Board 8 > Trying my hand on game-based satirical headlines.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://twitter.com/LevelHeaded247

Level-Headed News: think the Onion, but for us.

I've pitched these elsewhere and they have not been picked up yet, but I still have confidence in them sooooo...maybe ya'll will enjoy them!

Two favorites posted so far:

https://twitter.com/LevelHeaded247/status/1499753728991186944?t=heLqWYYHj70vbjUjisVPrw&s=19

https://twitter.com/LevelHeaded247/status/1494690612733526017?t=LMpc0NQJAgAWYorDJTET6Q&s=19

Bad news. There's an established leader in this field already: @HardDriveMag

#DemocracyDiesInDungeons

Okay that's real good

No bad news to it -- I've been pitching some of these to Hard-Drive. Their article about Mega Man figuring out which order to ask his bosses for a raise first caught my attention with them. I liked their recent article about Marvel recently announcing they did in fact have an upcoming movie too.

Gave you a follow.

"Steam Deck Confirms It Can Break A Liquor Store Window" gave me a good chuckle

Thank you for the compliments and the follow!

The liquor store window-test is one of the best measurement-tests out there. Democracy Dies In Dungeons was made up on a whim and I'm glad it lands well for ya.

Shooting my satire-shot on more current events today:

https://twitter.com/LevelHeaded247/status/1501897767446368262?t=sgcugDWftD3O0nDVP-kLHQ&s=19

Pfft

I mean

you know what I want to say

stop giving me layups

Keep at it. There are some good ones in there. Any chance you'll do articles and not just headlines?

I'd like to! I do have some time constraints going on for committing to that right away, plus I was originally pitching headlines in hopes of getting paid for writing larger articles. That said, while some of these would be harder for me to write a story around than others, some like this one?

https://twitter.com/LevelHeaded247/status/1493420101344894990?t=Tk4s_-dT-qxu9u1CfvLKfQ&s=19

Yeah, I could dish out an article for this pretty fast.

These are pretty good. When is Hard Drive going to buy you out?

These are so good that Im a little concerned about your pace, dont burn out my guy.

It's $25 per article. It's easy to make jokes about why they ain't accepted a headline fron me yet...so I will: they spent the budget on MAR10 Day.

And thank you for the burn-out concern. Burn-out's got some ebb and flow elsewhere in my life. That feeling sucks wherever it's at, but I'm feeling good with the headlines for the moment.

Hard Drive is really good

Thabks to I believe @Kamekguy who fact-checked this with me a few weeks ago:

https://twitter.com/LevelHeaded247/status/1502629494036836355?t=FeVOigtPjZp3exuIu0GIkA&s=19

^ and that's a headline I wish I could write an article for. I'd love to have Banja defend himself with like the variation of the one whole song he knows and also the little jingle he knows that's too small to be a SONG-song.

A few days after the news broke, but ah well:

https://twitter.com/LevelHeaded247/status/1503367476746366981?t=UKXK-bhtH8iYLHx1i6qTkg&s=09

Apologies to T H E S T A B L E for this one:

https://twitter.com/LevelHeaded247/status/1504103591010869255?t=ZA6VqK89XlYxGY_wxvpIbQ&s=19

Sorry for the somewhat critical takes below, but if you are actually submitting these to The Hard Drive, I want to be honest.

I feel like some of these could be snappier. The game bundle one could reach the punchline a lot faster. Like, 'Tough Predicament: Gamer Already Owns 5 Games in 1000-game Charity Bundle.' We don't really need to know the gamer 'wants' this bundle, as that's already implied by the Tough Predicament phrasing. It feels kind of clunky.

And with the horse one, I get the concept but don't actually see a joke. Instead of telling us they 'got nothing nice to say,' I think you should show us. Like, I don't know, "I Never Needed to Double Jump": Epona Sparks Horse Feud. Not that I think my alternative here is very good, but the headline feels more like a premise than a fully-realized joke. Outright needing to say "Torrent The Double-Jumping Horse" for the joke to work feels clinical, so there has to be a better way to phrase it.

I love comedy dissecting. Thank you for this, no offense taken. I'll follow up later.

I used to love comedy dissecting, but it always manages to lose its hilarity after you remove the humerus.

I think what Zelos hit on is the fact that 100% of video game jokes are to validate gamer's insider knowledge. If you don't know that Torrent is the Elden Ring horse and that it can double jump then you're not a gamer and this joke is not for you. By cutting out details you can emphasize that elitism.

foolm0r0n posted...

I think what Zelos hit on is the fact that 100% of video game jokes are to validate gamer's insider knowledge. If you don't know that Torrent is the Elden Ring horse and that it can double jump then you're not a gamer and this joke is not for you. By cutting out details you can emphasize that elitism.

I have no idea how you read my message and came up with that conclusion. My problem with these is almost entirely in the phrasing - there are ways to allude to Torrent being able to double jump without calling him 'The Double-Jumping Horse.' Like, I could edit my suggestion to say '...Epona Sparks Horse Feud with Torrent.'

Going off the initial headline, the joke really seems to be about the bizarre feud between these horses. But, as written, we don't get the context for the feud until the last two words. And, if someone hasn't played Elden Ring, the phrasing might make the joke even more obscure - "The Double-Jumping Horse" could be some weird in-game title, and then what is Epona upset about?

And, yes, satirical headlines about video games are going to be inherently niche. I don't think it's elitist to acknowledge that - no matter how you phrase it, no one is going to care about an Elden Ring joke if they don't care about Elden Ring.

I'm not paraphrasing you, just adding my own thought on what the essence of "nerd" humor is. The formula of that joke an inferior person acting defensive and compensating. You could have the same joke with a one armed baseball player or something. But the essence of this joke is that you know both Epona and Torrent and the difference in their abilities, so you can recognize that it fits that familiar formula.

Paraphrasing a quote I heard before: "Dissecting a joke is like dissecting a frog...few people enjoy it and the frog dies of it."

That said, I try to keep the opinion that jokes are disposable and the best jokes are the next jokes.

Right off the bat, I do generally agree with word economy. I'm wordy sonetimes for flavor and sometimes as a failure to shorten further.

I had a punchline class with a person who used ro write behind the scenes for MadTV as well as write for Mad Magazine. This was years ago and that doesn't make me the pro, but the thing I took away from it was not just punchlines but punchwords. The philosophy shared was to save them for the end so they have the build up for the established from the rest of the set-up to support it. I've adapted the phrase of punch phrase as well for similar logic.

So, the latest one about the horses.

The intended premise: horses double-jumping is uniquely audacious. It's maybe the most video game'y thing I've ever heard and it's awesome for that. I bet other horses would be jealous.

The intended reading: [Most famous regular horses] [are jealous of] [new super-horse] (for a reason to make the joke more accessible)

Then, if selected to write a headline, I would have been interested in getting more horse quotes. Alas, the only horse quote we got is their silence of rejection telling me neigh.

As is though, I ran with the funniest phrase of that to me which was "Torrent The Double-Jumping Horse"...but if the funniest part of the bit was the jealousy, which I think would be fair to say, I could have played with that ordering and made something more like Epona And Agro Play Elden Ring, Refuse To Give Torrent Its Due...or, with the angle of word economy, Epona Plays Elden Ring, Skips Torrent.

^ that last one is in-tune with an article they did recently about players choosing not to learn a game mechanic out of pride. Maybe that's what they'd want. shrug*

CasanovaZelos posted...

no matter how you phrase it, no one is going to care about an Elden Ring joke if they don't care about Elden Ring.

I feel a lot of things about this sentence. Yes and no.

Regarding the larger context about the rest of the post, multiple satire sites has multiple niches and they seem to do fine elitist or not. Is satire inherently elitist? I kinda think so since there is an assumed understanding before it's read that someone will read it literally unlike you the smart one, but I'm not sold yet. Hard-Drive, Reductress, Babylon Bee, what have you -- any that's not the Onion or the general genre of political cartoon comic strip probably ain't big enough to not be inherently niche. That's just joke structure and audience size before even touching on understood references like double-jumps.

What does that niche audience know? Epona's in the opening scene of the most celebrated game of all time. Agro was in one of the biggest PS2 games and had a popular PS4 remaster. People know Elden Ring just came out and is huge, but I wasn't sure Torrent was as well known. I don't really know the age
emographic for Hard-Drive but I played it safe with whether or not people knew it. I figured knowing rhe name of Torrent and its power of super-jumping was the most niche information referenced to their audience, but it may not be (might be Agro's name that's most obscure).

I think this sentence of yours is the safe bet and the broader truth, but there is room for exceptions including some I've submitted for more obscure games. I don't live or die by it, as reasonable as it is.

An example of word economy and my last point.

https://twitter.com/LevelHeaded247/status/1504460477195247643?t=Oi0aP96vmeCuiL6VmFo91w&s=19

heh

https://twitter.com/LevelHeaded247/status/1505226133045972994?t=n8Isz-p7sh6VnF3IUuzXag&s=19

Shortest headline I got.

https://twitter.com/LevelHeaded247/status/1505951276680593410?t=2O-53Ra4MVOgbYjr9jJs6A&s=19

https://twitter.com/LevelHeaded247/status/1506700156904919040?t=1jmBXCOWsdDiBWvFTEdO9w&s=19

https://twitter.com/LevelHeaded247/status/1507359849281204232?t=4DLM_WgENl5I2GmRJxbcKg&s=19

Has anyone done an article yet on how gamers are upset that Nintendo has confirmed that Zelda will be a girl in the next Zelda game, and are worried Samus might be next?

Maybe, but I can't recall an example...I may dabble with that idea.

I've got a lot of pitches I've thrown to the wayside -- closest one I had to your idea there was "Samus's Identity And Birdo's Gender Highlight Nintendo's Early Progressive Roots," but it doesn't land comedically or even like satire the way I wanted it to...feels more like a coincidental false premise.

We got a live situation here.

https://twitter.com/LevelHeaded247/status/1508112042460434433?t=QEmA6GfbTvg9cZ6DF591wQ&s=19