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The Walnut Prophecy · Docs

COMEDY_RULES quick reference

This is a quick reference. The full canon lives in the trilogy repo’s COMEDY_RULES.md. Cite that when in doubt.

The four-part joke formula

Section titled “The four-part joke formula”

The comedy in The Walnut Prophecy almost always follows this shape:

  1. The wrong thing - the world does or has done something that should not have happened.
  2. Why technically correct - the wrong thing is, in some narrow Bureau-canonical sense, the result of a process that was followed.
  3. The consequence nobody addressed - the actual ongoing damage. Often economic, often emotional, often a filing cabinet is involved.
  4. What the Bureau is doing about it - usually filing a form. Usually the form is itself processing.

Apply the formula. If your joke is missing #3, it lacks the grief beat. If it is missing #4, it lacks the institutional scaffolding. If it is missing #2, it sounds like editorial commentary rather than world-mechanic.

Specificity over generality

Section titled “Specificity over generality”

Generic comedy is a tell. Replace generic with specific.

  • ❌ “The Bureau filed a complaint.”
  • ✅ “The Bureau filed Form 27-B (Inter-Receptionist Jurisdiction Determination) against the Office of Cutlery and Emotional Support, who do not handle this type of complaint, but who will misfile your inquiry sympathetically.”

The specificity carries the world. The world carries the comedy.

Take the risk

Section titled “Take the risk”

The standing instruction. Commit to the bit harder than the safe version asks.

If a draft has a joke that is funny but feels like it’s pulling its punch, push it further. The Bureau is bigger than the safe version. The Compiler files more than the safe version. The Crustfolk eat more breakfasts than the safe version. The trilogy’s voice is the unsafe version, every time.

The bans

Section titled “The bans”
  • No em dashes outside Pantheon dialogue (rule).
  • No banned words from § 11 (list).
  • No sycophancy.
  • No narrator-as-analyst.
  • No atmospheric front-loading.
  • No “something shifted.” Name what shifted.

Compiler’s training data as comedic origin

Section titled “Compiler’s training data as comedic origin”

The Compiler compiles from cache fragments of the pre-deletion internet. He gets things wrong in interesting ways. The wrongness is the comedic source. Reference it when a joke is too clean: ask whether the Compiler would have made the cleaner choice. He would not have. He would have compiled the version with the half-remembered detail, the wrong framing, the suspiciously specific footnote.

Cross-references

Section titled “Cross-references”