I didn't mean to imply these things would make it harder to give this character jokes because of his situation. I just meant I didn't mean it as like "This exact singular situation is the one where I want to work in the comedy" because I'm talking about comedy in general.
Like I don't know how to make a genuinely funny line happen in most of the narrative events going on here, no matter which characters are on screen. That's what I'm asking. Like... here's a scene.
—
Cut to them eating it.
Nobody (mouth full): This is so good.
Orion is kind of nervous about it but also kind of likes the attention.
—
Nobody: You really have a gift.
Orion: It's nothing, really.
This conversation is making him uncomfortable.
Nobody: (Insert funny line here)
Like what would go in that blank that's even a little bit funny? This is just one of maybe hundreds of moments where I just can't make it work, and but I don't want this character to not make a joke there. This is basically every situation. The only way I can imagine a properly funny joke is by reading it somewhere else.
I have written funny things before. I once knocked myself dead reading an old tumblr post where I said I had the media literussy, and that phrase still makes me laugh a bit, but that only works in a satirical tumblr post, you can't have a fictional character say shit like that.
Old jokes I wrote for Nobody were stuff like him mentioning cancer and holding up a Moe anime girl he pulled out of hammerspace, or ordering a sundae with beans, bacon, and hot sauce, then leaving without eating it, or saying "waste is based" after someone said the word waste. Like just nonsense for no reason.