Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Bubble Wrap
User:Under user/Bubble Wrap[edit source]
Yeah, so this is an attempt to bring myself out of a couple of months of writer's block. It pretty much wrote itself to this stage, and I had fun with it, but now comes the serious bit of trying to get it right. So, which bits work, which don't, and what needs to be worked on? Experienced reviewers preferred, but not essential, although an in-depth review is. Ta! --SirU.U.Esq. VFH | GUN | Natter | Uh oh | Pee 16:10, May 9
| Humour: | 7.5 | The humor in this one is a little uneven, but ultimately makes the cut. The beginning is pretty shaky. When I saw "ostensibly little more than an aid to packaging," "regarded by many as little more than padding," and "still looked down on as a mere packaging accessory" almost right next to each other, I was worried. When I barely cracked a smile through "History," I was very worried.
But things picked up. The caption on the bikini made me laugh out loud - which articles rarely do. The whole "clothing" section was hilarious. "Decoration" became very funny when I realized we weren't talking about decoration. And with the conclusion, the whole concept dawns on you and casts the whole article in a brand new light. Beautiful. So, really, the score I'm giving this is 5 for the first half of the article and 10 for the second half. I sort of feel like "History" should just go away completely. Maybe a rewrite would work, I don't know, but I just so rarely find sections on "a fictional history of x" to be funny. Uncyclopedia has roughly eight million of them, and I've chuckled at maybe two. |
| Concept: | 10 | This is the genius of the article - that it starts out in an encylopedic, scholarly tone, and then it gets a little too enthusiastic about bubble wrap, and we start thinking, "Wow, this is getting reallly enthusiastic about bubble wrap," and then it reveals - subtly at first, then explicitly - that the author is a certifiable mental case. Nicely done.
The ending was maybe a little eighth-grade, but, you know, it fits. After all, that's actually something a guy with brain damage might do. Maybe the link to orgasm was juuust a little bit of overkill, though... because, before mousing over that, I was glad you didn't explicitly spell it all out for us. |
| Prose and formatting: | 7 | It's really not bad. The glaring repetition error I mentioned needs to be fixed. Also, the fact that "Bubble Wrap Today" seems more gushingly insane than "History" seems like an oversight - the article should crescendo into insanity, not oscillate into it. |
| Images: | 7.3 | Let's see: I give them 8, 5, 10, and 6. Averaged, that's 7.25. The little boy sets the tone nicely. The picture of bubble-wrap-art is weird, and it feels like the sectopm was written to fit the picture instead of a picture being selected to fit the section. I always like pictures of girls in bikinis, but the caption was what really made that picture kick ass. And the random gizmo wrapped in bubble wrap? Well... okay. 6 is for "not too interesting, but maybe better than nothing?" |
| Miscellaneous: | 7.9 | Averaged. |
| Final Score: | 39.7 | 39.7/50. The guidelines call that "More than adequate: might be VFH." Sounds about right to me. Rewrite the lede, fix or delete the history section, and change the second picture, and I'll nom it myself. Cheers! |
| Reviewer: | Hyperbole 00:57, 10 May 2008 (UTC) | |
Heh, interesting comment about the second pic - actually, the opposite is true. I wrote the section, and wanted a picture to fit to it, and 'chopped that one together from a couple of sources. While I might play around with the running order and I will revisit some of the prose, I think that image stays as it fits with the section - unless I get a second opinion that agrees it should go. (I don't think every pic needs to be funny of itself or with the caption, sometimes you gotta have some that illustrate the text).
I'm now caught in two minds about the repetition - on the one hand, that was deliberate, to sow the first seeds of suspicion that the narrator is a little too obsessed with bubble wrap; but on the other hand, as you thought it was a mistake, perhaps it doesn't work in that capacity. Hmm. I think I'll walk away from this one for a day, and come back to it fresh, and have another tinker. Thanks for all the feedback! --SirU.U.Esq. VFH | GUN | Natter | Uh oh | Pee 09:13, May 10