Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/User:Saberwolf116/The Stench of Defeat
The Stench of Defeat[edit source]
Rewritten here. I plan on moving this to mainspace, but i'm wondering if it's good enough, or if I should make some improvements. Saberwolf116 18:04, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm gonna go ahead and move this to mainspace, seeing as how i'm terribly impatient. Saberwolf116 05:48, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
| Humour: | 3 | This article seems to be short and lacking in jokes. Let's take a look:
Intro: The prose is fine, and it introduces the subject without being cliched. But the three examples you give don't really tie together. The first example is good; that would be really crushing if that happened. The second example doesn't flow very well from that. How is WTC defeat? I personally never had any vested interest in WTC, and assuming that you're younger than me, you probably knew very little about WTC when it happened too. Defeat hurts most when you try really hard to achieve something, you train or otherwise devote energy every day to get that thing, but you fall short at some crucial moment and all your efforts come crumbling down on top of you. The more irony there is, the more it hurts and the better it is to write about. For example, let's say there's this girl you're trying to date. You bought a gift for her, and she unexpectedly comes by where you live so you ask your roommate to distract her while you wrap her gift. You finish wrapping it only to find out that your roommate distracted her by asking her out, and she said yes. That's defeating. Or it doesn't even have to be ironic like that for it to be defeating. She could simply say no to you and that would be enough. For another example, you're batting at baseball when you get a hit, and when you make it to first base, you're so caught up in the moment with fans cheering for you that you go for second, but you don't notice that they already have the ball there. The twin towers collapsing totally sucks, but it's not really defeating because your efforts aren't thwarted. Basically, I'm just saying in a long-winded way that tragedy != defeat. (Besides, everyone knows that WTC was an inside job.) I don't understand why you say "you begin to perspire". It doesn't really fit with the rest of the sentences. Does defeat smell like sweat? I personally think defeat is more of a taste. You lose a battle: This section evokes more wtf than haha. I'm certainly not accusing you of providing too much detail, given how short this is, but what's that about hamburger buns? What is the reader supposed to think of those hamburger buns? Is it gross that they're stained and soaked? It it a sign that the burger is hot and juicy? Is the reader supposed to think about it at all? If something doesn't help the article, but only raises questions, you should probably remove it. I also don't understand why you have a link piped to ugly. If she's ugly, maybe it's not such a big deal that you lose her later on? Instead, you should give more detail about what's going on and why you're about to be defeated. Who is this guy, what does he look like, and why does he hate you? Sizing him up, what kind of a chance do you stand in a fight with him? Why is it over so quick? You begin to perspire: Again, this sentence strikes me as weird because of the sentence that follows it. So you're sweating blood out of your nose now? And at this point in the story I realize that the stench of defeat you're talking about is sweat. I was thinking about that metallic taste of death you get when you know you're screwed. So there are two ways you can fix this: You can clarify it from the beginning, or you can pull a bait-and-switch, make the reader think the stench of defeat is one thing and then reveal what it really is. I recommend the first option, for simplicity's sake. Why do your tears mix with your lunch? Did you throw up? Are you eating your tears? Did you cry into your burger? Really, this article is too short, and it needs explanations and details like these to flesh it out. You are forever shunned: The story was too short for the reader to really sympathize with the character by this point. Say something about how much Mary meant to you, because if she left you because some random guy beat you up, she seems too fickle and easy to really cry about. Yeah. Flesh out this thang. |
| Concept: | 5 | Any English teacher will tell you that writing in second person is hard. It really is. I suggest you may want to change to third person and give your character a name and a personality. If not, at least be really freakin' careful.
An important thing when writing in second person, or an any person with a subject so general as this, is to write so the reader can relate to what's happening. For a bad example, think of comic strips like Family Circus or the "Love is..." series. They're stupid and gay, but they have a following because people can relate to them. Your article has to be believable. So some guy wants to beat you up. That's workable, but he needs a background and motivation. For an example, I present Why?:Do I have a drug dealer on my buddy list?. Check it out. The narrator is a normal guy confronted with someone unusual but plausible (whether it's talking to a drug dealer who acts like he knows you but you don't remember him, or a stranger trying to fight you), and you get to see the narrator's thought process and then the explanation for the whole scenario. The guy I'm fighting is Mike Tyson? I can't relate to that. The guy is just a random dude who's mad at me because Mary looks like his girlfriend? I could see that happening to some hypothetical me. I'd like to see you finish this article, but it's not there yet. It's short like a stub. |
| Prose and formatting: | 6 | I see that you're trying to be terse throughout the story. That's fine, and you seem to stick to it pretty well, but it presents an obstacle for making this longer. If this style becomes to restrictive, scrap it. Just be sure to add details. Why is the room filled with a hideous odor after hours? How can you smell if your nose is bloody? That sort of thing. Make sure all the loose ends are tied and that the reader doesn't have to ask questions like these. |
| Images: | 4 | There's one image, and while it doesn't suck, it's got that good. See my above tirade about WTC. |
| Miscellaneous: | 5 | Points for not making a pun on "the feet". |
| Final Score: | 23 | I don't know what your goal with this article is, but it seems like you want something good enough to stay on the mainspace. Okay, but since you rewrote this completely, I think you have an obligation to make it genuinely better than it was before, or else the original author will be reasonably pissed that you undid all his edits if he comes back. Right now, I'd say that it's only slightly better than the original. Just stick with it, make sure everything flows and makes sense, and you'll have a good article. |
| Reviewer: | --Pleb SYNDROME CUN medicate (butt poop!!!!) 01:46, 6 May 2009 (UTC) | |