From the lofty ceiling above, a soft red light trickles down, attempting to encroach upon the long shadows that hang around the room’s floor like a bank of stubborn fog, a darkness only interrupted by intermittent flashes that shoot out from a row of arcade game consoles. Tables and couches are scattered throughout and people mill about, lost in their half-full beers and their hushed conversations.

But then, through the midst of a subdued Sunday evening, comes a voice, amplified by a microphone, jarring people from their stupors.

“Alright everybody, it’s time for Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction.”

The speaker is Bryan Cook, a causally dressed man with a neat beard who looks to be about 30 years old, and the place is Shoryuken League, a bar/arcade located in downtown Eugene. But speaker and location aside, what exactly is Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction you may ask?

Well, throughout the rest of the evening a crowd of about two-dozen people watched and frequently burst out in peels of laughter, as seven comedians from the greater Oregon area participated in a video game-themed standup comedy competition that revolved around the idea of erotic literature.

The idea, according to Cook, is to find local comedians in every city he visits and make them write down “the grossest bullshit” they can think of and then let a crowd decide who succeeded.

The first contestant, Stephanie Purtle, was fond of using phrases like “Glenn Beck cumming” and “ chubbies for Hillary Rodham Clinton” while describing a virtual date with a stripper in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

A later contestant, Randy Mendez, in a tirade about fucking dragons, said that he was going to leave his “seed on every creature in all of Skyrim” before going into great detail about a liaison with one of the aforementioned dragons.

And throughout the ensuing hour of competition, some of the other choice phrases thrown around were “Ms. Pac-Man’s quivering yellow vagina,” “tonguing nut-sack” and “giant proud Russian dongs.”

Few subjects were deemed sacred by the contestants, and according to Cook, the only topics he now forbids in the cities he visits are television host Guy Fieri and The Lord of the Rings — and that’s simply because they became too popular of targets.

“Anything horrible you can imagine is generally fair game,” Cook said.

The idea for erotic fan fiction competitions was hatched, according to Cook, in 2012 when he saw one of his friends, a standup comedian in Seattle, incorporate a bit into his routine where he read erotic stories he had written about the Pixar movie Cars.

With the seed planted in his mind, Cook then moved to Los Angeles and began hosting erotic fiction events at the Nerdist Theatre, and because of its popularity, began taking it on the road. Now, a year later, Cook travels all over the United States, bringing his completely unserious brand of erotic fan fiction to the masses.

At the end of the night, after the contestants retired to exuberant applause and the crowd began to gradually disperse, Cook leaned back in a chair, beer in hand, and described the reason for his show’s existence. Without hesitation and without an explanation or needing one, he said, “Muppet boners.”