GenCon, the mother of all tabletop gaming conventions, is still a few months (and more than a few states) away, but the geeky music duo The Doubleclicks have been gearing up for this year's event for a while now with a breakthrough addition to their usual repertoire.
Since the early 2010s, the pair have written and performed songs about "dinosaurs, cats, anxiety, and Queer feelings" in thematic venues like comic book shops and game stores in the United States, Australia, and Europe. Along the way, they've rubbed shoulders with the likes of actor and writer Wil Wheaton and the comedic musical team Paul and Storm. Their YouTube channel boasts over four million views.
One half of the group, Laser Webber, said that the Doubleclicks were formally founded soon after his sister, Aubrey Turner (the other half), graduated college and followed him out to Portland, Oregon.
"She was all over the open mic scene, playing her cello everywhere," Webber said over Zoom. "And she encouraged me to pick up a guitar and start writing little songs."
At the time, Webber had been writing poetry and comedy anyway, so adding in some music wasn't too much of a stretch.
"And those early songs were, like, breakup songs about World of Warcraft, [and] songs about falling in love and playing Dungeons & Dragons," Webber said. "And we were just very different from what everyone else was doing, and it was really fun."
Getting bigger
The year 2011 marked the "official" beginning of the Doubleclicks, and as the duo gained recognition, it became apparent that they would need more content if they were to perform at bigger venues.
"We started a YouTube channel, just as a way to keep writing more music, because we were starting to get booked on more shows, and we were like, 'We don't have 40 minutes — we need to write more songs.'"
It was after that that they got their first "big break," not through some hot shot producer attending one of their performances but in the digital realm, where geek culture was already abundant.
"My friend Brad Jonas, who is an incredible artist, went off on his own and made a music video for one of our songs," Webber said. "Without me even knowing, he made an animated video, and that video went kind of viral, especially in the D&D community. I sent that along with an email to Paul and Storm, and they invited us to open for them... That was the first really big show we got to do."
The Doubleclicks' digital presence has only broadened since then. They've been featured on the Geek and Sundry web series TableTop, which was hosted by Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day until its end in 2017. More recently, Webber in particular has streamed and played in the all-Trans RPG show Strumpets and Flagons on Twitch and published it on Spotify.
Writing a musical
Since Turner is taking a break from touring, GenCon 2023 will be the last stop on a tour of Webber's solo act, Laser the Boy. His focus for the last year has been on writing musicals, and the first in line is Teaching a Robot to Love.
"I've wanted to write a musical for a while," Webber said. "I've seen my friends do it, and I was very impressed."
"Teaching a Robot to Love," he explained, "is a show about this girl who creates a robot. She wants to teach it how to be a person, but she herself doesn't know how to be a person, like many of us."
Its regional debut will be performed at GenCon by the ACORN Players of Lafayette, Indiana. Webber said of the theater group, "I'm really excited for the energy these people are bringing to the show, especially because Indiana isn't known for being a state that's super open to Trans and Queer art, or Trans and Queer people."
Of course, a musical is a lot more demanding than a song, or at least it demands different things. Before Webber was a songwriter, he was educated as a journalist, another kind of storyteller.
"Prior to this, any story I told never needed to be longer than five minutes," Webber said of musicals. "Instead of trying to fit a lot of words into a short article, you're trying to fit a lot of ideas into a song."
"But that's also what makes it so rewarding," he added, "because it's a story not just told by one or two people. It's a story told by this whole creative team who bring their own things to the show. And that has been just absolutely incredible. I feel like we're able to tell ... so many different stories at once.
"I have been fortunate that the people who are attracted to working on this show are generally this group of really loving Queer folks who are excited to tell a positive story about transness and queerness that isn't trauma-based. So generally, it's just a whole lot of fun. The costumes we get are very brightly colored and very shiny."
Webber also teased his next theatrical project, titled A Shark Ate My Penis, inspired by his research into Trans men throughout history, and by his own transition. Webber said the play will explore those topics with much of the same quirky humor as his previous work.
You can read more about The Doubleclicks at https://www.thedoubleclicks.com/ and get notified about Laser Webber's future streams at www.twitch.tv/lasertheboy/ Webber is @lasertheboy on Instagram.