Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Butterfly effect
Butterfly effect[edit source]
WiiKend 05:35, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
| Humour: | 2 | All in all, I just didn't find this article funny. At all. There really aren't any gags to speak of in the piece.
Your opening paragraph features the most obvious attempt at humour, with the flippant comments about the scientist ("decided to die", "you certainly don't know who he is", etc), but they fall flat. HTBFANJS may be a useful starting point if you wish to rewrite this paragraph. The remainder of this article takes a completely different tone to the opening. The change from the gonzo, random diction of the opening to the deadpan delivery used to describe the three "Periods" is disorientating and confusing. My first question regarding this section of the article is, once again, "where are the jokes?" I understand what you were trying to do, aping a scientific approach to writing in order to lampoon the physics at the heart of the subject. The problem is that you've done it too well! "Waiting since the dawn for such an opportunity, a dewdrop starts sliding all along the central vein of the leaf towards its extremity. The sun, already hot despite the youth of the day, would have soon make this dewdrop evaporate but destiny has chosen another alternative." This does have the required Richard Attenborough voice that your approach requires, but it needs a little more of a Richard Pryor voice to make it funny. Have you read UnBooks:A Night in the Life of PJ McFreeman? It's a "slice of life" article, similar in tone to this, but the author shows a great understanding of when and where to push into the bounds of the ridiculous in order to increase the potential for humour. |
| Concept: | 8 | I really like the concept of lampooning the Butterfly Effect. It's such a quintessential piece of theoretical physics, it's asking for a parody. Have you heard of the film of the same name, released a few years ago? Perhaps linking the two would be a good idea to increase the scope of the article. |
| Prose and formatting: | 3 | The prose in this piece is fairly poor. Spelling mistakes and grammar errors abound, and some of the sentences are very poorly constructed. "Eventough you cannot imagine a more furtive move, the tiny flap of the brazilian butterfly’s wings made the leaf on which he rested slightly shake" is a serious offender in all of these departments, but there are examples EVERYWHERE in the article. Now, it's true to say that humour doesn't rely on obeying the rules of English 100% of the time, but I found these errors made the article difficult to read and certainly restricted my enjoyment of it. Running your prose through the SpellCheck function on a word processor might be a good idea for eradicating these issues.
On the plus side, keeping paragraph lengths brief worked well. While overall the article was difficult to read, your paragraph layout and use of titles made the best of a bad situation. |
| Images: | 10 | Easily the strongest part of the article. The images were well-chosen, suited the material well, and all of the captions worked perfectly (the "oops" caption on the picture of the nuke is what bumped your Humour rating up to 2). |
| Miscellaneous: | 5.8 | Averaged your score. |
| Final Score: | 28.8 | This article looks like a very rushed job. It's like you found a topic that you thought was good (and rightly so), and wanted to stake your claim on it before anyone else did. There's little evidence of proof-reading or overall thought about the finished project.
But don't be disheartened! You have found a topic with a lot of potential, and I think you have an idea of where you want the article to go. Read the links I sent you before doing anything else. Then, pick the tone you want the article to carry right across the board. When rewriting, be critical of your approach. Deadpan delivery (if you choose to continue that path) is brilliant for comedy. However, it only really works when the subject material is so ridiculous that the sombre tone is completely inappropriate. So get crazy! |
| Reviewer: | BlackHarrier32 01:14, 13 September 2008 (UTC) | |