Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/History of the World: Part 1
History of the World: Part 1[edit source]
Oliphaunte 16:57, October 30, 2010 (UTC)
- I'll get this. Consider it an early Christmas present, or a late Chanukkah present. --Black Flamingo 11:49, December 15, 2010 (UTC)
| Humour: | 5 | Ah, a new user are you? In that case welcome to the site, and to pee review; thanks for contributing. This is a decent first article, but like all first articles it's not without its problems. Most of these problems are probably conceptual, in my opinion (the whole idea of it just seems a bit strange), so I will talk about that later in the Concept section. For now let's just take a look at some of the snags in your humour.
The first idea I'm going to talk about is the whole fingerpuppet thing, which is probably the main source of humour in here. Generally speaking, it feels a bit out of place here. It's too random, and a bit irrelevant to the subject matter. I don't know if you've read How to be funny and not just stupid but I find it's an invaluable guide to writing for this site. One of the key things it advises writers is to try to avoid random humour, and especially putting things in that have nothing to do with the title of the article. If this was an article about fingerpuppets or someone who was famous for fingerpuppetry (if such a person exists) then it would be fine. But here it's just too weird. No one's going to laugh at it because they'll all be wondering what the hell is going on here. It's an idea I would advise against using at all, although you may be able to get away with it if you downplay it a little. I guess what you're trying to establish with this is that the historian character is totally insane. I think there are much more subtle ways of suggesting this than having him have a foul-mouthed fingerpuppet with him at all times; it kind of feels like you're desperately trying to pad out the article with anything you can. Use his speech and mannerisms to suggest this instead. Maybe take a look at this article which does a similar thing with a back-and-forth style, with one character being the straight man and the other being a complete weirdo. Another thing that doesn't really work about the fingerpuppet joke is how overly-coarse it is. Swearing a lot and for very little reason is rarely funny, and although you do try it make it a bit more interesting by having it all censored; this is actually a bit of an old joke. I can think of a couple of examples of where I've seen the exact same thing. Generally speaking it's not a good idea to use a joke which has been told before, especially something that's actually become a cliche. Rather than just swearing, try to use more interesting language. Play with words. I'm not saying don't be coarse at all, but swearing by itself simply isn't funny. If you're going to swear, try and do it in a fresh and original way - "fatherfucker" instead of the more pedestrian "motherfucker", for example. The only other comic technique you use throughout the article is the historian not knowing what he's talking about - and possibly also being insane. This is workable, I think, and could form a good foundation for your article. However it needs to be developed. The whole thing is over too quick (in fact, the article as a whole is just really short). You rush through it, have him say a couple of silly things and then it's basically done. Because of this, it seems too silly. You should build up to it slowly, take your time to develop the idea. At the start have him say a few questionable but ultimately believeable things, then have both the historian's madness and the host's skepticism grow, until ultimately it crescendoes with claims of travelling to the moon with toothpaste and battling Godzilla. It will be a lot funnier this way, as the randomness won't seem like it's coming out of nowhere, and the reader will be swept along with it. Another thing that would help would be to keep the host totally straight. In the current article, he says a few silly, random things himself, such as the twister reference. It would be a lot more effective if he was straight, as that way he'd be giving a realistic contrast to the silliness of the historian. |
| Concept: | 4 | Ok, so there are a couple of issues with the concept too. In fact, I think it's where many of the issues with humour stem from. First of all, the TV show format seems an odd choice. I can't really understand the leap between coming up with the title "History of the World: Part 1" and coming up with the style of doing it like an interview. The two ideas seem poles apart, and I think the article would be a lot better off if you got rid of one of them. I guess there are two options here; first to just change the title to something like "History Today", or some other generic title of a history show (although maybe not this exact example as it will sound way too familiar to British readers of a certain age). Or on the other hand, you could totally revamp the article so it's a more general exploration of early Earthen history. This of course would require a lot more work, but you could still probably transplant a few of the ideas you have here across to the new version. In any case, this isn't the biggest issue. The interview could work with its current title, but you would have to explore the subject matter in a hell of a lot more depth. This brings me to my next point...
The article is way too short. For such a grand-sounding title like "History of the World" you only cover a very small period of time, and even then you don't go into detail about it. Even for "Part 1" this isn't enough. Take a look at this ridiculously long history article for an idea of the kind of scope such a subject should have. Hopefully that will inspire you to get a bit more content in there. What probably doesn't help with the length is that you don't really get to grips with what's funny about the subject matter, in fact the only jokes you make on this are, again, random claims that they played twister and other silly things like that. And the only non-random one I noticed was the joke about fire being the hottest trend in pre-classical culture. You could go so much further. I mean, what is the joke here? That fire is hot? I don't want to sound harsh but it's not exactly the peak of satire is it? It's as if you didn't really have any ideas for the article, but just liked the title. The problem is, most of the jokes in here don't even go with the title, and the few that do feel forced. Have a think about what's actually funny about the early history of the world, then try to focus your jokes upon that. Read a few articles from our best of if you haven't already, and note how consistent and in-depth they tend to be. |
| Prose and formatting: | 6.5 | Your prose, spelling and grammar really aren't that bad, although I would advise you give it another thorough proofread just to make sure you've got everything. What's more of an issue here is your formatting. The article looks kind of scruffy at the moment, and I think there are several things causing this. The biggest is probably the script style you've employed; having everything in italics (except for one line in the middle which I think you might have missed) does ruin the way it looks slightly. Italicising text can help when it comes to differentiating two speakers, but to have everything this way just seems odd. I think poor image placement and a lack of headers also contributes to this. Try making the images larger and maybe put on or two on the left (unless this breaks up the text too much). The only thing you can really do about the lack of headers is to generate more content. |
| Images: | 4 | Your images are ok, let's go through them one at a time.
The first one is good, and nicely suited to the article's content. I think the caption could probably do with a bit more work, as I'm not too sure what you mean by it. Also, it's not really the history of the world is it? It's just a diagram of the evolution of humans. Still, it's relevant, I'm just saying you should rework the caption. And maybe replace it with a more general image for your opener; moving this one to a section focussing on solely on humanity. If you're sticking with the interview thing, pictures of the set/interviewers would definitely be a benefit to the article. The one of Ronald the fingerpuppet is ok too, but then you know how I feel about the whole fingerpuppet thing. I don't think there's much more to say on the subject. Finally, the one from Office Space isn't bad either. It's not hugely funny however, nor does the guy really look like a historian (he looks more like an office worker, which obviously is what he is). A more obvious picture of a historian would help, as well as some pictures of the madness the historian is talking about. The latter may require some photoshopping, but if you don't have those skills yourself you can always stumble over to RadicalX's corner, where one of our 'choppers will probably be able to throw something together for you. |
| Miscellaneous: | 5 | My gut feeling on your article as a whole. |
| Final Score: | 24.5 | Well, that's me done. Sorry if the review's a bit short, but then so is the article really. The main things to work on are the randomness and the lack of depth. Overall, you've done some good work here, especially for a first piece, and I look forward to seeing you continue working on it. If there's anything I've said here that you want me to explain better, or if you want my opinion on anything I might have missed, please let me know and I'll try to help. I hope the review is ok. |
| Reviewer: | --Black Flamingo 14:45, December 15, 2010 (UTC) | |