Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/HowTo:Be a Brave Protagonist (Revised)
HowTo:Be a Brave Protagonist [edit source]
Put it on Pee Review in 2010, made some changes as requested in the review. Tell me what y'all think! Scofield 12:05, February 28, 2011 (UTC)
- I don't know about everyone but I'll tell you what I think.
(talk) 03:04, March 1, 2011 (UTC)
| Humour: | 5 | Down,Down-Forward,Forward Punch! And that's how you Hadouken.
Intro Standard intro. Nothing really to say here. You step up the article well (even though you don't completely follow through) and have a halfway decent joke in there as well. Could use a little revising if you take my advice in the Concept section. The beginning This section reads a lot like a second intro. A couple of the paragraphs could be moved to the intro without affecting much, and then what's left could be expanded upon (while making it more like a HowTo.) As it is right now this section isn't very funny. Most of the jokes seem more like stating the truth of what would happen to different kinds protagonists (and truth =/= funny.) Honestly rewriting most of this section is probably the best way to go. Taking Charge As I talk about more in the Concept section. From here on each section will most likely need to be written more in the format of a HowTo. But back to humor. I like the idea of having to be involved in "sequels," however I think, if this is going to center around video game characters, then it should be more obvious that challenges will be scaled. Simply making a quip about how modern games skip over this isn't sufficient. I also like the endings that your adventure could have, although it should be later on probably in the ending section. Each one of the endings should also explain how one can get out of each situation compliant with the HowTo format. The Plot Thickens First off, you should probably censor out any spoilers with <c></c> tags. Don't want anyone getting mad over nothing now do we? This section is pretty funny on it's own and actually fits the format more than most of the other sections so the only thing I can recommend is getting a better picture and expanding on what you already have in this section. The Final Battle Each of the video game protagonist sections read more as a commentary on the predictability of video games than a guide on what to do when you become one. The last two paragraphs are decent, but the rest of it just seems like you don't like video games that are linear. I think you should keep the sub-sections in this section as they are essential to someone learning to be a protagonist, although there should be steps to getting to endings that are beneficially and steps to avoid endings that lead to you dying. Drawn-out ending Might want to re-title this "The Epilogue" as it's neater. The text itself is good as there isn't much to instruct people to do here. Mainly you could tell people what to expect once their adventure is over (probably using Lord of the Rings as a guide as Frodo isn't really considered a hero in the Shire, just as most people won't be considered heroes in their hometowns.) and how their lives will be pretty terrible as they've just lost most of their friends and then their lives will abruptly end (after all the story is over.) Overview There isn't much humor here that is actually relevant to the format of the article. There is a lot that you can salvage, though, as adding more on actually becoming a protagonist as well as how to navigate the actual adventure (rather than just what you can except.) |
| Concept: | 5 | The concept of a HowTo guide for becoming a protagonist is a good idea, but you seem to be trying to do too much in one article. In the intro you say that you're going to teach people how to become a movie or video game protagonist. That's your first problem. In much of the article you switch back and forth between movie and video game terminology without indicating which one will be talked about. You also will address something like the "Fianl Battle" in video games with no mention as to final battles in movies (They exist, just look at Equilibrium, The Matrix, Boondock Saints, Fight Club, any action movie really.) To fix this I would recommend choosing one or the other. Alternatively, if you want to do two at the same time I'd recommend doing movies and books (as they are much more compatible than movies and video games.)
The second major problem I have with the article is that it doesn't read as much as a HowTo guide as much as a guide book to what to expect if you are already a movie/video game protagonist. The first section pretty much says "Sorry guys. Heroes are born, not made." which can be a funny point if you do something like the Frank Caliendo sketch (I know, he's not that funny, but this sketch is brilliant) which would start something like "Step 1. Be born exactly 15-25 years before a major crisis in either the real world or a fantasy world far, far away. Having a evil father and/or stepmother is preferred. Step 2. ??? Step 3. Pro After thought: You mention Harry Potter a great deal in this article. It's not necessarily a bad thing as many people know Harry Potter and will know what you're talking about. I would just consider picking at least one type of protagonist mentioned (Frodo, Neo, Alice (in Wonderland), Batman, Ender (Ender's Game), Paul Atreides (Dune) etc.) and use those as examples. Harry could be one or two of those examples, but as it is right now he's the only example. |
| Prose and formatting: | 6 | The format of this article is really strange as there are too many images (more on that later) which cause many of the sections' edit buttons to be pushed under the picture of Agent Smith. Right now the right side of your article is almost 100% pictures or the HowTo template. If you can move one or more of the pictures over to the left without it looking too strange I would recommend that, but first you should determine if you actually need all those pictures, and if you do, do they have to be that big?
In terms of the actual writing there is a little tense confusion that goes on seemingly randomly. Where I noticed it the most is in and after "The Final Battle" section. In that section you start using present tense instead of future tense (i.e. The final battle usually begins when you breach the antagonist's headquarters.) This is something to look out for if you decide to write further on this article as tense confusion is a really common thing (I've done it a lot myself.) A minor concern of mine is that a number of your longer sections don't have breaks in them. This makes your article look neater, and you've already done it in a couple sections, "The beginning" is a good example of how to space the breaks in your prose. |
| Images: | 3 | This article suffers from something that a few of my own articles have suffered from: an overload of pictures. I'm going to go through them one at a time (and don't have a random, witty one-liner to go with that statement) and evaluate each one individually, I'd recommend deleting at least 3 of them at your discretion.
1. Harry Potter. The picture deals with something that you mentioned in the section and the caption is relatively funny. These are two good things to have in a thumb. The picture itself could be improved a little to fit more with the "I'm just Harry" quote instead of having him look super happy. That's entirely up to you though, it still works with the pic you have. My prognosis: Keep. 2.FF13 swordgun girl. I'll leave my personal hatred toward swordguns at the door (minus Dante's of course.) The pic is really big, you could easily crop it so that it's just her face (even if you just use MS paint or...whatever mac have) to make it a lot smaller that way. You can also just reduce the number of pixels in the link so it isn't taking up so much space. The caption is alright for the picture, but the whole pic only vaguely relates to the article as a whole. My prognosis: Make it smaller, keep the caption, put in something in the article to make it more relevant. 3.Cliffhanger. Fairly humorous, not exactly a laugh-out-loud moment but a pretty good picture all around. A still from 127 hours may work better as that's actually a movie, and failing that I'm sure you can find some literal cliffhangers in actual movies/shows. My prognosis: Keep it if you keep the "Cliffhanger" sub-section in the article, or maybe even if you don't. 4.Agent Smith. I have a feeling this is a reference to one of the sections (either "a storm is coming" or "I'll be back") but it doesn't tie in to the article very well. Agent Smith is a very recognizable figure and deserves a better caption that what's in the article right now. He could easily be used as an example to people who are learning to be protagonists as someone who could either be a good guy or a bad guy as he looks like a real-world good guy (FBI agent) but we all know him as a heartless killing machine who can move much faster than any human. Someone just learning to be a protagonist can benefit from learning to recognize good guys from bad guys. My nogprosis: Delete. If you keep it change the caption and make it smaller. 5.Harry Flynn. I'm a fairly proficient video game player and I had to look up this guy which means that the average reader will have no idea who this is, and even fewer will have played the game far enough to be betrayed by him. Both of these things make this an extremely useless picture that just serves to take up space and confuse the reader. My prognosis: Delete it, probably qvfd it too, can't see anyone else using it. 6. Explosion. Although explosions are a common occurrence in boss battles that is a fairly well known fact which makes it not surprising at all (which is one of the main elements of comedy.) If you delete some of the bigger pictures you can probably keep this one, but I wouldn't recommend it, at least not with that caption. My prognosis: I kind of beat myself to this part...delete or change the caption..I guess. 7. Angrybaldman. This is a pretty good pic with a decent caption, it's just in the wrong section. If you're going to include this picture you should make it more relevant to the article by perhaps including an antagonist/arch-enemy section that you can then use this image in. This pic is the only one that I think is the right size other than the 1st. The image could be replaced with someone more recognizable perhaps (such as Two-face from Dark Knight), but the current image still proves the point. My prognosis: Add a section to make this relevant, maybe change the pic. 8. Mug shot. Who is this? Should I know who this is? It's from '85 which is before about 1/2 (I think) of the registered users were born, and 20 years before uncyc itself. This doesn't seem to reflect the point of the article either as everyone knows what it would look like when a famous criminal get arrested and this isn't it. If it were Lex Luthor's mugshot or maybe the Joker's (or...Magneto's if you're a Marvel fan like me) then it would be more relevant. As it is now this is just a guy getting arrested. My prognosis: Unless the pic is changed then it should be taken out entirely. |
| Miscellaneous: | 6 | General "feel" of the article |
| Final Score: | 25 | If you keep working on this I could definitely see this being an amazing article. Right now it's just not quite there yet.
P.S. I know I'm really hard in this review. It's mainly because I can see this being so much better if you work on it and if I told you everything was "ok" then that would never happen. |
| Reviewer: |  (talk)
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