British humor

You know, I just realized something when I was lying in bed and thinking of random things the other night. All of the funny, cheeky, snarkily hilarious writers and bloggers that I love so much always turn out to be British. Now why exactly is that? People always talk about Brits having the most dry, god-awful sense of humor, but I absolutely adore their deadpan style and their sarcastic wittiness. I find British television extremely weird and boring, but their writing is another thing altogether.

Take Douglas Adams for example. The man was a brilliant writer, in all his sarcastic glory and apocalyptic visions of doom (I LOVE the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). Mind you, he had rather odd ideas in his stories – like the Earth actually being part of a millennia-old experiment run by the mice, who are actually 10th-dimension beings who manipulate us humans instead of the other way around – but the scary part is that it could all actually turn out to be true (in a freaky conspiracy kind of way)! And the way he writes it, putting us in the shoes of poor bumbling Arthur Dent, makes it seem so normal when you know it’s really not. And one of my favorite scenes of all time has to be the Restaurant at the End of the Universe part. Who else but Adams could come up with the idea of a restaurant that sits enclosed in a time bubble and visits the exact moment of the end of the universe, while managing to turn it into a comical satire that pokes fun at all those religions and cults who revere that moment as something holy and sacred? Genius, I tell you.

But it’s totally weird when even my mental voice starts to adopt a British accent as I’m narrating in my head, or sometimes I’ll find myself sliding into the same sarcastic and edgy tone when I’m writing or blogging. But I can’t really complain when I’ve got Alan Rickman’s silky voice whispering in my mind I can’t ever decide if he’s just really snarky and sarcastic or a totally vicious bastard when I read fanfiction involving our favorite Severus Snape. Or maybe it’s a combination of both. I have to say, it’s a pretty hot mixture. Tall, dark, sharp mind, sexy voice, what’s not to like? But only in dreams and fanfiction, sadly. J.K. Rowling ended any canon hopes for that character in Deathly Hallows when she killed him without ever giving him a real chance at redemption. Such an anti-climatic and predictable end for a character with so much more depth and a far more interesting backstory than the Golden Trio. Psh. But that’s another story and another rant.

So what is it that gives those Brits that ability to wow and wound with their words? Innate talent? A product of that gloomy and perpetually rainy atmosphere in England? Or I am just rambling on about something that no one else sees? I love my British writers anyways =)

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