When I was more n00bish I found a one line aricle when flicking through recent changes. I wrote a bigger article that I got to a point of non-completion and then gave up on it. Happytimes started to play with it and that got me excited. Once my interest was up I went back and rewrote huge slabs of it. Happytimes has also put a lot of effort into this. It is a true collab and I now want to see how close to featurable it is, and where, if anywhere, can we take it from here. Pup 07:34, 17/02/2010
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24-48 hours --Sir Skinfan13 Talk {< CUN RotM FBotM VFH ΥΣΣ Maj. SK >}17:10 EST 18 Feb, 2010
| Humour:
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3
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The way I review, I generally put the majority of my comments and suggestions in the humor section. This allows me to be lazy keep all of my thoughts organized. I'll give you my first impressions after one read through and then go in for a more detailed look.
after an initial read-through, I think this review will be briefer than most of my last. I'll go as in-depth as I can, but most of my comments will probably come in the concept section.
Initial Impressions
I'm going to be honest on this one, this article is fairly boring. I wasn't very entertained reading this. The A team references were predictable (but I am happy you didn't go for the easy Mr. T. route), and got few chuckles from reading this. I guess it felt overly juvenile. For this reason, take my review, the comments I make, and the score with a grain of salt.
Closer Look
well, an initial problem I think is that your introduction is very short and doesn't especially cover what goes on in the rest of your article very well. When you say they had "a fanatical devotion to the concept of 'everybody happy,'" you make it sound like this is going to be a big part of the article. It also sets up the tone for the Care bears to be a fanatical fringe organization from the start, which isn't the case.
What you've done here is basically summarize the plot of the show as if it were real, but with shades of varying violence, this isn't especially funny. I don't know if it's your delivery or just the concept (my gut is telling me its the later of the two), but it isn't working. I don't really think there's much more I can say on the subject or offer in terms of this concept, but below I will make suggestions for improving this.
Let me be clear though, the humor isn't abysmal, or even bad in your article, it just falls flat and creates a feeling of boredom. This is only my experience however, and you may wish to get a second opinion about this.
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| Concept:
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4
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The basic problem with your concept here is that this article reads like a summary of the TV show's plot, without any reference to the TV show, nor any real deviation from said plot with minor references to drugs and armed combat within the shows fictional universe. This is both boring, and unimaginative. My suggestion for pursuing the train of thought you've developed with this article would be to either:
- Focus more on making the carebears into a real-world fanatical organization with aims of sowing happiness through chaos and war, and perhaps throw in a reference to the TV show as inspired by the true events surrounding the real world carebears. You can do this by having the carebears be the product of some sort of scientific experiment gone wrong in a marvel-esque story arch, or by other means created with the unlimited capacity of the human brain at your disposal. This is merely a suggestion of mine, but I hope you understand that imo the way you've gone about this is rather boring.
- Focus on removing what you have and parodying the show and its culture within the United States and abroad in the western world. Don't focus so much on the shows plot and making it appear to have actually happened, but rather parody the show and resulting fan culture that sprung up. There is a lot of opportunity for genuine satire here. Two approaches come to mind: writing from the perspective of someone revolted with the thought of the show and its fans, or, writing from the perspective of an extreme fan, possibly one in adult age who is a fanatic of the show. This is perhaps more challenging to make it funny instead of annoying.
- If you want to take the A-team parody route, you need to commit to it fully, a paragraph and a few mentions elsewhere aren't really going to cut it. This article needs to have a single unifying concept.
there are other routes you can take, but the first two stick out to me as having the greatest potential for success.
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| Prose and formatting:
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7
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For the most part there aren't too many problems with your current formatting or tone. There were a few things that I did want to point out though:
- At the very beginning, you should stick the word 'the' in front of the bold carebears, it will make the opening sentence flow better.
- You may want to add a little spacing at the end of the genesis section in history. This way the next section header, 'A Temporary Decline' isn't hugging the picture to its left.
- 'carebear habitat' section is either not placed within the article well or it is extraneous. It shouldn't be sandwiched in between the end of the article and the table with all of the bears.
- Your article seems to lack a good conclusion, it just abruptly ends with the habitat section and a small motivational poster style image that you can't see. If you change nothing else, you seem to conclude the history section in a fitting manner, perhaps you should transplant that to the end of your article.
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| Images:
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7.5
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I'll go in and do an analysis of each picture and the caption:
- I really like the first image, it's a well done photoshop. It also creates interest in your article, it makes the reader think that your article will in fact be about real bears fanatically bent of making people happy through whatever means necessary. This isn't the route you chose to take, however, and I've already touched on this in the concept section. Your caption is purposely ambiguous to not give away too much about the content of your article, which is ok in the manner you've done so.
- second image is applicable to your text, but isn't anything spectacular. The caption is simply average, but is somewhat relevant. If you choose to redo your article in any significant way, you should evaluate whether this image should stay or go.
- third image is actually fairly funny. The beginning image and this one are probably the bits I enjoyed most from your article. The caption is a good one-liner and isn't plainly obvious. I would keep this image and caption regardless of what you do with the article.
- fourth image is applicable to your text, but I personally didn't find it very funny. I am a little biased about crystal meth humor though; crystal meth has been particularly devastating to the poor population of my state and my county here at school and I've seen the effects it has on people who abuse it (and can't really help it), and I've seen people who literally have tried to claw their own skin off. It isn't hard to pick out the 'crankers' in public and its very sad. Now, crystal meth humor truly isn't going to be very offensive to people, and I'm not saying I'm offended by it, I'm just being candid that personal bias may be a factor when I say this image isn't funny.
- fifth image is very average. Caption is better than the actual image in terms of humor, but it came off as bland to me.
- The comic is a little bit funny, but isn't particularly over exciting.
- Lucky charms as carebear poop is somewhat clever, I feel as though a wittier caption would make for a great combination that you can tie into the text.
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| Miscellaneous:
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3
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My level of personal enjoyment from reading the article. It wasn't abysmal, it was just a little boring and average.
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| Final Score:
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24.5
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I think you need to come up with one unifying concept for this article and stick with it throughout. Personally, I'd like to see you take this more toward a more real-world kind of angle, like I suggested in the first bullet under concept. This article just needs a little love and attention in terms of concept. If you have any questions or comments about this review, please feel free to leave me a message at my talk page.
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| Reviewer:
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--Sir Skinfan13 Talk {< CUN RotM FBotM VFH ΥΣΣ Maj. SK >} 00:15 EST 20 Feb, 2010
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