGAN’S RUN

39. REBEL WITHOUT A CLAUSE

40. BURNS OF PHRASE

41. ARTLESS QUOTATIONS

42. BON MOT MONEY, BON MOT PROBLEMS

43. JESTIN’ CASE

44. LET ‘ER QUIP

45. ADVERB REACTIONS

46. INFINITE JESTS

47. ARTS OF SPEECH

48. DIGITAL PUNDERGROUND

49. THE PUN-ISHER

50. IMPUNDING DOOM

51. BEYOND PUNDERDOME

52. BAUHAUS OF CARDS

53. TEXTUAL HARASSMENT

54. IT’S A PUNGLE OUT THERE

55. GRAND THEFT MOTTO

56. IT HAD PUNNED ONE NIGHT

57. PLEASE GRAMMAR DON’T HURT EM

58. RHETORICAL QUESTIN’

59. ACUTE PUNS? SURE

60. BAWDILY HUMORED

61. DAMNED IF YOU INNUENDO, DAMNED IF YOU INNUENDON’T

62. TROUBLE ENTENDRES

63. WITS UP, DOC

64. SELF-IMPROV MEANT

65. PUN-EYED JOKERS

66. LAUGHTERMATH

67. JAPES OF WRATH

68. MAKING HA-HAJJ

69. MUTTER, MAY I?

70. BATTLE OF HALF-WITS

71. DEMI-BRAVADO

72. MALCONTENT MARKETING

73. NON-SILENT OFFENSES

74. ORAL HIJINX

75. THE PUN-ISHER

76. NOUNS, YOUR CHANCE

77. TEXT OF KIN

78. OH, PUN AND SHUT

79. JOKE OF ALL TRADES

80. PATTER UP

81. SCHTICK IT TO EM

82. BOOS HOUNDS

83. IT’S NOT EASY BEING GROANED

84. FAR FROM THE MADDENED CROWD

85. COMPETITIVE DEBASING

86. THE PUNFORGIVEN

87. THE PUNCANNY VALLEY

88. INTENTIONAL FORTITUDE

89. CHURCH OF THE LETTER DISDAIN

90. POETRY IN MASHIN’

91. CREATIVE SENTENCING

92. DAAAMN, DACTYL!

93. NO CONTEXT

94. A TALE OF TWO SILLIES

95. THE WIZARD OF LOLZ

96. IT’S A PUNDERFUL LIFE

97. WHAT’S HA? PUNNIN’

98. THE ZING AND I

99. THE WILD PUNS

100. THE PUN ALSO RISES

101. HOW THE REST WERE PUNNED

102. RAGING SYLLABLE

103. DANGEROUS ELISIONS

104. GOODWILL PUNTING

105. FELLOWSHIP OF THE WRONG

106. INGLOURIOUS LAST WORDS

107. THE LIMITATION GAME

108. APPETITE FOR DISTRACTION

109. HOW I MEANT ANOTHER

110. LARKS AND RECREATION

111. COMEDY OF AIRERS

112. DECLARATION OF INNER PENANCE

113. BOO HA-HA

Senior editor and pun criminal Peter Rubin (@provenself) wrote about the roadblocks to VR in issue 24.04.

This article appears in the October 2016 issue.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/12/reflexlology-inside-the-groan-inducing-world-of-pun-competitions/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/09/12/reflexlology-inside-the-groan-inducing-world-of-pun-competitions/

[adambstingus]

ReflexLOLogy: Inside the Groan-Inducing World of Pun Competitions

From the moment he spoke, I knew I was screwed. On the surface, the guy wasn’t particularly fearsome—pudgy, late thirties, polo shirt, plaid shorts, baseball cap, dad sneakers—but he looked completely at ease. One hand in his pocket, the other holding the microphone loosely, like a torch singer doing crowd work. And when he finally began talking, it was with an assurance that belied the fact that he was basically spewing nonsense.

“I hate all people named John,” he said with surprising bravado. “Yeah, that’s right, that was a John diss!” The crowd roared. John-diss. Jaundice. A glorious, groan-inducing precision strike of a pun.

Welp, I thought. It was fun while it lasted.

If you’re an NBA rookie, you really don’t want to go up against LeBron James. Anyone’s trivia night would be ruined by seeing Ken Jennings on another team. And if you find yourself at the world’s biggest pun competition, the last person you want to face is four-time defending champion Ben Ziek. Yet that’s exactly where I was, on an outdoor stage in downtown Austin, Texas, committing unspeakable atrocities upon the English language in front of a few hundred onlookers who were spending their sunny May Saturday reveling in the carnage.

The rules of the 39th annual O. Henry Pun-Off World Championship’s “Punslingers” competition are simple: Two people take turns punning on a theme in head-to-head rounds. Failure to make a pun in the five seconds allowed gets you eliminated; make a nonpun or reuse a word three times and you’ve reached the banishing point. Round by round and pair by pair, a field of 32 dwindles until the last of the halved-nots finally gets to claim the mantle of best punster in the world and what most people would agree are some pretty dubious bragging rights. It’s exactly like a rap battle, if 8 Mile had been about software engineers and podcasters and improv nerds vying for supremacy. (Also just like 8 Mile: My first-round opponent had frozen when his turn came to pun on waterborne vehicles. Seriously, yacht a word came out. Canoe believe it?)

Eventually, there we stood, two among the final eight: me, a first-timer, squaring off against the Floyd Mayweather of the pun world. Actually, only one of us was standing; I found myself doing the world’s slowest two-step just to keep my legs from trembling. I’d been a little jittery in my first couple of rounds, sure, but those were standard-issue butterflies, perched on a layer of misguided confidence. This was the anxiety of the sacrificial lamb. I was punning above my weight, and I knew it. Once the judges announced that we’d be punning on diseases—hence Ziek’s joke about star-crossed livers—we began.

“Mumps the word!” I said, hoping that my voice wasn’t shaking.

Ziek immediately fired back: “That was a measle-y pun.” Not only was he confident, with a malleable voice that was equal parts game show host and morning-radio DJ, but his jokes were seemingly fully formed. Worse, he was nimble enough to turn your own pun against you.

“Well, I had a croup-on for it,” I responded. Whoa. Where’d that come from?

He switched gears. “I have a Buddha at home, and sometimes”—making a rubbing motion with his hand—“I like to rubella.”

I was barely paying attention. Diseases, diseases—oh! I pointed at people in different parts of the audience. “If you’ve got a yam, and you’ve got a potato, whose tuber’s closest?”

“There was a guy out here earlier painted light red,” Ziek said. “Did you see the pink guy?”

“I didn’t,” I responded. “Cold you see him?”

Again and again we pun-upped each other, a philharmonic of harmful phonics. From AIDS to Zika we ranged, covering SARS, migraines, Ebola, chicken pox, ague, shingles, fasciitis, streptococcus, West Nile, coronavirus, poison oak, avian flu, gangrene, syphilis, and herpes. Almost five minutes later, we’d gone through 32 puns between the two of us, and I was running dry. As far as my brain was concerned, there wasn’t a medical textbook in existence that contained something we hadn’t used. Ziek, though, had a seemingly endless stockpile and tossed off a quick alopecia pun; I could have bald right then and there. The judge counted down, and I slunk offstage to watch the rest of the competition—which Ziek won, for the fifth time. Knowing I’d lost to the best cushioned the blow, but some mild semantic depression still lingered: Instead of slinging my way to a David-like upset, I was the one who had to go lieth down.

Author Peter Rubin doing the punning man.Ryan Young

When I was growing up, my father’s favorite (printable) joke was “Where do cantaloupes go in the summertime? Johnny Cougar’s Melon Camp.” This is proof that—well, it’s proof that I grew up in Indiana. But it’s also proof that I was raised to speak two languages, both of them English. See, there’s the actual words-working-together-and-making-sense part, and then there’s the fun part. The pliant, recombinant part. The part that lets you harness linguistic irregularities, judo-style, to make words into other words. It’s not conscious, exactly; it just feels at some level like someone made a puzzle and didn’t bother to tell me, so my brain wants to figure out what else those sounds can do.

A lifetime of listening to hip hop has reinforced that phonetic impulse. Polysyllabic rhymes aren’t strictly puns, but they’re made of the same marrow; when Chance the Rapper rhymes “link in my bio” with “Cinco de Mayo” in the song “Mixtape,” I get an actual endorphin hit. Besides, rap is full of puns already: instant-gratification ones—like Lil Wayne saying “Yes I am Weezy, but I ain’t asthmatic” or MF Doom saying “Got more soul than a sock with a hole”—as well as ones that reveal themselves more slowly. Kanye West might be more famous for his production than his lyricism, but he endeared himself to me forever on the song “Dark Fantasy” by spitting the best Family Matters pun of all time: “Too many Urkels on your team, that’s why your wins low.”

I was punning above my weight, and I knew it.

Whether this is nature or nurture, though, the end result is the same: I’m playing with language all the time, and Kanye and I aren’t the only ones. “I can’t listen passively to someone speaking without the possibility of puns echoing around in my head,” says Gary Hallock, who has been producing and hosting the O. Henry Pun-Off for 26 years. He’s seen the annual event grow from an Austin oddity to a national event and watched dad jokes, of which puns are the most obvious example, take hold in the millennial consciousness; a dad-joke-devoted Reddit board boasts more than 250,000 members. “I’ve often compared punsters to linguistic terrorists,” Hallock says. “We’re literally stalking conversations, looking for the weak place to plant our bomb.”

And we’ve been doing it for a long, long time—verbal puns date back to at least 1635 BC, when a Babylonian clay tablet included a pun on the word for “wheat”—and the world has been conflicted about them for nearly as long. (Linguists can’t even agree whether the word pun derives from French, Old English, Icelandic, or Welsh, though there’s no point heading down that scenic root.) On one hand, puns are the stuff of terrible children’s joke books. Oliver Wendell Holmes likened punsters to “wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism.” On the other, God, how can you not feel a little thrill when you make a good one or a begrudging joy when you hear a better one?

Humor theorists generally agree that comedy hinges on incongruity: when a sentence or situation subverts expectations or when multiple interpretations are suggested by the same stimulus. (Also, yes, humor theorists are a thing.) That stimulus can be visual (looking at you, eggplant emoji!) or auditory (what up, tuba fart!); most commonly, though, it’s linguistic. Language is slippery by nature, and of the many kinds of wordplay—hyperbole, metaphor, spoonerisms, even letter-level foolery like anagrams—nothing takes advantage of incongruity quite like puns, of which there are four specific varieties. In order of increasing complexity, you’ve got homonyms, identical words that sound alike (“Led Zeppelin’s guitarist was interrogated last week, but detectives weren’t able to turn the Page”); homophones, which are spelled differently but sound the same (“I hate raisins! Apologies if you’re not into curranty vents.”); homographs, which sound different but look the same (“If you’re asking me to believe that a Loire cabernet is that different from a Napa cabernet, then the terroirists have won.”); and paronyms, which are just kinda similar-sounding (“I have a ton of work to do, but I ate so much cucumber chutney that I have raita’s block”). When we hear a pun, the words we hear aren’t the words we think we hear, and the burden’s on us to crack the code.

Granted, there are people out there who hate puns, and maybe rightly so. But for many of us, that decryption process is a reward unto itself. “Humor happens when something important is being violated,” cognitive scientist Justine Kao says. “Social norms, expectations. So for people who are sensitive to the rules that language follows, puns are more entertaining.” In other words, if you work with words on a daily basis—writing, editing, translating—you’re simply primed to appreciate them more. Behind every great headline, any editor will tell you, is a great pun. (I have a colleague at WIRED who once looked at a page about chef’s knives and gave it the headline “JULIENNE MORE”; people lost their goddamn minds.)

Still, even among the nerdiest of word herders, there are some rules. Two years ago, Kao and two colleagues at Stanford and UC San Diego decided to prove empirically that incongruity was the root of humor. They tested people’s reactions to hundreds of sentences that varied from one another in minute ways. Some used homophones; some didn’t. Some added detail supporting the nonpun interpretation of the sentence; some stripped detail away. They were able to demonstrate that ambiguity of meaning is necessary for a pun to be perceived—but it’s only half of the equation. (And literally, there’s an equation.) After all, “I went to the bank” is ambiguous, but it’s not a pun. The true determining factor of a pun’s funniness is what the team calls distinctiveness.

Take the sentence “The chef brought his girlfriend flours on Valentine’s Day.” It’s a homophone, so it’s not the most complex pun. But if you turn the chef into a pastry chef, that added vocation property makes the pun more distinctive. “When you’re able to identify keywords from different topics,” Kao says, “it clues you in on the intentionality of it—you’re forcing together two things that don’t often co-occur.”

Of course, “The pastry chef brought his girlfriend flours on Valentine’s Day” still isn’t funny. It’s the kind of pun a bot would make, and maybe has made in the decades since programmers created the first pun generator. There’s no storytelling to it, no drama. A good pun isn’t just an artless slab of sound-alikeness: It’s a joke that happens to hinge on wordplay. A truly formidable punner knows that and frames a sentence to make the pun the punch line. The longer you delay the ambiguity, the more tension you introduce—and the more cathartic the resolution. A pun should be an exclamation point, not a semicolon.

But was I a truly formidable punner? I’d thought so—hell, my lifelong dream is seeing Flavor Flav and Ellen Burstyn cohosting a talk show, just so it can be called Burstyn With Flavor—but after Austin, I had my doubts. I’d cracked under pressure once; until I tried again, I’d never know fissure. As it turned out, a second chance was around the corner.

The Bay Area Pun-Off, a monthly philharmonic of harmful phonics.Ryan Young

Compact and jovial, Jonah Spear is a dead ringer for Saturday Night Live’s Taran Killam—or at least for Taran Killam in high school: Spear recently shaved off a grizzled-prospector beard and looks about half of his 34 years. He’s also a professional play facilitator and counselor at an adult summer camp (no to phones and drinking, yes to sing-alongs and bonfires). That loosey-goosey vibe has carried into the Bay Area Pun-Off, a monthly event Spear began hosting in January that’s just one of a handful of competitive punning events popping up across the country.

If the O. Henry Pun-Off is the Newport Folk Festival, then its Bay Area cousin—like Punderdome 3000 in Brooklyn, Pundamonium in Seattle, or the Great Durham Pun Championship in, well, Durham—is Coachella. The audience is younger, and the raucous atmosphere is fueled as much by beer as by unabashed pun love. It started in the living room of a communal house in Oakland in January 2016 but quickly outgrew its confines; in June the organizers even staged a New York City satellite event.

But on this Saturday night, a week after O. Henry, it’s a high-ceilinged performance space in San Francisco’s Mission District where I’m looking for redemption. The pool of contestants at the Bay Area Pun-Off is small by O. Henry standards, and we commence with an all-hands marathon on tree puns designed to winnow the field of 12 down to eight. “I’m just hoping to win the poplar vote,” one woman says. “Sounds like birch of contract to me,” says someone else. A lanky British guy whom I’ll call Chet rambles through a shaggy-dog story involving a French woman and three Jamaican guys to get to a tortured “le mon t’ree” punch line. The crowd eats it up.

“Keep the applause going. It takes balsa get up here and do this.”

When you’re waiting for 11 other people to pun, you’ve got plenty of time to think of your next one, so I try to Ziek out a good-sized reserve of puns—and when it’s my turn, I make sure that my puns build on the joke that came before me. “Keep the applause going,” I say after someone boughs out. “It takes balsa get up here and do this.” After someone delivers a good line, I admit that “I ended up being pretty frond of it.” They’re not distinctive, but at this stage they don’t need to be, as long as they’re ambiguous. Things go oak-ay, and I’m on to the next round. (What, yew don’t believe me? Olive got is my word.)

After I indulge in a muggleful of Harry Potter puns, I find myself in the semifinals against a Quora engineer named Asa. Spear scribbles the mystery topic on a small chalkboard hidden from sight, then turns it around. It says … diseases. The same category that knocked me out in Austin? The category I dwelled on for the entire flight home, thinking of all the one-liners that had eluded me?

This time, there’s no running dry. Not only do I remember all the puns I used against Ben Ziek, but I remember all the puns he made against me. So when Asa says, “I’m really taking my mumps,” I shoot back with “That’s kinda measly, if you ask me.” I reprise puns I’d made in Austin (“Did you see that Italian opera singer run through the door? In flew Enzo!”); I use puns that I’d thought of since (“My mom makes the best onion dip. It’s HIV little concoction you’d love”). Asa fights gamely, but I have immunerable disease puns at my fingertips, and it’s not much longer before the round is over.

And then, again, there are two: me and Chet. The difference now is I’m locked in: no nerves, no self-consciousness, just getting out of my brain’s way and letting the connections happen. When Spear announces the theme—living world leaders—I don’t even start trying to stockpile puns. I just wait, and they come.

Chet opens the round: “Ohhhh, BAMA. I don’t know anything about world leaders!”

This time, just hearing him mention Obama conjures up a mental image of Justin Trudeau. Before the laughter even dies down, I nod my head encouragingly: “True, tho—that was a decent pun!”

It’s Austin all over again, just in reverse: Now I’m the quick one and Chet’s the one who has to scramble. He fumbles through a long story about rock climbing that leads to a pun about his cam-bell. (And before you ask: Chances are he wasn’t actually talking about Kim Campbell, who was prime minister of Canada for all of six months in 1993, but in the heat of the moment no one realized he’d just screwed up David Cameron’s name.)

My turn? No problem. Just keep flipping it back to him. “Another patented long-ass Chet story,” I say. “I am Bushed.”

“Well,” Chet says, then pauses. “He thinks he can just … Blair shit out.”

It’s his one solid blow. I talk about the “bonky moon” that’s shining outside that night. I confide in the audience about my own alopecia problem, and how I needed to buy a Merkel. And each time, the audience is right there with me. They don’t necessarily know what’s coming, but they’re loving it. Chet’s used three US presidents and two prime ministers; meanwhile, I’ve been from South Korea to Germany, by way of Canada.

Even better, I’ve got another continent in my pocket. “Have you guys been to Chet’s farm?” I ask the audience. “He has this group of cows that won’t stop talking.” I wait a beat. “They are seriously moo-gabby.”

What happens next is a blur, to be perfectly honest. I can’t even tell you what comes out of Chet’s mouth next, but it’s either nothing or it’s the name of someone dead—and either way, the Bay Area Pun-Off is over.

I might not have been able to vanquish Ben Ziek; this may be my only taste of victory in the world of competitive paronomasiacs; hell, I may never know the secret to the perfect pun. But as long as I’ve got the words to try, one thing’s for sure: I’ll use vaguely different words to approximate those words, thereby creating incongruity and thus humor.

Or maybe I’ll just plead raita’s block.

Phrase the Roof!

Author Peter Rubin set up a Slack channel here at Wired to crowdsource the punny headlines for the opening illustration to this story. He compiled more than 150 of them. Here are the ones we couldnt fit.

1. PRESENTS OF MIND

2. SHEER PUNDEMONIUM

3. VIRULENT HOMOPHONIA

4. OFF-SYLLABLE USE

5. PUNBELIEVABLE

6. HEADLINE BLING

7. LIVE A CRITIC, DIACRITIC

8. FEAST OF THE PRONUNCIATION

9. VERBAL MEDICATION

10. THE BEST OF BOTH WORDS

11. SUFFERING FROM INCONSONANT

12. DAMNED WITH FAINT PHRASE

13. THE SEVEN DEADLY SYNTAXES

14. THE NOUN JEWELS

15. PUNS THE WORD

16. CONSONANT READER

17. FARTS OF SPEECH

18. PUN-CHEWATION

19. GRAMMAR RULES

20. POISSON PEN

21. PUNS AND NEEDLES

22. DEATH AND SYNTAXES

23. THE WRITE STUFF

24. MAKING THE COPY

25. SLAIN LETTERING

26. PUN AND GAMES

27. VALLEY OF THE LOLZ

28. NOUN HEAR THIS

29. WHATEVER FLOATS YOUR QUOTE

30. PUT A VERB ON IT!

31. CRIME AND PUN-NICHE-MEANT

32. TIC TALK

33. ECCE HOMONYM

34. DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXTS ASS

35. WRITES OF MAN

36. VERB APPEAL

37. THE RHYME DIRECTIVE

38. SLOGAN’S RUN

39. REBEL WITHOUT A CLAUSE

40. BURNS OF PHRASE

41. ARTLESS QUOTATIONS

42. BON MOT MONEY, BON MOT PROBLEMS

43. JESTIN’ CASE

44. LET ‘ER QUIP

45. ADVERB REACTIONS

46. INFINITE JESTS

47. ARTS OF SPEECH

48. DIGITAL PUNDERGROUND

49. THE PUN-ISHER

50. IMPUNDING DOOM

51. BEYOND PUNDERDOME

52. BAUHAUS OF CARDS

53. TEXTUAL HARASSMENT

54. IT’S A PUNGLE OUT THERE

55. GRAND THEFT MOTTO

56. IT HAD PUNNED ONE NIGHT

57. PLEASE GRAMMAR DON’T HURT EM

58. RHETORICAL QUESTIN’

59. ACUTE PUNS? SURE

60. BAWDILY HUMORED

61. DAMNED IF YOU INNUENDO, DAMNED IF YOU INNUENDON’T

62. TROUBLE ENTENDRES

63. WITS UP, DOC

64. SELF-IMPROV MEANT

65. PUN-EYED JOKERS

66. LAUGHTERMATH

67. JAPES OF WRATH

68. MAKING HA-HAJJ

69. MUTTER, MAY I?

70. BATTLE OF HALF-WITS

71. DEMI-BRAVADO

72. MALCONTENT MARKETING

73. NON-SILENT OFFENSES

74. ORAL HIJINX

75. THE PUN-ISHER

76. NOUNS, YOUR CHANCE

77. TEXT OF KIN

78. OH, PUN AND SHUT

79. JOKE OF ALL TRADES

80. PATTER UP

81. SCHTICK IT TO EM

82. BOOS HOUNDS

83. IT’S NOT EASY BEING GROANED

84. FAR FROM THE MADDENED CROWD

85. COMPETITIVE DEBASING

86. THE PUNFORGIVEN

87. THE PUNCANNY VALLEY

88. INTENTIONAL FORTITUDE

89. CHURCH OF THE LETTER DISDAIN

90. POETRY IN MASHIN’

91. CREATIVE SENTENCING

92. DAAAMN, DACTYL!

93. NO CONTEXT

94. A TALE OF TWO SILLIES

95. THE WIZARD OF LOLZ

96. IT’S A PUNDERFUL LIFE

97. WHAT’S HA? PUNNIN’

98. THE ZING AND I

99. THE WILD PUNS

100. THE PUN ALSO RISES

101. HOW THE REST WERE PUNNED

102. RAGING SYLLABLE

103. DANGEROUS ELISIONS

104. GOODWILL PUNTING

105. FELLOWSHIP OF THE WRONG

106. INGLOURIOUS LAST WORDS

107. THE LIMITATION GAME

108. APPETITE FOR DISTRACTION

109. HOW I MEANT ANOTHER

110. LARKS AND RECREATION

111. COMEDY OF AIRERS

112. DECLARATION OF INNER PENANCE

113. BOO HA-HA

Senior editor and pun criminal Peter Rubin (@provenself) wrote about the roadblocks to VR in issue 24.04.

This article appears in the October 2016 issue.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/12/reflexlology-inside-the-groan-inducing-world-of-pun-competitions/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/165253970052

[allofbeercom]

ReflexLOLogy: Inside the Groan-Inducing World of Pun Competitions

From the moment he spoke, I knew I was screwed. On the surface, the guy wasn’t particularly fearsome—pudgy, late thirties, polo shirt, plaid shorts, baseball cap, dad sneakers—but he looked completely at ease. One hand in his pocket, the other holding the microphone loosely, like a torch singer doing crowd work. And when he finally began talking, it was with an assurance that belied the fact that he was basically spewing nonsense.

“I hate all people named John,” he said with surprising bravado. “Yeah, that’s right, that was a John diss!” The crowd roared. John-diss. Jaundice. A glorious, groan-inducing precision strike of a pun.

Welp, I thought. It was fun while it lasted.

If you’re an NBA rookie, you really don’t want to go up against LeBron James. Anyone’s trivia night would be ruined by seeing Ken Jennings on another team. And if you find yourself at the world’s biggest pun competition, the last person you want to face is four-time defending champion Ben Ziek. Yet that’s exactly where I was, on an outdoor stage in downtown Austin, Texas, committing unspeakable atrocities upon the English language in front of a few hundred onlookers who were spending their sunny May Saturday reveling in the carnage.

The rules of the 39th annual O. Henry Pun-Off World Championship’s “Punslingers” competition are simple: Two people take turns punning on a theme in head-to-head rounds. Failure to make a pun in the five seconds allowed gets you eliminated; make a nonpun or reuse a word three times and you’ve reached the banishing point. Round by round and pair by pair, a field of 32 dwindles until the last of the halved-nots finally gets to claim the mantle of best punster in the world and what most people would agree are some pretty dubious bragging rights. It’s exactly like a rap battle, if 8 Mile had been about software engineers and podcasters and improv nerds vying for supremacy. (Also just like 8 Mile: My first-round opponent had frozen when his turn came to pun on waterborne vehicles. Seriously, yacht a word came out. Canoe believe it?)

Eventually, there we stood, two among the final eight: me, a first-timer, squaring off against the Floyd Mayweather of the pun world. Actually, only one of us was standing; I found myself doing the world’s slowest two-step just to keep my legs from trembling. I’d been a little jittery in my first couple of rounds, sure, but those were standard-issue butterflies, perched on a layer of misguided confidence. This was the anxiety of the sacrificial lamb. I was punning above my weight, and I knew it. Once the judges announced that we’d be punning on diseases—hence Ziek’s joke about star-crossed livers—we began.

“Mumps the word!” I said, hoping that my voice wasn’t shaking.

Ziek immediately fired back: “That was a measle-y pun.” Not only was he confident, with a malleable voice that was equal parts game show host and morning-radio DJ, but his jokes were seemingly fully formed. Worse, he was nimble enough to turn your own pun against you.

“Well, I had a croup-on for it,” I responded. Whoa. Where’d that come from?

He switched gears. “I have a Buddha at home, and sometimes”—making a rubbing motion with his hand—“I like to rubella.”

I was barely paying attention. Diseases, diseases—oh! I pointed at people in different parts of the audience. “If you’ve got a yam, and you’ve got a potato, whose tuber’s closest?”

“There was a guy out here earlier painted light red,” Ziek said. “Did you see the pink guy?”

“I didn’t,” I responded. “Cold you see him?”

Again and again we pun-upped each other, a philharmonic of harmful phonics. From AIDS to Zika we ranged, covering SARS, migraines, Ebola, chicken pox, ague, shingles, fasciitis, streptococcus, West Nile, coronavirus, poison oak, avian flu, gangrene, syphilis, and herpes. Almost five minutes later, we’d gone through 32 puns between the two of us, and I was running dry. As far as my brain was concerned, there wasn’t a medical textbook in existence that contained something we hadn’t used. Ziek, though, had a seemingly endless stockpile and tossed off a quick alopecia pun; I could have bald right then and there. The judge counted down, and I slunk offstage to watch the rest of the competition—which Ziek won, for the fifth time. Knowing I’d lost to the best cushioned the blow, but some mild semantic depression still lingered: Instead of slinging my way to a David-like upset, I was the one who had to go lieth down.

Author Peter Rubin doing the punning man.Ryan Young

When I was growing up, my father’s favorite (printable) joke was “Where do cantaloupes go in the summertime? Johnny Cougar’s Melon Camp.” This is proof that—well, it’s proof that I grew up in Indiana. But it’s also proof that I was raised to speak two languages, both of them English. See, there’s the actual words-working-together-and-making-sense part, and then there’s the fun part. The pliant, recombinant part. The part that lets you harness linguistic irregularities, judo-style, to make words into other words. It’s not conscious, exactly; it just feels at some level like someone made a puzzle and didn’t bother to tell me, so my brain wants to figure out what else those sounds can do.

A lifetime of listening to hip hop has reinforced that phonetic impulse. Polysyllabic rhymes aren’t strictly puns, but they’re made of the same marrow; when Chance the Rapper rhymes “link in my bio” with “Cinco de Mayo” in the song “Mixtape,” I get an actual endorphin hit. Besides, rap is full of puns already: instant-gratification ones—like Lil Wayne saying “Yes I am Weezy, but I ain’t asthmatic” or MF Doom saying “Got more soul than a sock with a hole”—as well as ones that reveal themselves more slowly. Kanye West might be more famous for his production than his lyricism, but he endeared himself to me forever on the song “Dark Fantasy” by spitting the best Family Matters pun of all time: “Too many Urkels on your team, that’s why your wins low.”

I was punning above my weight, and I knew it.

Whether this is nature or nurture, though, the end result is the same: I’m playing with language all the time, and Kanye and I aren’t the only ones. “I can’t listen passively to someone speaking without the possibility of puns echoing around in my head,” says Gary Hallock, who has been producing and hosting the O. Henry Pun-Off for 26 years. He’s seen the annual event grow from an Austin oddity to a national event and watched dad jokes, of which puns are the most obvious example, take hold in the millennial consciousness; a dad-joke-devoted Reddit board boasts more than 250,000 members. “I’ve often compared punsters to linguistic terrorists,” Hallock says. “We’re literally stalking conversations, looking for the weak place to plant our bomb.”

And we’ve been doing it for a long, long time—verbal puns date back to at least 1635 BC, when a Babylonian clay tablet included a pun on the word for “wheat”—and the world has been conflicted about them for nearly as long. (Linguists can’t even agree whether the word pun derives from French, Old English, Icelandic, or Welsh, though there’s no point heading down that scenic root.) On one hand, puns are the stuff of terrible children’s joke books. Oliver Wendell Holmes likened punsters to “wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism.” On the other, God, how can you not feel a little thrill when you make a good one or a begrudging joy when you hear a better one?

Humor theorists generally agree that comedy hinges on incongruity: when a sentence or situation subverts expectations or when multiple interpretations are suggested by the same stimulus. (Also, yes, humor theorists are a thing.) That stimulus can be visual (looking at you, eggplant emoji!) or auditory (what up, tuba fart!); most commonly, though, it’s linguistic. Language is slippery by nature, and of the many kinds of wordplay—hyperbole, metaphor, spoonerisms, even letter-level foolery like anagrams—nothing takes advantage of incongruity quite like puns, of which there are four specific varieties. In order of increasing complexity, you’ve got homonyms, identical words that sound alike (“Led Zeppelin’s guitarist was interrogated last week, but detectives weren’t able to turn the Page”); homophones, which are spelled differently but sound the same (“I hate raisins! Apologies if you’re not into curranty vents.”); homographs, which sound different but look the same (“If you’re asking me to believe that a Loire cabernet is that different from a Napa cabernet, then the terroirists have won.”); and paronyms, which are just kinda similar-sounding (“I have a ton of work to do, but I ate so much cucumber chutney that I have raita’s block”). When we hear a pun, the words we hear aren’t the words we think we hear, and the burden’s on us to crack the code.

Granted, there are people out there who hate puns, and maybe rightly so. But for many of us, that decryption process is a reward unto itself. “Humor happens when something important is being violated,” cognitive scientist Justine Kao says. “Social norms, expectations. So for people who are sensitive to the rules that language follows, puns are more entertaining.” In other words, if you work with words on a daily basis—writing, editing, translating—you’re simply primed to appreciate them more. Behind every great headline, any editor will tell you, is a great pun. (I have a colleague at WIRED who once looked at a page about chef’s knives and gave it the headline “JULIENNE MORE”; people lost their goddamn minds.)

Still, even among the nerdiest of word herders, there are some rules. Two years ago, Kao and two colleagues at Stanford and UC San Diego decided to prove empirically that incongruity was the root of humor. They tested people’s reactions to hundreds of sentences that varied from one another in minute ways. Some used homophones; some didn’t. Some added detail supporting the nonpun interpretation of the sentence; some stripped detail away. They were able to demonstrate that ambiguity of meaning is necessary for a pun to be perceived—but it’s only half of the equation. (And literally, there’s an equation.) After all, “I went to the bank” is ambiguous, but it’s not a pun. The true determining factor of a pun’s funniness is what the team calls distinctiveness.

Take the sentence “The chef brought his girlfriend flours on Valentine’s Day.” It’s a homophone, so it’s not the most complex pun. But if you turn the chef into a pastry chef, that added vocation property makes the pun more distinctive. “When you’re able to identify keywords from different topics,” Kao says, “it clues you in on the intentionality of it—you’re forcing together two things that don’t often co-occur.”

Of course, “The pastry chef brought his girlfriend flours on Valentine’s Day” still isn’t funny. It’s the kind of pun a bot would make, and maybe has made in the decades since programmers created the first pun generator. There’s no storytelling to it, no drama. A good pun isn’t just an artless slab of sound-alikeness: It’s a joke that happens to hinge on wordplay. A truly formidable punner knows that and frames a sentence to make the pun the punch line. The longer you delay the ambiguity, the more tension you introduce—and the more cathartic the resolution. A pun should be an exclamation point, not a semicolon.

But was I a truly formidable punner? I’d thought so—hell, my lifelong dream is seeing Flavor Flav and Ellen Burstyn cohosting a talk show, just so it can be called Burstyn With Flavor—but after Austin, I had my doubts. I’d cracked under pressure once; until I tried again, I’d never know fissure. As it turned out, a second chance was around the corner.

The Bay Area Pun-Off, a monthly philharmonic of harmful phonics.Ryan Young

Compact and jovial, Jonah Spear is a dead ringer for Saturday Night Live’s Taran Killam—or at least for Taran Killam in high school: Spear recently shaved off a grizzled-prospector beard and looks about half of his 34 years. He’s also a professional play facilitator and counselor at an adult summer camp (no to phones and drinking, yes to sing-alongs and bonfires). That loosey-goosey vibe has carried into the Bay Area Pun-Off, a monthly event Spear began hosting in January that’s just one of a handful of competitive punning events popping up across the country.

If the O. Henry Pun-Off is the Newport Folk Festival, then its Bay Area cousin—like Punderdome 3000 in Brooklyn, Pundamonium in Seattle, or the Great Durham Pun Championship in, well, Durham—is Coachella. The audience is younger, and the raucous atmosphere is fueled as much by beer as by unabashed pun love. It started in the living room of a communal house in Oakland in January 2016 but quickly outgrew its confines; in June the organizers even staged a New York City satellite event.

But on this Saturday night, a week after O. Henry, it’s a high-ceilinged performance space in San Francisco’s Mission District where I’m looking for redemption. The pool of contestants at the Bay Area Pun-Off is small by O. Henry standards, and we commence with an all-hands marathon on tree puns designed to winnow the field of 12 down to eight. “I’m just hoping to win the poplar vote,” one woman says. “Sounds like birch of contract to me,” says someone else. A lanky British guy whom I’ll call Chet rambles through a shaggy-dog story involving a French woman and three Jamaican guys to get to a tortured “le mon t’ree” punch line. The crowd eats it up.

“Keep the applause going. It takes balsa get up here and do this.”

When you’re waiting for 11 other people to pun, you’ve got plenty of time to think of your next one, so I try to Ziek out a good-sized reserve of puns—and when it’s my turn, I make sure that my puns build on the joke that came before me. “Keep the applause going,” I say after someone boughs out. “It takes balsa get up here and do this.” After someone delivers a good line, I admit that “I ended up being pretty frond of it.” They’re not distinctive, but at this stage they don’t need to be, as long as they’re ambiguous. Things go oak-ay, and I’m on to the next round. (What, yew don’t believe me? Olive got is my word.)

After I indulge in a muggleful of Harry Potter puns, I find myself in the semifinals against a Quora engineer named Asa. Spear scribbles the mystery topic on a small chalkboard hidden from sight, then turns it around. It says … diseases. The same category that knocked me out in Austin? The category I dwelled on for the entire flight home, thinking of all the one-liners that had eluded me?

This time, there’s no running dry. Not only do I remember all the puns I used against Ben Ziek, but I remember all the puns he made against me. So when Asa says, “I’m really taking my mumps,” I shoot back with “That’s kinda measly, if you ask me.” I reprise puns I’d made in Austin (“Did you see that Italian opera singer run through the door? In flew Enzo!”); I use puns that I’d thought of since (“My mom makes the best onion dip. It’s HIV little concoction you’d love”). Asa fights gamely, but I have immunerable disease puns at my fingertips, and it’s not much longer before the round is over.

And then, again, there are two: me and Chet. The difference now is I’m locked in: no nerves, no self-consciousness, just getting out of my brain’s way and letting the connections happen. When Spear announces the theme—living world leaders—I don’t even start trying to stockpile puns. I just wait, and they come.

Chet opens the round: “Ohhhh, BAMA. I don’t know anything about world leaders!”

This time, just hearing him mention Obama conjures up a mental image of Justin Trudeau. Before the laughter even dies down, I nod my head encouragingly: “True, tho—that was a decent pun!”

It’s Austin all over again, just in reverse: Now I’m the quick one and Chet’s the one who has to scramble. He fumbles through a long story about rock climbing that leads to a pun about his cam-bell. (And before you ask: Chances are he wasn’t actually talking about Kim Campbell, who was prime minister of Canada for all of six months in 1993, but in the heat of the moment no one realized he’d just screwed up David Cameron’s name.)

My turn? No problem. Just keep flipping it back to him. “Another patented long-ass Chet story,” I say. “I am Bushed.”

“Well,” Chet says, then pauses. “He thinks he can just … Blair shit out.”

It’s his one solid blow. I talk about the “bonky moon” that’s shining outside that night. I confide in the audience about my own alopecia problem, and how I needed to buy a Merkel. And each time, the audience is right there with me. They don’t necessarily know what’s coming, but they’re loving it. Chet’s used three US presidents and two prime ministers; meanwhile, I’ve been from South Korea to Germany, by way of Canada.

Even better, I’ve got another continent in my pocket. “Have you guys been to Chet’s farm?” I ask the audience. “He has this group of cows that won’t stop talking.” I wait a beat. “They are seriously moo-gabby.”

What happens next is a blur, to be perfectly honest. I can’t even tell you what comes out of Chet’s mouth next, but it’s either nothing or it’s the name of someone dead—and either way, the Bay Area Pun-Off is over.

I might not have been able to vanquish Ben Ziek; this may be my only taste of victory in the world of competitive paronomasiacs; hell, I may never know the secret to the perfect pun. But as long as I’ve got the words to try, one thing’s for sure: I’ll use vaguely different words to approximate those words, thereby creating incongruity and thus humor.

Or maybe I’ll just plead raita’s block.

Phrase the Roof!

Author Peter Rubin set up a Slack channel here at Wired to crowdsource the punny headlines for the opening illustration to this story. He compiled more than 150 of them. Here are the ones we couldnt fit.

1. PRESENTS OF MIND

2. SHEER PUNDEMONIUM

3. VIRULENT HOMOPHONIA

4. OFF-SYLLABLE USE

5. PUNBELIEVABLE

6. HEADLINE BLING

7. LIVE A CRITIC, DIACRITIC

8. FEAST OF THE PRONUNCIATION

9. VERBAL MEDICATION

10. THE BEST OF BOTH WORDS

11. SUFFERING FROM INCONSONANT

12. DAMNED WITH FAINT PHRASE

13. THE SEVEN DEADLY SYNTAXES

14. THE NOUN JEWELS

15. PUNS THE WORD

16. CONSONANT READER

17. FARTS OF SPEECH

18. PUN-CHEWATION

19. GRAMMAR RULES

20. POISSON PEN

21. PUNS AND NEEDLES

22. DEATH AND SYNTAXES

23. THE WRITE STUFF

24. MAKING THE COPY

25. SLAIN LETTERING

26. PUN AND GAMES

27. VALLEY OF THE LOLZ

28. NOUN HEAR THIS

29. WHATEVER FLOATS YOUR QUOTE

30. PUT A VERB ON IT!

31. CRIME AND PUN-NICHE-MEANT

32. TIC TALK

33. ECCE HOMONYM

34. DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXTS ASS

35. WRITES OF MAN

36. VERB APPEAL

37. THE RHYME DIRECTIVE

38. SLOGAN’S RUN

39. REBEL WITHOUT A CLAUSE

40. BURNS OF PHRASE

41. ARTLESS QUOTATIONS

42. BON MOT MONEY, BON MOT PROBLEMS

43. JESTIN’ CASE

44. LET ‘ER QUIP

45. ADVERB REACTIONS

46. INFINITE JESTS

47. ARTS OF SPEECH

48. DIGITAL PUNDERGROUND

49. THE PUN-ISHER

50. IMPUNDING DOOM

51. BEYOND PUNDERDOME

52. BAUHAUS OF CARDS

53. TEXTUAL HARASSMENT

54. IT’S A PUNGLE OUT THERE

55. GRAND THEFT MOTTO

56. IT HAD PUNNED ONE NIGHT

57. PLEASE GRAMMAR DON’T HURT EM

58. RHETORICAL QUESTIN’

59. ACUTE PUNS? SURE

60. BAWDILY HUMORED

61. DAMNED IF YOU INNUENDO, DAMNED IF YOU INNUENDON’T

62. TROUBLE ENTENDRES

63. WITS UP, DOC

64. SELF-IMPROV MEANT

65. PUN-EYED JOKERS

66. LAUGHTERMATH

67. JAPES OF WRATH

68. MAKING HA-HAJJ

69. MUTTER, MAY I?

70. BATTLE OF HALF-WITS

71. DEMI-BRAVADO

72. MALCONTENT MARKETING

73. NON-SILENT OFFENSES

74. ORAL HIJINX

75. THE PUN-ISHER

76. NOUNS, YOUR CHANCE

77. TEXT OF KIN

78. OH, PUN AND SHUT

79. JOKE OF ALL TRADES

80. PATTER UP

81. SCHTICK IT TO EM

82. BOOS HOUNDS

83. IT’S NOT EASY BEING GROANED

84. FAR FROM THE MADDENED CROWD

85. COMPETITIVE DEBASING

86. THE PUNFORGIVEN

87. THE PUNCANNY VALLEY

88. INTENTIONAL FORTITUDE

89. CHURCH OF THE LETTER DISDAIN

90. POETRY IN MASHIN’

91. CREATIVE SENTENCING

92. DAAAMN, DACTYL!

93. NO CONTEXT

94. A TALE OF TWO SILLIES

95. THE WIZARD OF LOLZ

96. IT’S A PUNDERFUL LIFE

97. WHAT’S HA? PUNNIN’

98. THE ZING AND I

99. THE WILD PUNS

100. THE PUN ALSO RISES

101. HOW THE REST WERE PUNNED

102. RAGING SYLLABLE

103. DANGEROUS ELISIONS

104. GOODWILL PUNTING

105. FELLOWSHIP OF THE WRONG

106. INGLOURIOUS LAST WORDS

107. THE LIMITATION GAME

108. APPETITE FOR DISTRACTION

109. HOW I MEANT ANOTHER

110. LARKS AND RECREATION

111. COMEDY OF AIRERS

112. DECLARATION OF INNER PENANCE

113. BOO HA-HA

Senior editor and pun criminal Peter Rubin (@provenself) wrote about the roadblocks to VR in issue 24.04.

This article appears in the October 2016 issue.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/12/reflexlology-inside-the-groan-inducing-world-of-pun-competitions/