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Hey @bookdragon, I think this is one of the most useful discussion threads I’ve ever seen posted on the forum, lol. It’s a really tough and really practical question. I’ve been thinking about it for over a week.

I don’t know that I agree that the obvious solution is to remove the ridiculousness since, like you said, that’s kind of the entire point of the story. There have been lots of other stories that have serious and emotional moments in the middle of a silly setting, but it’s definitely tough. I think the Oz books do this fairly well, and satire as a genre is probably a good one to study to see serious ideas in the middle of absurdity.

Terry Pratchett also does an amazing job at writing the most ridiculous situations imaginable and having very human characters in the middle of them who live out very human, touching lives. Here’s a bit adapted from Hogfather, in which the Grim Reaper saves Christmas by becoming Santa Claus.

It’s an extremely silly premise in an extremely silly world, and it also has some of Terry Pratchett’s most heartfelt philosophical ideas in it.

Posting the full link might make the spam filter eat my post, but remove the parentheses from this link and check it out:

youtu(.)be(/)isLW0TTB2R0

It’s a very short clip of Neil Gaiman explaining how Alan Moore took the extremely silly superhero comic Marvelman and rebooted it into a serious series full of actual literary value… while keeping all the silly escapades of the comic’s past, rather than rewriting the whole backstory to be dark and gritty ala The Dark Knight.

Hopefully some of this was helpful. I hope you find success in writing this story! I’m interested to hear more about it as your work progresses.