Entertainment The Oddish

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Some of you may have read the magazine The Onion--The Oddish is essentially the pokemon equivalent. For those who don't know the magazine, the basic idea is that fake (hopefully humorous) articles are published as if they were true. The idea is not to deceive the reader into thinking that they are, but to comment on the bizarrity of some hypothetical situation while making it so ludicrous that the reader knows it is not true. An example article (greatly abridged) might look like this:
Game Freak Announces New Event That Requires You to Have Bought That Magikarp

Game Freak, the company behind the highly successful line of Pokemon games, made a major announcement today. The announcement concerns an apparent "all-in-one" release that will be coming out imminently. Anyone lucky enough to attend one will be able to download every single one of the legendary Pokemon from all series with perfect IVs free of charge. The only requirement is that you have a Nintendo DS or 3DS and a copy of Pokemon Black or White. Oh, and that you that $500 magikarp way back in RBY or FrLg.

Long known for its fearsome appearance, blistering strength, and mighty splash, magikarp has been a stalwart of the Pokemon Trainer's arsenal since the first game it was released. (Just make sure it doesn't evolve into gyarados, a truly worthless Pokemon.) However, for some reason, many players seem to have opted to NOT spend 500 precious poke-dollars to buy a worthless fish that can be picked up in any body of water. While we here at The Oddish cannot fathom why this would be the case, there are nevertheless many of these naive Pokemon fans who are now unable to receive the new release, causing a huge uproar. Game Freak has also confirmed that it is indeed impossible to simply make another account and buy it there--do to the high-tech new tracking technology implanted in every DS and Pokemon game, they are able to keep records of every Pokemon player's history and, unfortunately, will not grant the release unless you bought it the first time you played the game. For younger players of the hit series, there is a spark of hope if they started playing in Gen 3 or later, but ironically for the committed veterans of Pokemon there is little hope.

While the date of the release is not yet set, it is clear that it will be an event of much emotion and passion as some peoples' dreams are fulfilled, while others can only hopelessly watch as theirs' are shattered. Game Freak stated that it has already been in communication with every police department worldwide, warning them to take precautions in case of angry mobs made up of those foolish people tragically unable to receive the release because of their ignorance of the awesome might of magikarp. The suicide watches have also been warned to watch for jumpers. Whatever the way events actually play out, it is clear that whenever the release actually comes will be a day of huge excitement and emotion for all parties involved, and perhaps for the world as whole.

Also, our most recent update from Game Freak was that it doesn't count if your magikarp evolved to a gyarados.


Ideally, this would be a periodic thing (maybe an article per smog release?). I would be of course happy to write for it, though I would love if anyone was up for collaborating on this. I also think that some type of survey at the end of each article about what the next articles should be on would be a good idea, both to boost reader participation and to give us ideas. Both the name and the scale of the project are very much undecided--I went with oddish to make it clear that it is a spin-off from the Onion, but am not wedded to that name. Additionally, this could become a much larger project if others wanted to collaborate with me on this, perhaps getting several articles out each in each Competitor article.

Thanks for reading, and for any feedback!
 
I forgot to mention this in the post above, but there are also variable lengths of articles possible. Sometimes just a headline might be posted--"10,000 square foot banner of Pikachu flown on December 21st Apocalypse to appease Arceus"--for example. Major articles could be longer than the example above, and medium-length ones might be about that length.
 

v

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missing the point of the onion, which is to fool gullible people via sarcastic social commentary. this is just a really sarcastic article based on a lie. the point of satire is to effect change via cutting humor, not to be as sarcastic as possible with no point
 

Birkal

We have the technology.
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But in that case, your main conflict lies with the title of the article rather than its content. I'd agree with you, Vader, in that this isn't satire (which I think is pretty darn hard to do in The Smog), but I don't think that necessarily means this will make a poor article by any means.
 
For what it's worth, if you think the example article fails to serve its purpose, that may be because the writing itself isn't great--idk if that's an article that would be used anyway, and i'd definitely spend more time on it than I did. Also, at least in my mind, the purpose of the Oddish was to be entertaining to read due to the ludicrous ideas it acts as if are true. (Not that I'd expect anyone to actually fall for them.)
 

Toast++

Nexus is literally the worst.
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I like the idea here but I'm not too taken with the example article. If the idea were taken and transformed into a more realistic, but still completely implausible/impossible version, I think I would be more entertained. Just to throw out some topics off the top of my head:
  • GameFreak to End Pokemon Franchise - "We just don't see the money in it anymore."
  • Sony Aquires Rights to "Pokemon", New game to release on Vita
  • Japanese Genetics Company Develops Real-Life Pikachu

Imaginary quotes from real people are a plus, too.
 
Yeah, that was a pretty quick idea and draft, I can work on trying to make it fit the idea better if you think that would be helpful. I like your ideas for articles, I was thinking of a couple other possibilities as well:

  • Something about how Ken Sugimori (the art director) is planning to take over the world using an army of real-life pokemon
  • Abomasnow (obamasnow) sues Obama for name-stealing
  • Announcement about a jurassic park remake, with pokemon for dinosaurs--reportedly, huge pachirisu attempt to eat the protagonists, while rabid mudkip play the parts of the velociraptors
 

Birkal

We have the technology.
is a Top Artistis a Top CAP Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributoris a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
To be honest, I really liked Toast's suggestion. The idea of making something more "real life plausible" would make this article very different from any other entertainment article. I think the ones that deal with Pokemon are alright, but Kidogo, I feel that you would find more success if you made this more of the real world news stories of Pokemon (like Toast was suggesting). I guess I'd be willing to approve this article either way, but I think Toast's suggestion would lead to a stronger article. I'm not trying to tell you to do it one way or the other, but I just thought I'd throw my support behind what I believe would make this article the best it could be.

What are your thoughts?
 
Ah i see what you mean, yeah I wasn't exactly sure what toast meant about realism. Also, I was kinda submitting the idea of the oddish more than that particular article--it was written just as an example of what the oddish articles might look like. And you're probably right, more realistic articles like the ones toast suggested might work better for this. If this were to be a recurring thing, I would think that we would collectively decide on what article should be written before I (or anyone else) writes one. Something like this thread, but dedicated just to deciding what ideas would make the best articles. Does that sound feasible to you?
 

Birkal

We have the technology.
is a Top Artistis a Top CAP Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributoris a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
I think this article idea has potential, but you'll have to come up with the writers yourself. Again, the idea is great and I think we could move forward with it. Just Kidogo, you have to find some friends to help you write this. If you do, let me know on IRC and I'll re-open this thread.
 
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