Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/User:MacMania/Chekhov's gun
User:MacMania/Chekhov's gun[edit source]
Something new, something cliché, something different, something awful. Any comments, suggestions (especially with the formatting—it got really confusing with Leo as section headers, Olga as normal text, and Anton as bold text), recommendations welcome. Any at all. Really. Please, I'm begging you! Wait, no, I'm a writer, not a beggar. Actually, wait, that's not true either. I'm ... I'm ... I'm rambling. 
Sir MacMania GUN—[02:11 21 Jul 2010]
- I told Mac that I'd review one of his articles as soon as I could. That being said, I'll review this as soon as I can. —Unführer Guildy Ritter von Guildensternenstein 17:08, August 9, 2010 (UTC)
| Humour: | 7.75 | A very amusing piece, to be sure. Or at least I thought so. What I liked so much about this article (and, conversely, what other people might not like so much) is that a lot of the humor is totally dependent on knowing who and what Chekhov, Tolstoy, repetitive designation, etc. are. To someone as culture-savvy as myself, all of this is pretty darn funny and quite clever. To someone who isn't so savvy, your jokes might come off as, well, not so funny. I definitely don't advise "dumbing down" the piece, or anything, just simply stating that, by its very nature, it might receive a fair number of bewildered 'abstains' on VFH.
As for improvements, I can't really think of any. Like one of Chekhov's plays,[1] each joke is necessary, each section flows nicely into the next, everything fits. Basically, I wouldn't change anything.
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| Concept: | 8 | A straightforward and clever concept that's executed really well. I don't have any improvements or suggestions to put forth, so let's just leave it at that, I suppose. |
| Prose and formatting: | 6 | This is where your problems lie--unfortunately, I really don't have any concrete suggestions. On the other hand, it's not like said 'problems' are all that problematic, so I wouldn't particularly worry, or even change anything, if I were you.
Anyway, this is (obviously) one of those articles where the text is actually the characters in said article talking. There are two ways these types of articles are often formatted. In articles where there are only two speaking characters, usually the main body text will be the dialog of one character, with the headers being the dialog of the other. In articles where there are multiple speaking voices, you typically get something similar to what I did in my Behind the Music article, where the article is effectively written as a script. Now, your article has three voices, which is too many to totally utilize the first and too few to utilize the second respective layouts. As such, things get just a tad bit awkward. I know you've acknowledged this, obviously, but it bears mentioning. As such, I have no real specific suggestions to alleviate this. If anything, the way you went about it is probably the best way you could have done it. So, like I said, I don't have any specific suggestions, but it bears mention anyway. Anyway, a couple other things: in the Charles Dickens line, you should have 'write' instead of 'writing.' Also, the first image might be just a tad bit too large. Yeah. |
| Images: | 8.25 | I really think that this article's images are one of its stronger points. The first (with the exception of it being a bit too big) and final images are great and fit perfectly. The second and third are a decided change-of-pace from the other two, and I think both work pretty well, plus the third caption is unexpected and quite funny. The only suggestion I can make is maybe add a picture of good ol' Leo Tolstoy in there somewhere, though another image might be one too many. |
| Miscellaneous: | 8 | My overall grade--good work. |
| Final Score: | 38 | coughcoughVoteForMyArticlecoughcough |
| Reviewer: | —Unführer Guildy Ritter von Guildensternenstein 19:38, August 12, 2010 (UTC) | |