Odyssey of Oddities

## Plot

A calculus and vectors major named Annie, is accused of being mentally insane and not fit for the mainstream world. Annie is forced to live in an insane asylum disguised as a crazy town. Annie joins forces with a younger boy named Jake and they go to war with the crazy town and the evil, corrupt, and lazy mayor that runs the town. Annie and Jake are also accompanied by Jake's friend, Isaac, and Isaac's alien friend, Wayon. The characters go against the crazy town and try to expose the evils of it to the world while they come across bizarre oddities.

## Development

These are the words from Ray Phoenix himself:

##### The Prophecy of Oddities (2014-2016)

> In mid-2014, I was on a roll with making new episodes for my Jason and Mason series. I recently established the series as being a more episodic series that could serve as episodes of a show or issues of a comic book. The universe of Jason and Mason was rapidly expanding and one of the best ways to further expand on something is to make another series set in the same universe. Interconnected shared universes have intrigued me and entertained me for years. I was watching a lot of the Star Trek shows at the time and it always intrigued me as to how they are all set in the same universe and three of those series are set in the same relative time period and they have plots that often crossover with each other. I wanted to give the universe I created for Jason and Mason something like this. I wanted to make another series that could coincide with Jason and Mason and have plots that tie into the series while at the same time, it would remain as an independent series that could stand by itself as its own thing and not be dependent on something else. I tampered with a bunch of ideas and most of them didn’t work. I planned on having a series about some smart girl that ends up stranded in Japan and is always running from oppressors from her home but that idea didn’t take off. Around that same point in time, I started to develop a fascination with odd and bizarre things. I would constantly go on YouTube where I would watch videos about altercations at restaurants or at places in general that start over very trivial things. I would watch videos of people that would fight at burger joints because they would demand free food for no real reason and they wouldn’t get food and they would fight against the joint as if it is their entitlement. I would find fights like these to be entertaining and I would think that odd encounters like this could make for an entertaining series. I also watched a lot of Planet Dolan at the time and they would often make videos about the worst prisons, dumb products, and the worst vacations people could have. The series I create often come from current interests of mine like years earlier when I conceived Jason and Mason as a means of going against corrupt corporate bureaucrats and now, it is bizarre encounters. In late 2015, I envisioned a puppetlike character that is yellow and has a long neck with thin long arms, and wears a Hawaiian shirt. I also imagined he would speak in rhyme and he would mock people for odd things they do. I thought of turning this character into a puppet that could be used in a comedy show with puppets I thought of making since puppetry was also an interest of mine.
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##### Odyssey of Oddities Conceived (2016)

> All these odd things I constantly watched started to bond together in my mind and they caused a series to be created in January 2016. I developed a philosophy that the timeline of real-life events is nothing but one everlasting odyssey filled with oddities. The story of our world has gone on for a very long time and continues to go on for longer than anyone can possibly imagine. I also find a lot of our history to be quite odd with the philosophies and mythologies the ancient Greeks believed in and even with the amount of the religious practices people go by in the contemporary world. Our world is deeply dictated by odd philosophies. I always felt like a prisoner being marooned in a hick town my whole life so I thought it would make for an entertaining storyline to have a smart academically gifted girl get accused of something she didn’t do and have her forced to live as a prisoner where she constantly encounters odd people and odd events. I then wanted to give this girl a name. I recently watched the first two Scary Movies and I had the name, Anna Faris in my recent memory. I found that Anna is a common name and it would be too obvious if I named this new character that so I gave her the similar name, Annie.
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##### The Early Years of Odyssey of Oddities (2016-2017)

> I wrote for Annie to be the main character of this series where she comes across bizarre predicaments and she must use her intellect to resolve these conflicts. Most series that I write do not have one single main character. I then wrote for Annie to have a sidekick that is a younger boy that I named, Jake and would also be a victim of the entrapment. I would imagine this entrapment would be filled with odd things and it would go on for a very long time. I soon named this series after my philosophy, Odyssey of Oddities since it has a nice ring to it and it perfectly describes what the series is about. It is a title and a series that perfectly suits my ultimate philosophy of the history and future of our world. It is ultimately a long story that is filled with all kinds of odd things. I soon started creating more characters for this series. That yellow puppet I came up with in late 2015 was redesigned and redeveloped into the character Wayon. I wrote for Wayon to be a green long necked and thin armed alien that always wears a red Hawaiian shirt and he speaks in rhyme and usually mocks people. I needed to find a place for him so I later came up with him being a close friend of a complete and total clown that would serve as a “friend” of Annie’s sidekick. I soon came up with a clown character that was a former classmate of Jake’s. This clown is highly based off a kid I knew in the ninth grade that was named Isaak. I just changed the spelling to the more traditional spelling of Isaac and thus, Isaac was born. At this point, Annie is depicted as being the main character, Jake is her sidekick, and Isaac and Wayon are friends of Jake that tag along with Annie and Jake on their adventures. Isaac’s real-life inspiration is just some kid that laughs at everything and thinks everything that happens is funny. Wayon mindlessly tags around with Isaac so Wayon has absorbed most of Isaac’s traits. I never intended for them to be useful characters. They are more just a hinderance on Annie and Jake’s plans. I imagined that a place like this must be some kind of insane asylum since it is filled with people that are deemed to be insane and are not allowed in the mainstream public. I also imagined that a place of this kind must have an administrator. I wrote for the person responsible for this town to be a mayor only this mayor is never elected and he often neglects his duties and he uses Annie and Jake as his slaves. This asylum does not have an official name so I gave it the de facto name of Crazy Town. I then started labelling this evil administrator as, The Mayor of Crazy Town. I mostly got the idea for that name from a scene from the 2004 movie, A Series of Unfortunate Events where Sunny says about their aunt, “She’s the Mayor of crazy town.” I imagined crazy town as being a ridiculous place filled with insane people that always do insane things and that is exactly what Odyssey of Oddities reflects on. The early plots I came up with for this series were simplistic plots that deal with ghosts that live in your home, to having nightmares that involve precious memories going missing, to having nightmares where people get baked into cakes, and even unknowingly ending up in a WWII action movie. A lot of early episodes of Odyssey of Oddities had storylines that paid homage to some of the greatest odd stories. There was one episode that served as a parody of Maurice Sendak’s, In the Night Kitchen and it involved the characters getting baked into something and they break out of it and they end up naked in mockery to the book. There was another episode that served as a love letter to Harry Potter as it had a similar formula to the early Harry Potter books and movies that simply involves the characters solving a mystery and it leads to them discovering hidden sections of city hall.
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##### The Action-Packed Era (2018-2020)

> In 2018, I started reading an abundance of Marvel comics. I was fascinated about how it is one giant interconnected universe that dwarfs Star Trek’s universe. I was intrigued about how characters from one series could end up in another series and it paints even more entertaining connections. Odyssey of Oddities was good in the early years but the series was destined to have its horizons expanded. I always write a series with the intent that it will last a very long time and one of the best ways to do that is to introduce new characters and new types of plots the characters could come across. Admiral Lightning is a venerable superhero that is even older than Captain Fusion. He was the inspiration for Captain Fusion (in the continuity of the series) and I intended for there to be Jason and Mason episodes focused on this character. Jason and Mason was getting too many stories involving superhero action and Odyssey of Oddities didn’t get a lot of this action. I then made Admiral Lightning a character in Odyssey of Oddities to help bridge connections with this series and Jason and Mason. Admiral Lightning became a major driving force in the series and storylines started to focus more on superhero action and sci-fi technology which does somewhat deviate from what the series was in the early years. The evolution of the series is actually quite interesting (or so I find it to be) because it allows for character arcs to be formed. It also becomes a point of interest that the series started as one thing and it evolved into so many seemingly different things over the course of its run.
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##### The SL33K Unlimited Era (2021-present)

> In 2021, Jason and Mason joined a community of welcoming artists and it became a big hit. All the people were interested in seeing more from me. They accepted Odyssey of Oddities with open arms and it soon became a proud part of the SL33K Unlimited family that was later made in 2022 Odyssey of Oddities was confirmed to be another well liked series of mine and the Mayor of Crazy Town became a character all the SL33K Unlimited people like to mock. My fan, Carlos Soupotown took interest in Odyssey of Oddities and suggested ideas that mostly revolved around the continuing battles of Annie and Jake going against the evil mayor. At this point in time, Isaac and Wayon earned the reputation for being the right-hand men for the mayor and they downright work for him which would technically make them antagonists. Odyssey of Oddities also captured the interest of my Discord friend, Isabelle the founder of IJGames Productions Studio. She has created a series called, Red Fox and it is mostly inspired by a lot of the video games she is interested in such as GTA V, Just Cause 4, and Watchdogs. She often plans on having her series crossover with Odyssey of Oddities and she has come up with ideas involving the Odyssey of Oddities characters meeting her characters and the dark ties and connections the mayor has with the mafia. Odyssey of Oddities begins around 2001 (in the chronology of the series) and was originally intended to end by the end of the 2000’s decade or sometime in the early 2010’s. With Isabelle’s input, Annie and Jake are still stuck in the crazy town in 2022 which ads more insult to their goal of taking down crazy town. Odyssey of Oddities is now slated to go on a lot longer than was originally intended which is perfect for this series. Isabelle helped Odyssey of Oddities live up to its name. Odyssey of Oddities is a series that has come a long way and it still continues to expand and evolve. The limits of how odd a long story could be are endless. The future of this series may involve more action type characters using sci-fi technology to fight off some unknown evil force. It may also involve types of villainy that are unimaginable to people today. Odyssey of Oddities has no real bounds.
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